paradox of self-conciousness, the - bermúdez

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Summary by Jos Luis Bermdez

Summary of

The Paradox of

Self-Consciousness(MIT Press, 1998)

by Jos Luis Bermdez

1 First-person thought and self-reference

Most, if not all, of the higher forms of self-consciousness presuppose our capacity to thinkabout ourselves. Consider, for example, self-knowledge, the capacity for moral self-evaluation and ability to construct a narrative of our past. Although much of what we thinkwhen we think about ourselves involves concepts and descriptions also available to us inour thoughts about other people and other objects, our thoughts about ourselves alsoinvolve an ability that we cannot put to work in thinking about other people and things -namely, the ability to apply those concepts and descriptions uniquely to ourselves. I shallfollow convention in referring to this as the capacity to entertain 'I'-thoughts.

'I'-thoughts of course involve self-reference, but it is self-reference of a distinctive kind. 'I'-thoughts have the property of being immune to error through misidentification, where this

means (roughly) that one cannot think an 'I'-thought without knowing that it is in fact aboutoneself (Shoemaker1968, Evans 1982). This feature of 'I'-thoughts is closely tied to thelinguistic fact that they can only be reported in oratione rectaby means of the first personpronoun, because one cannot use 'I' to refer to oneself and be mistaken about who one isreferring to (as one could, for example, were one to refer to oneself using a proper nameor a definite description). This suggests a deflationary account of self-consciousnesscharacterised by the following three theses.

A) Once we have an account of what it is to be capable of thinking 'I'-thoughtswe will have explained everything that is distinctive about self-consciousness.

B) Once we have an account of what it is to be capable of thinking thoughts thatare immune to error through misidentification we will have explained everythingthat is distinctive about the capacity to think 'I'-thoughts.

C) Once we have explained what it is to master the semantics of the first personpronoun (e.g. via mastery of some version of the token-reflexive rule) , we willhave explained everything that is distinctive about the capacity to think thoughtsthat are immune to error through misidentification.

The problem with the deflationary view is that first-person self-reference is itself dependentupon 'I'-thoughts in a way that creates two forms of vicious circularity which collectively Iterm the paradox of self-consciousness The first type of circularity (explanatory
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circularity), arises because the capacity for self-conscious thought must presupposed inany satisfactory account of mastery of the first person pronoun. I cannot refer to myself asthe producer of a given token of 'I' without knowing that I intend to refer to myself -knowledge which itself has a first-person content. The second type of circularity (capacitycircularity) arises because this interdependence rules out the possibility of explaining howthe capacity either for self-conscious thought or for linguistic mastery of the first person

pronoun arises in the normal course of human development. It does not seem possible tomeet the following constraint:

TheAcquisition Constraint If a given psychological capacity is psychologicallyreal then there must be an explanation of how it is possible for an individual inthe normal course of human development to acquire that capacity

Neither self-conscious thought nor linguistic mastery of the first person pronoun is innate,and yet each presupposes the other in a way that seems to imply that neither can beacquired unless the other capacity is already in place.

2 Escaping the paradox of self-consciousness

The strategy that I employ in the book to escape the paradox of self-consciousnessinvolves cutting the tie between content-bearing states and language mastery. The generalstrategy involves distinguishing those forms of full-fledged self-consciousness whichpresuppose mastery of the first person concept and linguistic mastery of the first personpronoun, and those forms ofprimitiveornonconceptual self-consciousnesswhich do notpresuppose any such linguistic or conceptual mastery. If the self-consciousnesspresupposed by linguistic mastery of the first person pronoun is nonconceptual rather thanfully-fledged, then the two forms of circularity which create the paradox of self-consciousness will be neutralised. A non-circular analysis of full-fledged self-consciousness in terms of linguistic mastery of the first person pronoun would be availableif the 'I'-thoughts presupposed by such linguistic mastery turned out to be instances, not offully-fledged self-consciousness, but instead of nonconceptual self-consciousness. Thiswould also provide the key to showing how linguistic mastery of the first person pronounmeets the Acquisition Constraint.

Pursuing this strategy involves rejecting what might be termed the classical view ofcontent. In particular it involving rejecting the following thesis:

The Conceptual Requirement Principle The range of contents which it ispermissible to attribute to a creature is directly determined by the conceptswhich that creature possesses.

Roughly speaking, it is because concepts are language-dependent and yet there existstrong reasons for ascribing thought-contents to non-linguistic creatures that we have toaccept the existence of nonconceptual contents. A nonconceptual content is one that canbe ascribed to a thinker without that thinker having to possess the concepts required tospecify that content. I defend the claim (which I term the Priority Principle) that conceptscan only be possessed by language-users. Non-linguistic thoughts can only be thoughtswith nonconceptual content, because concepts are essentially linguistic phenomena.

The constitutive connection between concepts and language emerges from the conditionsupon the individuation of concepts - which in turn are conditions upon what it is to possess


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or grasp a concept. Any acceptable account of what it is to possess a concept will have toinclude certain specifications of circumstances in which it is appropriate to apply thatconcept. But this is not all. Concepts form part of, and are individuated by their role in, thecontents of propositional attitudes. Part of what it is to possess a given concept is that oneshould be able to recognise that certain circumstances give one good reasons to takeparticular attitudes to contents containing that concept. Moreover, concept mastery is also

evidenced in dispositions to make and to accept as legitimate or justified certain inferentialtransitions between judgements.

