CONSCIOUSNESS AND PERIPHERAL SELF-AWARENESS

It has been argued that consciousness is not possible without peripheral self-consciousness; i.e., without an implicit awareness of oneself as the subject of one’s mental state. The author ś purpose is to undermine this view. He contend that a subject’s first-personal access to her conscious mental states and an awareness of them as hers, along with a particular approach to consciousness according to which a subject cannot be unconsciously conscious of things motivate the view that consciousness is not possible without self-consciousness. In order to undermine this view he argues that not all conscious states are accompanied by a sense of mineness. He rejects also the reasons for endorsing an approach to consciousness according to which a subject cannot be unconsciously conscious of things. Then he examines critically Kriegel’s arguments for the dependence of consciousness on self-consciousness based on the first-personal access a subject has to her conscious mental states and discuss the difficulties involved.