It seems clear that no creature

an
Navigation and Spatial Reasoning 225
integrated representation of its environment? Let me define the number
of affordances with which a creature is familiar as its affordance space,
and let a section of an affordance space be connected if and only if the
creature in question recognizes that there is a route from any given affordance
to any other given affordance. It seems clear that no creature
can possess an integrated representation of its environment unless its affordance
space is connected, or at least close to being connected. Moreover,
repeated application of affordance symmetry, affordance transitivity,
and affordance identity could yield just such a connected affordance
space. This is not to say, of course, that a connected affordance space
is sufficient for an integrated representation of the environment. As discussed
in the previous section, there are conditions on navigational behavior
that any creature possessing an integrated representation of its
environment must satisfy, and it is possible that a creature might fail to
satisfy those conditions despite possessing a connected affordance space.
After all, a connected affordance space does not automatically generate
the capacity to keep track of those changes in spatial relations between
objects caused by one’s own movements relative to those objects, for example.
Nor will every connected affordance space be able to serve as a
basis for further types of spatial reasoning. The London Underground
map is an example of a connected affordance space, but not one that
would enable a navigator to devise shortcuts not marked on the map. At
the very least, a connected affordance space must be sensitive to the distance
and direction between affordances.
Nonetheless, once a creature has a connected affordance space, or
something close to it, it is relatively straightforward to see how it might
progress toward an integrated representation of its environment by acquiring
the further capacities discussed in the previous section. It is plausible
that the capacity for thinking about different routes to the same
place could emerge naturally out of a fully connected affordance space,
particularly one in which there is a range of affordance identities. Likewise
for the capacity to think about places independently of the objects
or features located at those places.
The concept of an affordance, therefore, is the key to seeing how my
discussion of spatial reasoning and of integrated representations of the
environment meets the Acquisition Constraint in the manner outlined in
226 Chapter 8
chapter 1. The constraint demands, in effect, that any learned cognitive
ability be constructible out of more primitive abilities already in existence.
As emerged in chapter 5, there are good reasons to think that the perception
of affordances is innate. And so if, as I have suggested, the perception
of affordances is the key to the acquisition of an integrated spatial representation
of the environment via the recognition of affordance symmetries,
affordance transitivities, and affordance identities, then it is perfectly
conceivable that the capacities implicated in an integrated representation
of the world could emerge nonmysteriously from innate abilities.
Navigation and Spatial Reasoning 227
9
Psychological Self-Awareness: Self and Others
Let me take stock. Chapter 5 showed how the very structure of perceptual
experience can be a source of nonconceptual first-person contents
through the pick-up of self-specifying information. In chapter 6, I argued
that somatic proprioception can also be a source of first-person contents,
and that those first-person contents incorporate an awareness of the body
as a spatially extended and bounded object that is distinctive in virtue of
its responsiveness to the will. The next two chapters explored how these
basic building blocks could be developed into a more sophisticated form
of self-awareness that I termed a nonconceptual point of view. The key
elements of a nonconceptual point of view are, first, a more sophisticated
registering of the distinction between self and environment than is available
in either perceptual experience or somatic proprioception and, second,
a capacity for spatial reasoning that brings with it an awareness of
oneself as moving within, acting upon, and being acted upon by, the spatial
environment.
These forms of self-awareness so far discussed are predominantly physical
and bodily. What we have been dealing with is largely awareness
of the embodied self as a bearer of physical properties. There has so far
been little discussion of the explicitly psychological dimension of selfawareness.
But awareness of the embodied self as a bearer of psychological
properties is an equally significant strand in self-awareness and, moreover,
of central importance in solving the paradox of self-consciousness.
It will be the subject of this chapter.
9.1 The Symmetry Thesis: An Unsuccessful Defence
An initial question that arises in thinking about psychological selfawareness
is the relation between psychological self-awareness and awareness
of other minds. As a way of broaching the issue, let me start with
the relation between psychological self-awareness and awareness of other
minds in subjects who are capable of fully conceptual thought and linguistic
mastery. As I have already mentioned, psychological predicates
have a constant sense, whether they are applied to oneself or to others. It
is not the case that psychological predicates have a first-person sense, on
the one hand, and a second- and third-person sense, on the other. This
is prima facie evidence for a commonality between psychological selfawareness
and awareness of other minds, at least at the conceptual level.
Let me offer the following as a way of capturing this prima facie commonality
more generally:
The Symmetry Thesis A subject’s psychological self-awareness is constitutively
linked to his awareness of other minds.
The Symmetry Thesis will be the subject of this section and the next. I
will consider two arguments in support of the Symmetry Thesis, only one
of which will turn out ultimately to be sound. First, though, let me discuss
the Symmetry Thesis a little further.
The Symmetry Thesis has both a weak reading and a strong reading,
which it is useful to distinguish. The weak reading is that there can be no
psychological self-awareness without awareness of other minds. I am taking
awareness of other minds to involve the capacity to discriminate at
least some psychological-state types in other subjects of experience. This
means that the Symmetry Thesis is directly antithetical to any view on
which psychological self-awareness is conceptually distinct from awareness
of other minds. Let me put the point another way. On the weak
reading, the Symmetry Thesis implies that to the extent that psychological
awareness in general is a matter of applying psychological predicates, it
is impossible for a subject’s repertoire of psychological predicates to be
composed solely of predicates that have only a first-person application.1
The same point can be put in a way that does not make it a point about
language mastery. If we define a psychological representation as a mental
representation that enables a subject to discriminate psychological-state