The plausibility of the Priority Principle emerges from the constraints upon being able toappreciate rational grounds for certain inferences. It is certainly true that it is possible to bejustified (or warranted) in making a certain inferential transition without being able toprovide a justification (or warrant ) for that inferential transition. It is a familiarepistemological point, after all, that there is a difference between being justified in holdinga belief and justifying that belief. What does not seem to be true is that it is possible todistinguish between justified and unjustified inferential transition if one is not capable ofproviding any justifications at all for any inferential transitions. But providing justifications is

a paradigmatically linguistic activity. Providing justifications is a matter of identifying andarticulating the reasons for a given classification, inference or judgement. It is becauseprelinguistic creatures are in principle incapable of providing such justifications that thePriority Principle is true. Mere sensitivity to the truth of inferential transitions involving agiven concept is not enough for possession of that concept. Rational sensitivity is required,and rational sensitivity comes only with language mastery.

The attribution of representational states with nonconceptual content to non-linguisticcreatures is an instance of inference to the best explanation. As such it is subject to theconstraints associated with inference to the best explanation - that is, constraints ofsimplicity, explanatory power and parsimony. In particular, it is only to be entered into whensimpler explanations that do not appeal to representational states are demonstrablyinadequate.

Nonetheless, many philosophers would be prepared to countenance the possibility ofnonconceptual content without accepting that there might be nonconceptual first personcontents or 'I'-thoughts. If the theory of nonconceptual content is to solve the paradox ofself-consciousness the possibility of nonconceptual first person contents, and hence thepossibility of nonconceptual self-consciousness, must be independently motivated. Thisrequires identifying forms of behaviour in prelinguistic or nonlinguistic creatures for whichinference to the best understanding or explanation demands the ascription of states with

nonconceptual first person contents. I carry out this strategy in four domains:

a) perceptual experienceb) somatic proprioception (bodily self-awareness)c) self-world dualismd) psychological interaction

3 The self of ecological optics

One of J. J. Gibson's great insights in the study of visual perception was that the very

structure of visual perception containspropriospecificinformation about the self, as well asexterospecific information about the distal environment (Gibson 1979). This is the mostprimitive form of nonconceptual self-awareness, the foundation on which all other forms of
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self-awareness are built.

Gibson stresses certain peculiarities of the phenomenology of the field of vision. Notableamong these is the fact that the field of vision is bounded. Vision reveals only a portion ofthe world to the perceiver at any given time (roughly half in the human case, due to thefrontal position of the eyes). The boundedness of the field of vision is part of what is seen,

and the field of vision is bounded in a way quite unlike the way in which spaces arebounded within the field of vision. The self appears in perception as the boundary of thevisual field - a moveable boundary that is responsive to the will.

The boundedness of the visual field is not the only way in which the self becomes manifestin visual perception according to Gibson. The field of vision contains other objects thathide, orocclude, the environment. These objects are, of course, various parts of the body.The nose is a particularly obvious example, so distinctively present in just about everyvisual experience. The cheekbones, and perhaps the eyebrows, occupy a slightly lessdominant position in the field of vision. And so too, to a still lesser extent, do the bodilyextremities, hands, arms, feet and legs. They protrude into the field of vision from below in

a way that occludes the environment, and yet which differs from the way in which one non-bodily physical object in the field of vision might occlude another. They are, as Gibsonpoints out, quite peculiar objects. All objects, bodily and non-bodily, can present a range ofsolid angles in the field of vision (where by a solid angle is meant an angle with its apex atthe eye and its base at some perceived object), and the size of those angles will of coursevary according to the distance of the object from the point of observation. The further awaythe object is, the smaller the angle will be. This gives rise to a clear, andphenomenologically very salient, difference between bodily and non-bodily physicalobjects. Perceived body-parts are, according to Gibson, 'subjective objects' in the contentof visual perception.

But these self-specifying structural invariantsprovide only a fraction of the self-specifyinginformation available in visual perception. There are two more important types of self-specifying information. The mass of constantly changing visual information generated bythe subject's motion poses an immense challenge to the perceptual systems. How can thevisual experiences generated by motion be decoded so that subjects perceive that theyare moving through the world? Gibson's notion ofvisual kinesthesis is his answer to thistraditional problem. Whereas many theorists have assumed that motion perception canonly be explained by the hypothesis of mechanisms which parse cues in the neutralsensations into information about movement and information about static objects, thecrucial idea behind visual kinesthesis is that the patterns of flow in the optic array and the

relations between the variant and invariant features make available information about themovement of the perceiver, as well as about the environment.

As an example of such a visually kinesthetic invariant, consider that the optical flow in anyfield of vision starts from a centre, that is itself stationary. This stationary centre specifiesthe point that is being approached, when the perceiver is moving. The aiming point oflocomotion is at the vanishing point of optical flow.

