Consciousness can refer to itself as whole that exists or perceives {self-consciousness, recursion}| {self-awareness}. Consciousness can know that it has experiences. Consciousness can be aware of its abilities, actions, feelings, memories, perceptions, plans, thoughts, and will. Perhaps, only higher primates have self-awareness.
self
Self can be physical, psychological, or non-physical substance {substantivalism, self}, be property, or have no substance or property per se. Perhaps, self is biological body, mind, ego, or soul.
self: non-self
Living systems can distinguish self from non-self, so they do not eat themselves, fight with themselves, or try to reproduce with themselves. Perceptions from inside senses and outside senses affect other body sensors and make feedback and feedforward signals that help define self and not-self. Algorithms can distinguish inside-body stimuli, as self, and outside-body stimuli, as non-self. Tightening muscles actively compresses, to affect proprioception receptors that define body points. During movements or under pressure, body surfaces passively extend, to affect touch receptors that define external-space points.
nature
Perhaps, self-consciousness is beliefs about body, mind, or world.
Self-consciousness involves thinking about what one has just done, is doing, and/or will do. Self-consciousness is cognition of mental concepts as acting, attending, learning, remembering, perceiving, or reporting, such as perceiving oneself deciding problems or using language.
Perhaps, self-consciousness is knowledge about body, mind, or world.
Perhaps, self-consciousness requires symbol use, language, memory, and/or society.
Self-consciousness involves thinking about what one did in recent and/or distant past.
Perhaps, self-consciousness results from proprioception or other unconscious body perception. Perhaps, self-consciousness results from sense perception.
Self-consciousness requires higher-order thought and is extended consciousness [Damasio, 1999], autonoetic consciousness [Tulving, 1985], higher-order consciousness [Edelman and Tononi, 2000] [Tononi and Edelman, 1998], or reflective consciousness [Block, 1995].
Perhaps, self-consciousness requires interactions with other people, who act as mirrors for oneself, allowing self-observation. People can learn to be self-aware, using verbal reports. As they communicate with more people at higher levels, self-consciousness develops.
Creativity, self, and reason arise from social life, which use language reflexively. Language and symbolic interaction allow humans to be self-conscious.
hypnosis
Hypnosis can reduce self-consciousness and critical appraisal.
Mental content {apperception, self-conscious}| can be self-conscious.
Self-consciousness does not require having sensation, body image, imagination, or proprioception, because people can have thoughts with no images {imageless thought} [Külpe, 1893].
Thinking about what they have just done, are doing, and/or will do allows people to create stories {narrative, consciousness} {life story}, in which earlier events cause later events, from past to present to future.
Selves are subjects of experiences and have self-consciousness {präreflexive Selbstvertrautheit} {prereflexive self-intimacy}. Self-consciousness is not a concept but a feeling, in which person or self is a subject of experiences, such as seeing someone touch one's hand.
Consciousness allows monitoring {self-monitoring} behavior and thoughts.
Perhaps, self-consciousness depends on representation and comparison. Subject distinguishes self and not-self, positions self in space and time, realizes difference between perceiving act and perceived object, looks at itself objectively in third person, and compares itself to other selves using theory of mind {interdependence thesis}.
At age 18 months, language areas become active. Perhaps, as they develop, self-consciousness develops [Gazzaniga and LeDoux, 1978] [Gazzaniga, 1980] [Gazzaniga, 1992]. Left-brain regions label, categorize, and describe experiences using language. Language underlies self-consciousness {interpreter theory}.
1-Consciousness-Self-Consciousness
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Date Modified: 2022.0225