conditions of mastery of the first-person pronoun,

the
conditions of mastery of the first-person pronoun. But there are two kinds
of circularity created by the proposal (as per (1)) that this is the key to
providing an analysis of the capacity for self-conscious thought. The first
type of circularity, which I termed explanatory circularity, arises because
the capacity for self-conscious thought is presupposed in a satisfactory
account of mastery of the first-person pronoun. The second type of circularity
(capacity circularity) arises because the putative interdependence
between self-conscious thought and linguistic mastery of the first-person
pronoun rules out the possibility of explaining how the capacity either
for self-conscious thought or for linguistic mastery of the first-person
pronoun arises in the normal course of human development. Neither capacity
is innate, and yet each presupposes the other in a way that seems
to imply that neither can be acquired unless the other capacity is already
in place.
Clearly, defusing the paradox of self-consciousness requires removing
at least one of the propositions (1) to (6) so as to leave the propositions
that remain consistent. The proposal that emerged from considering the
strengths and shortcomings of the functionalist theory of self-reference in
chapter 2 is that it is the Thought-Language Principle that must be rejected.
Rejecting the Thought-Language Principle means rejecting the
theory of content that underlies it, what I termed the classical conception
of content. The classical conception of content has two key components.
The first component is the Conceptual-Requirement Principle, that the
ascriptions of content to an individual are constrained by the concepts
that the individual possesses. The second component is the Priority Principle,
to the effect that there is a constitutive connection between conceptual
abilities and correlated linguistic abilities such that conceptual
abilities cannot be possessed by nonlinguistic creatures. These two components
jointly make up the Thought-Language Principle, and rejecting
either one of them will be sufficient to reject the Thought-Language Principle.
I proposed retaining the Priority Principle and rejecting the principle
that ascriptions of content are constrained by concept possession.
This makes possible a theory of nonconceptual content, according to
which states with representational content can be properly ascribed to
individuals without those individuals necessarily possessing the concepts
required to specify how those states represent the world.
268 Chapter 10
Of course, rejecting the Thought-Language Principle and the classical
conception of content is useless unless it is shown that rejecting the
Thought-Language Principle does not affect the truth values of the propositions
that remain. The general strategy that I proposed here involves
distinguishing between those forms of full-fledged self-consciousness that
presuppose mastery of the first-person concept and linguistic mastery of
the first-person pronoun and those forms of primitive or nonconceptual
self-consciousness that do not presuppose any such linguistic or conceptual
mastery. The operative idea was that if the self-consciousness presupposed
by linguistic mastery of the first-person pronoun could be
construed as nonconceptual rather than full-fledged, then the two forms
of circularity that create the paradox of self-consciousness could be neutralized.
A noncircular analysis of full-fledged self-consciousness in terms
of linguistic mastery of the first-person pronoun would be available if
the ‘I’-thoughts presupposed by such linguistic mastery turned out to be
instances not of full-fledged self-consciousness but instead of nonconceptual
self-consciousness. This would also provide the key to showing how
linguistic mastery of the first-person pronoun meets the Acquisition Constraint.
On the assumption that linguistic mastery of the first-person
pronoun can be analyzed satisfactorily in terms of nonconceptual
self-consciousness, the Acquisition Constraint will be satisfied if it
can be shown that there could be 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 selfconsciousness
to linguistic mastery of the first-person pronoun.
If a solution to the paradox of self-consciousness along these lines is
to be independently plausible, there are several conditions that must be
satisfied. First, the rejection of the classical conception of content must
be independently motivated. The paradox of self-consciousness cannot
be the only reason for rejecting the classical conception of content if the
appearance of a purely ad hoc move is to be avoided. A second condition
is that the theory of nonconceptual content be subject to general constraints
on the ascription of states with representational content. This in
turn requires developing a general account of the marks that characterize
content-bearing states in general and limiting ascriptions of nonconceptual
content to states in which those marks are clearly present. Moreover,
Solving the Paradox of Self-Consciousness 269
some ways of rejecting the classical conception of content to allow the
existence of nonconceptual contents are nonetheless incompatible with
the proposed solution to the paradox. It might be argued, for example,
that states with nonconceptual content can be ascribed only to creatures
that have a certain basic conceptual and linguistic mastery. A third condition,
therefore, is that the conception of nonconceptual content in play
be one that permits representational states with nonconceptual content
to be ascribed to creatures that have no linguistic (and hence conceptual)
abilities at all, that is, that recognizes the possibility of autonomous nonconceptual
contents.
In chapter 3, I undertook to show that these conditions are indeed satisfied.
I began by discussing arguments from the theory of perceptual
experience in support of the general thesis that not all contents can be
conceptual. Those arguments do not, however, support a notion of autonomous
nonconceptual content. Accordingly, I then argued that evidence
from experiments studying dishabituation in object perception in early
infancy shows that the perceptual experience of infants does genuinely
represent the world in a content-bearing way. Hence, since these are infants
who manifestly lack any linguistic or conceptual abilities, the ways
in which they represent the world can only be captured through a notion
of autonomous nonconceptual content. In chapter 4, after having thus
legitimated the notion of nonconceptual content, I offered an account
of the essential marks of content-bearing states that is neutral between
conceptual and nonconceptual content and thus provides a principled
way of identifying when it is appropriate to ascribe states with nonconceptual
content.
Nonetheless, a simple rejection of the classical conception is not sufficient,
since there are many philosophers who would be prepared to countenance
the possibility of nonconceptual content without accepting that
there might be nonconceptual first-person contents, or ‘I’-thoughts. Thus,
to use the theory of nonconceptual content to solve the paradox of selfconsciousness,
I must independently motivate the possibility of nonconceptual
first-person contents, and hence the possibility of nonconceptual
self-consciousness. This is a more substantial task, occupying chapters 5
through 9. The methodology I adopted rested on the first of the marks of
content identified in chapter 3, namely that content-bearing states serve