Striking experiments have brought out the significance of visual kinesthesis. In the so-called 'moving-room' experiments, subjects are placed on the solid floors of rooms whosewalls and ceilings can be made to glide over a solid and immoveable floor (Lishman and

Lee 1973). If experimental subjects are prevented from seeing their feet and the floor ishidden, then moving the walls backwards and forwards on the sagittal plane creates in thesubjects the illusion that they are moving back and forth. This provides strong support for
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the thesis that the movement of the perceiver can be detected purely visually, since visualspecification of movement seems to be all that is available. An even more strikingillustration emerges when young children are placed in the moving room, because theyactually sway and lose their balance (Lee and Aronson 1974).

A further important form of self-specifying information available to be picked up in the field

of vision, according to the theory of ecological optics. This is due to the direct perception ofa class of higher-order invariants which Gibson terms affordances. It is in the theory ofaffordances that we find the most sustained development of the ecological view that thefundamentals of perceptual experience are dictated by the organism's need to navigateand act in its environment, because the animal and the organism are complementary. Theuncontroversial premise from which the theory of affordances starts is that objects andsurfaces in the environment have properties relevant to the abilities of particular animals,in virtue of which they allow different animals to act and react in different ways.

According to Gibson, information specifying affordances is available in the structure of lightto be picked up by the creature as it moves around the world. The possibilities which the

environment affords are not learnt through experience, and nor are they inferred. They aredirectly perceived as higher-order invariants. And of course, the perception of affordancesis a form of self-perception - or, at least, a way in which self-specifying information isperceived. The whole notion of an affordance is that of environmental information aboutone's own possibilities for action and reaction.

Recognising the existence of the 'ecological self', as it has come to be known (Neisser1988), is the first step in resolving the paradox of self-consciousness. It removes the needto explain how infants can "bootstrap" themselves into the first-person perspective. Theevidence is overwhelming that nonconceptual first person contents are available more orless from the beginning of life. Illustrations are to be found in:

neonatal distress crying (Martin and Clark 1982)

neonatal imitation (Meltzoff and Moore 1977)

infant reaching behaviour (Field 1976, Von Hofsten1982)

visual kinesthesis (Lee and Aronson 1974, Butterworth and Hicks 1977, Pope 1984)

4 Somatic proprioception and the bodily self

The following list of the principal types of information deployed in somatic proprioceptionand their physiological sources is taken from the general introduction to Bermdez, Marcel

and Eilan 1995:

Information about pressure, temperature and friction from receptors on the skin andbeneath its surface.

Information about the state of joints from receptors in the joints, some sensitive tostatic position, some to dynamic information.

Information about balance and posture from the vestibular system in the inner ear;the head/trunk dispositional system; and information from pressure on any parts of

the body that might be in contact with a gravity-resisting surface.

Information about bodily disposition and volume obtained from skin-stretch.
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Information about nutritional and other homeostatic states from receptors in theinternal organs.

Information about muscular fatigue from receptors in the muscles.

Information about general fatigue from cerebral systems sensitive to blood

composition.

Information about bodily disturbances derived from nociceptors.

These somatic information systems vary along several dimensions. Some provideinformation solely about the body (eg. the systems providing information about generalfatigue and nutrition). The vestibular system, in contrast, is concerned with bodily balanceand hence with the relation between the body and the environment. Other systems can bedeployed to yield information either about the body or about the environment. Receptors inthe hand sensitive to skin stretch, for example, can provide information about the hand's

shape and disposition at a time, or about the shape of small objects. Similarly, receptors injoints and muscles can yield information about how the relevant limbs are distributed inspace, or, through haptic exploration, about the contours and shape of large objects.

Second, not every system yields information that is consciously registered. Mostinformation about balance and limb position, for example, feeds directly into the control ofposture. There are also significant differences in the way in which different types ofinformation come to consciousness. It is important to distinguish two different types ofconscious somatic proprioception (mediatesomatic proprioception and immediatesomaticproprioception) distinguished according to the role played by bodily sensation. Theexperience of pain is a paradigm example of mediate somatic proprioception, because the

sensation of pain is a constitutive part of the experience. Pain is something we feel, as areitches, tickles and so forth. But this cannot be the model for conscious somaticproprioception in general. Joint position sense is the awareness that we have of how arebody parts are distributed in space and relative to each other. Kinesthetic awareness is theawareness of limb movement. Neither of these is mediated by sensations.

I count conscious somatic proprioception as a form of genuinely self-conscious thought forfour reasons. First, it gives information about the embodied self that is immune to errorthrough misidentification. It cannot be the case that one receives proprioceptiveinformation without being aware that the information concerns one's own body. Secondly,somatic proprioceptive information has direct and immediate implications for action. Third,

somatic proprioception provides a way, perhaps the most primitive way, of registering theboundary between self and non-self. Through tactile awareness we gain a direct sense ofthe limits of the body. Fourth, through feedback from kinesthesia, joint-position sense andthe vestibular system we become aware of the body as an object responsive to the will.Proprioception gives us a sense, not just of the embodied self as spatially extended andbounded, but also as a potentiality for action.

5 Points of view

The nonconceptual first person contents implicated in somatic proprioception and the pick-up of self-specifying information in exteroceptive perception provide very primitive forms ofnonconceptual self-consciousness, albeit ones that can plausibly be viewed as in placefrom birth or shortly afterwards. A solution to the paradox of self-consciousness, however,


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requires showing how we can get from these primitive forms of self-consciousness to thefully-fledged self-consciousness that comes with linguistic mastery of the first personpronoun. This progression will have to be both logical (in a way that will solve the problemof explanatory circularity) and ontogenetic (in a way that will solve the problem of capacitycircularity). Clearly, this requires that there be forms of self-consciousness which, while stillcounting as nonconceptual, are nonetheless more developed than those yielded by

somatic proprioception and the structure of exteroceptive perception - and, moreover, thatit be comprehensible how these more developed forms of nonconceptual self-consciousness should have 'emerged' out of basic nonconceptual self-consciousness.

The dimension along which forms of self-consciousness must be compared is the richnessof the conception of the self which they provide. Nonetheless, a crucial element in anyform of self-consciousness is the way in which it makes possible for the self-conscioussubject to distinguish between self and environment - what many developmentalpsychologists term self-world dualism. In this sense self-consciousness is essentially acontrastive notion. One implication of this is that a proper understanding of the richness ofthe conception of the self which a given form of self-consciousness provides requires

taking into account the richness of the conception of the environment with which it iscontrasted. In the case both of somatic proprioception and of the pick-up of self-specifyinginformation in exteroceptive perception, there is a relatively impoverished conception ofthe self associated with a comparably impoverished conception of the environment. Oneprominent limitation is that both are synchronic rather than diachronic. The distinctionbetween self and environment which they offer is a distinction that is effective at a time butnot over time. The contrast between propriospecific and exterospecific invariants in visualperception, for example, provides a way in which a creature can distinguish between itselfand the world at any given moment, but this is not the same as a conception of oneself asan enduring thing distinguishable over time from an environment which also endures overtime.

To capture this diachronic form of self-world dualism I introduced the notion of anonconceptual point of view. Having a nonconceptual point of view on the world involvestaking a particular route through the environment in such a way that one's perception ofthe world is informed by an awareness that one is taking such a route. This diachronicawareness that one is taking a particular route through the environment turned out toinvolve two principal components - a non-solipsistic component and a spatial awarenesscomponent. The non-solipsistic component is a subject's capacity to draw a distinctionbetween his experiences and what those experiences are experiences of, and hence hisability to grasp that an object exists at times other than those at which it is experienced.

This requires the exercise of recognitional abilities involving conscious memory and can bemost primitively manifested in the feature-based recognition of places. The spatialawareness component of a nonconceptual point of view can be glossed in terms ofpossession of an integrated representation of the environment over time. That a creaturepossesses such an integrated representation of the environment is manifested in threecentral cognitive/navigational capacities:

The capacity to think about different routes to the same place

The capacity to keep track of changes in spatial relations between objects causedby its own movements relative to those objects

The capacity to think about places independently of the objects or features located

at those places.

Powerful evidence from both ethology and developmental psychology indicates that these


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central cognitive/navigational capacities are present in both nonlinguistic and prelinguisticcreatures.

6 Psychological self-awareness

Possession of a nonconceptual point of view manifests an awareness of the self as aspatial element moving within, acting upon and being acted upon by the spatialenvironment. This is far richer than anything available through either somaticproprioception or the self-specifying information available in exteroceptive perception.Nonetheless, like these very primitive forms of self-consciousness, a nonconceptual pointof view is largely awareness of the material self as a bearer of physical properties. Thislimitation raises the question of whether there can be a similarly nonconceptual awarenessof the material self as a bearer of psychological properties.

In approaching the possibility of nonconceptual psychological self-consciousness weshould be guided by the thought that there might be a constitutive link between a subject's

psychological self-consciousness and his awareness of other minds (the SymmetryThesis). Although rejecting the strong version of the Symmetry Thesis which holds thatthere can be no psychological categories which a subject can apply only to himself, Idefend a weak version on which there are some psychological categories which a subjectcannot apply to himself without also being able to apply them to other psychologicalsubjects. These psychological categories are the categories which form the core of thenotion of a psychological subject. This is so because a subject's recognition that he isdistinct from the environment in virtue of being a psychological subject is dependent uponhis ability to identify himself as a psychological subject within a contrast space of otherpsychological subjects - and this self-identification as a psychological subject takes placerelative to a set of categories which collectively define the core of the concept of apsychological subject.

There appear to be three central psychological categories defining the core of the conceptof a psychological subject - the category of perceivers, the category of agents, and thecategory of bearers of reactive attitudes. This, in conjunction with the Symmetry Thesis,offers a clear way of answering the question of whether psychological self-consciousnesscan exist in a nonconceptual form that is independent of conceptual/linguistic mastery. Inline with the methodology adopted elsewhere in the book, what would settle the matterwould be social interactions involving prelinguistic or nonlinguistic subjects for whichinference to the best explanation requires assuming that those subjects are applying the

relevant psychological categories to themselves and to others. Research on the socialcognition of infants and showed that there are compelling grounds for attributingdistinguishing psychological self-consciousness relative to the three key categories toprelinguistic infants in the final quarter of the first year.

Psychological self-awareness as a perceiver is manifested in the phenomenon ofjointselective visual attention, where infants (a) attend to objects as a function of where theyperceive the attention of others to be directed (Scaife and Bruner1975, Bruner1975), and(b) direct another individual's gaze to an object in which they are interested (Leung andReinhold 1981, Stern 1985). In (b), for example, the infant tries to make the motherrecognise that he, as a perceiver, is looking at a particular object, with the eventual aim

that her recognition that this is what he is trying to do will cause the mother to look in thesame direction.
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Psychological self-awareness as an agentis manifested in the collaborative activities thatinfants engage in with their care-givers (coordinated joint engagement). Longitudinalstudies (e.g. Trevarthen and Hubley 1978) show infants not just taking pleasure in theirown agency (in the way that many infants show pleasure in the simple ability to bringabout changes in the world like moving a mobile), but also taking pleasure in successfullycarrying out an intention - a form of pleasure possible only for creatures aware of

themselves as agents. When, as it frequently is, the intention successfully carried out is ajoint intention, the pleasure shared with the other participants reflects an awareness thatthey too are agents.

Psychological self-awareness as a bearer of reactive attitudes is apparent in whatdevelopmental psychologists call social referencing (Klinnert et al. 1983). This occurswhen infants regulate their own behaviour by investigating and being guided by theemotional reactions of others to a particular situation. The infant's willingness to tailor hisown emotional reactions to those of his mother presuppose an awareness that both heand she are bearers of reactive attitudes.

7 Solving the paradox of self-consciousness

The four types of primitive or nonconceptual self-awareness provide the materials forresolving the paradox of self-consciousness. The problem of explanatory circularity can beblunted by giving an account of what it is to have mastery of the first-person pronoun thatshows how the relevant first-person thoughts implicated in such mastery can beunderstood at the nonconceptual level.

Consider the following plausible account of the communicative intent governing intentionalself-reference by means of the first-person pronoun.

An uttererUutters 'I' to refer to himself* iff Uutters 'I' in full comprehension ofthe token-reflexive rule that tokens of 'I' refer to their producer and with thetripartite intention:

i) that some audience Ashould have their attention drawn to him*

ii) that Ashould be aware of his* intention that A's attention should bedrawn to him*

iii) that the awareness mentioned in (ii) should be part of the explanation forA's attention being drawn to him*

Each of the three clauses of the tripartite intention is a first person thought, in virtue of thepresence in each of them of the indirect reflexive pronoun he* (which, following Castaedaand others, I am using to capture in oratione obliqua what would be said using 'I' inoratione recta). Each of the first-person thoughts (i) - (iii) can be understood at thenonconceptual level.

The first clause in the tripartite intention is that the utterer should utter a token of 'I' with theintention that some audience should have their attention drawn to himself*. There are two

key components here. The first component is that the utterer should intend to drawanother's attention to something. That this is possible at the nonconceptual level is clearlyshown by the discussion of joint selective visual attention. The second component is that
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the utterer should be aware of himself* as a possible object of another's attention. This islargely a matter of physical self-consciousness. The materials here are provided byproprioceptive self-consciousness and the various forms of bodily self-consciousnessimplicated in possession of a nonconceptual point of view.

Moving on to the second clause, the requirement here is that the utterer of 'I' should intend

that his audience recognise his* intention to draw their attention to him*. This is a reflexiveawareness of the intention in the first clause. The real issue that it raises is one about howiterated psychological states can feature in the content of intentions. This occurs wheneverthere is recognition of another's intention that one should do something. Recognitionalstates like these play a crucial role in the cooperative games and projects that are soimportant in infancy after the last quarter of the first year. An important source of infants'pleasure and enjoyment is their recognition that they have successfully performed whattheir mothers intended them to - and this implicates an embedding of a first person contentwithin a first-order iteration.

In the third clause the utterer of 'I' needs to understand how the satisfaction of the first

clause can causally bring about the satisfaction of the second clause. The causal relationof bringing-it-about-that is integral to the notion of a nonconceptual point of view and to theself-awareness that it implicates. Possession of a nonconceptual point of view involves anawareness of the self as acting upon and being acted upon by the spatial environment.Certainly, there is a distinction to be made between physical causation and psychologicalcausation, but both coordinated joint engagement and joint visual attention involve acomprehension that one's intentions can be effective in bringing about changes in themental states of others.

This resolution of the problem of explanatory circularity shows also how the problem ofcapacity circularity may be resolved. The solution is similar in general form to the solutionto the problem of explanatory circularity. Suppose we read the above specification of thecommunicative intent governing the correct use of the first person pronoun as offeringconditions upon learning the proper use of the token reflexive rule - as opposed to anintention that must be satisfied on any occasion of successful communication. If thatsuggestion is accepted then the solution to the problem of explanatory circularity gives,first, a clear specification of a set of first person thoughts which must be grasped byanybody who successfully learns the first person pronoun and, second, an illustration ofhow those first person thoughts are of a kind that can be nonconceptual. Of course, adetailed ontogenetic story needs to be told about how the nonconceptual first-personcontents implicated in mastery of the first-person pronoun can emerge from the basis of

ecological and bodily self-awareness, but there is no longer a principled reason for thinkingthat no such story can be forthcoming.

References

BERMUDEZ, J. L. 1998. The Paradox of Self-Consciousness. Cambridge MA. MIT Press.

BERMUDEZ, J. L., MARCEL, A. J. and EILAN, N. (Eds.) 1995. The Body and the Self.Cambridge MA. MIT Press.

BRUNER, J. S. 1975. 'The ontogenesis of speech acts' in Journal of Child Language2, 1-19.


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BUTTERWORTH, G. E., and HICKS, L. 1977. 'Visual Proprioception and Postural Stabilityin Infancy: A Developmental Study' in Perception6, 255-262.

EVANS, Gareth. 1982. The Varieties of Reference. Oxford. Clarendon Press.

FIELD, J. 1976 'Relation of Young Infants' Reaching Behaviour to Stimulus Distance and

Solidity' in Developmental Psychology12, 444-448.

GIBSON, J. J. 1979. The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. Boston. HoughtonMifflin.

KLINNERT, M. D., CAMPOS, J. J., SORCE, J. F. EMDE, R. N. SVEJDA, M. 1983.'Emotions as behaviour regulators: Social referencing in infancy' in PLUTCHIK andKELLERMAN 1983.

LEE, D. N., and ARONSON, E. 1974. 'Visual Proprioceptive Control of Standing in HumanInfants' in Perception and Psychophysics15: 529-532.

LEUNG, E. and RHEINHOLD, H. 1981. 'Development of pointing as a social gesture' inDevelopmental Psychology17, 215-220.

LISHMAN, J. R., and LEE, D. N. 1973. 'The Autonomy of Visual Kinaesthetics' inPerception2: 287-94.

MARTIN, G. B. and CLARK, R. D. 1982. 'Distress Crying in Neonates: Species and PeerSpecificity' in Developmental Psychology18, 3-9.

MELTZOFF, A. N. and MOORE, M. K. 1977. 'Imitation of facial and manual gestures byhuman neomnates' in Science198, 75-78.

NEISSER, U. 1988. 'Five Kinds of Self-Knowledge' in Philosophical Psychology, 1, 35-59.

POPE, M. J. 1984. Visual Proprioception in Infant Postural Development. PhD Thesis.University of Southampton.

SCAIFE, M. and BRUNER, J. S. 1975. 'The capacity for joint visual attention in the infant'in Nature253, 265-266.

SHOEMAKER, S. 1968. 'Self-reference and self-awareness' in The Journal of Philosophy65, 555-567.

STERN, D. 1985. The Interpersonal World of the Infant. New York. Basic Books.

TREVARTHEN, C. and HUBLEY, P. 1978. 'Secondary Intersubjectivity: Confidence,Confiding and Acts of Meaning in the First Year' in LOCK (Ed.).

VON HOFSTEN, C. 1982. 'Foundations for Perceptual Development' inAdvances inInfancy Research2, 241-261.

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Recenzie de Bach

Jos Luis Bermdez, The Paradox of Self-Consciousness. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press 1998, xv + 338pp.

KENT BACH

San Francisco State University

In many ways this is a masterful book. It is philosophy in the manner of Strawson, but richly fortified with

experimental findings on a wide range of psychological phenomena. There is much to think about here and plenty to

learn, as Bermdez guides the reader on a well-organized tour along a progression of complex issues pertaining

directly or indirectly to self-consciousness.

The goal of the book is to resolve its titles paradox. Like most paradoxes, this one involves a set of seemingly true

but mutually incompatible propositions. I wont enumerate them here, but the upshot of this paradox is that an

account of self-consciousness cannot avoid circularity. Now according to Bermdez, giving such an account requires

analyzing the capacity to think what he calls I-thoughts, as canonically expressed by means of the first-person

pronoun (analyzing a capacity is not only to explain it but to characterize what constitutes it). But analyzing the

capacity to think such thoughts requires analyzing the capacity to use the first-person pronoun, and that seems to

require analyzing the capacity to think I-thoughts. How, then, to analyze self-consciousness without circularity

(either explanatory or constitutive)?

As Bermdez sees it, the circularity at the heart of the paradox arises from the assumption that the capacity to think

thoughts with the first-person contents characteristic of self-consciousness is available only to creatures who have

mastered the semantics of the first-person pronoun (p. 43). This assumption is a special case of what he calls the

Thought-Language Principle:

Thought-Language Principle.The only way to analyze the capacity to think a particular range of thoughts isby analyzing the capacity for the canonical linguistic expression of those thoughts. (p. 13)

This principle may be broken down into two sub-principles, the Priority and the Conceptual Requirement principles.

These have the effect, respectively, of tying conceptual abilities directly to linguistic abilities and of denying that

nonconceptual states can have representational contents at all. To avoid circularity and thereby solve the paradox,

Bermdez will reject the Conceptual Requirement Principle.

In so doing he will rely heavily on a notion of nonconceptual content. The central idea will be that both in

explaining what mastery of the first-person pronoun actually is and in explaining how such a capacity can be


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acquired in the normal course of human development, we can appeal to nonconceptual first-person thoughts (p. 45).

Accordingly, Bermdez defends the Autonomy Principle:

Autonomy Principle.It is possible for a creature to be in states with nonconceptual content, even though thatcreature possesses no concepts at all. (p. 61)

Without this principle the task of explaining self-consciousness (and cognitive development in general) would be

faced with a dilemma: either we must deny that infants have the sorts of representational states that best explain the

many surprisingly complex kinds of behavior they are demonstrably capable of, or we must ascribe to them mastery

of concepts they could not possibly have. If we are to escape this dilemma and do justice to both the differences

and the similarities between infant and adult cognition then we will have to recognize the existence of states that

represent the world in a way that is independent of concept mastery and, moreover, that can be ascribed to creatures

who possess no concepts whatsoever (p. 83).

Although Bermdez is careful to distinguish constitutive from developmental issues, clearly he thinks that there is a

connection between the two. In particular, he takes facts about cognitive development concerning the precursors of

full-fledged self-consciousness to be strong evidence not just for ontogenetic but for constitutive claims. A major

portion (chapters 5-9) of the book is devoted to delineating a plausible developmental progression from the

cognitive skills and abilities that normal human infants have available to them at birth via the relevant forms of

nonconceptual self-consciousness to linguistic mastery of the first-person pronoun (p. 269). In these chapters

Bermdez skillfully presents and applies an impressive range of recent psychological findings in order to trace the

complex hierarchy of cognitive abilities that lead to full-fledged self-consciousness. Here I can only highlight some

of the main elements of this progression.

Nonconceptual self-consciousness begins in infancy with somatic proprioception and with the pick-up of self-

specifying information in exteroceptive perception. Although these comprise a form of primitive self-consciousness

operative in the very structure of perception (p. 131), they involve a relatively impoverished conception of the self

associated with a comparably impoverished conception of the environment (p. 272). Even so, visual perception and

somatic proprioception are the building-blocks for the bootstrapping process that will eventually result in the

mastery of the first-person concept and the capacity for full-fledged self-consciousness (p. 132), as well as in richer

conceptions of the environment.

Somatic proprioception provides information about the state and position of the body at a particular location and

about states of body parts relative to the rest of the body and to other body parts. Importantly, these are pieces of

self-specifying information. So is the information provided by visual kinesthesis, which provides information on

the perceivers movements, indicating that the self has a place in the content of visual experience (p. 112). Self-


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specifying information is also provided in how perceivers view objects in relation to their own action, e.g., as

within reach or as too heavy for one to lift (p. 200). And the sense of touch, because it is simultaneously

proprioceptive and exteroceptive, provides an interface between the self and the nonself (p. 164).

Bermdez examines in detail how the child develops a nonconceptual point of view on the world, which involves

taking a particular route through the environment in such a way that ones perception of the world is informed by an

awareness that one is taking such a route (p. 273). Bermdezs discussion (Chapters 7 and 8) of this and related

phenomena, including the capacities to track perspectival changes in spatial relations among objects caused by ones

own movements and to think about places independently of what occupies them, is reminiscent of Strawsons

rendition of Kants metaphysics of experience in The Bounds of Sense (Methuen 1966), but is splendidly enhanced

by the extensive research he invokes, e.g. on object permanence, autobiographical memory, spatial reasoning, and

navigational abilities.

Finally, there are the abilities to think of oneself as a perceiver, as an agent, and as possessing various psychological

properties. This last ability is, as Strawson argued long ago inIndividuals (Methuen 1959), inseparable from the

ability to ascribe such properties to others (it is essential to the capacity for nonsolipsistic consciousness), and that

ability is essential to being able to draw others attention to things, to engage in joint attention and in joint activity,

including communication.

Now it is time to register a few worries, none of which is meant to detract from the immense value of Bermdezs

subtle and erudite account of the hierarchy of forms of self-consciousness.

(1) His paradox of self-consciousness depends on the Thought-Language Principle and, in particular, its two

component principles:

Conceptual Requirement Principle. The range of contents that one may attribute to a creature is directlydetermined by the concepts that the creature possesses. (p. 41)

Priority Principle. Conceptual abilities are constitutively linked with linguistic abilities in such a way that

conceptual abilities cannot be possessed by nonlinguistic creatures. (p. 42)These two principles together comprise what Bermdez calls the classical view of content. However, it is not

obvious what is classical about this view or why he thinks it has been widely heldthat needs documentation. I

dont doubt that there have been plenty of others who have held it, but the only philosopher he cites as holding it is

Dummett, and Dummetts views are not exactly classical. More importantly, Bermdez does not explain why anyone

should find the classical view plausible. To the extent that one does not, it is difficult to be exercised by his

paradox.

Clearly Bermdez himself finds the classical view plausible, at least plausible enough to be worth refuting.

Indeed, he accepts the Priority Principle with little explanation or comment, noting that it allows us to make a very


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clear distinction between conceptual and nonconceptual modes of content-bearing representation, because the

connection between language and concepts gives us a clear criterion for identifying the presence of conceptual

representation (p. 43). But this doesnt begin to show that there is such a connection, much less what that

connection is. To suppose that linguistic abilities are necessary for conceptual abilities is to deny that even the most

advanced apes possess concepts. Also, considering the extent to which language is rife with ambiguity and semantic

underdetermination, it would seem that there are certain fine-grained conceptual abilities for which linguistic

mastery is not sufficient. In any case, Bermdezs complaint is with the Conceptual Requirement Principle.

Although he goes to sublime lengths to refute this principle, it is not clear why he finds it plausible in the first place.

It seems that only a philosophical dinosaur, by maintaining that unconceptualized perception is mere sensation,

would claim that seeing or feeling thatp is impossible without thinking thatp. It is hard to see or conceive why

anyone in this day and age would insist that representational states must be conceptual.

(2) It is also unclear why Bermdez takes the conceptual/nonconceptual distinction to pertain to content. For surely

at least some conceptual states and some nonconceptual states have contents in common, e.g., the proposition that a

certain tomato is red. But if states of both types can have identical contents, then how can the

conceptual/nonconceptual distinction pertain to content itself? Fortunately, it is not essential to Bermdezs intricate

resolution of his paradox that the operative distinction be one of content. Terminological adjustments aside, he could

make all his main points while taking this distinction to pertain to types of states or perhaps to ways of taking

contents.

My impression is that lurking in the background is a certain view of attitude ascription and a certain conception of

propositional content. It is clear from what he says in various places (pp. 3, 33, and 83) that Bermdez assumes that

the that-clauses of attitude ascriptions fully specify or otherwise individuate attitude contents, but, as I have argued

recently (Pac. Phil. Quar., Jan. 1997), this widespread assumption is problematic. He also seems to assume that the

constituents of propositions expressed by that-clauses are concepts. In so doing, he effectively rules out the

currently popular view that such propositions are Russellian, and have as their constituents not concepts but

objects, properties, and relations. On that view, there is no meaningful distinction between conceptual and

nonconceptual content. If attitudes and experiences have propositional contents of this sort, then obviously the

conceptual/nonconceptual distinction can meaningfully apply only to states that have them or to ways of taking

them.

(3) Bermdez does not set the problem of explaining self-consciousness against a background account of what is

involved in being conscious of objects in general. Nor does he set the problem of explaining mastery of the first-

person against a background account of what is involved in mastery of singular terms in general. It would be


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unreasonable to expect a general treatment of singular thought and singular reference in an already long and

involved book, but it would have been desirable to have an explanation what is special about thinking and referring

to oneself, as opposed to anything else. Who knows, perhaps an adequate account of what is required for

consciousness of and reference to things in general would show that nothing special is required for self-

consciousness and self-reference. Indeed, it seems to me, such an outcome would be consonant with Bermdezs

many observations about the complementarity of object- and self-consciousness.

(4) It is puzzling why Bermdez finds it even initially plausible that the capacity for self-consciousness should be

intimately tied to the capacity to use the first-person pronoun. Particularly puzzling is why, in the discussion which

occurs almost as an afterthought in the concluding chapter, he thinks that the communicative use of I (its use to

refer others to oneself) is essential to the analysis of the capacity for self-consciousness. And, although he rightfully

argues that there are the forms of self-consciousness which do not require the capacity to use the first-person

pronoun, there are also aspects of full-fledged self-consciousness which require more than linguistic mastery of the

first-person pronoun. He acknowledges that forms of self-consciousness [vary with] the richness of the conception

of the self that they provide (p. 272), but the richer ones can and do go far beyond what is required for competent

use of the word I. They pertain to what one takes oneself to be, and it is not possible to take oneself to be anything

without already being able to think of oneself.

Bermdez plausibly holds that a crucial element in any form of self-consciousness enables the self-conscious

subject to distinguish between self and environment (p. 272). Several of the cognitive agnosias he considers

illustrate how this distinction can become distorted in one way or another. I wish he had looked into some of the

more extreme psychiatric ways in which this distinction can break down. People with chronic uncontrollable

impulses, radical mood swings, multiple personalities, or schizophrenic breaks have to different degrees difficulty in

forming a stable self-conception, but their problems go well beyond anything having to do with mastery of the first-

person pronoun. In extreme cases, a persons sense of where the boundary is between himself and the rest of the

world is not at his skin but somewhere well within it, perhaps not far from the pineal gland.

* * * * *

Even though the paradox of self-consciousness rests on principles that I find much less plausible than Bermdez

does, I am glad he was gripped by it. This enabled him to produce a rich and deeply rewarding book on one of the

most difficult topics in philosophy. No philosopher heretofore has come close to bringing such a wide range of

scientific findings to bear on self-consciousness in its many stages and aspects. Paradox or no paradox, the reader

can safely venture into the Bermdez triangle. An edifying experience awaits.


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paradox of self-conciousness, the - bermúdez

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