Solving the Paradox of Self-Consciousness

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be understood as involving propositional attitudes to first-person conceptual
contents. Deflationary theorists are rightly impressed by the thought
that all of the conceptual abilities deployed in such first-person contents
are, with a single exception, also deployable with the same sense in contents
that are not first-personal. Since illumination of the distinctive features
of self-consciousness will not emerge from considering those
conceptual abilities that can feature indifferently in contents that are firstpersonal
and contents that are not, the deflationary theorist is driven to
the thought that an explanation of mastery of the first-person concept is
all that is required for a theoretical elucidation of the conceptual forms
of self-conscious thought.
If the deflationary theory is correct, then it might be natural to think
that an account of mastery of the first-person pronoun (and hence of
what it is to possess the first-person concept) based upon the discussion
in this book could come close to providing a complete philosophical elucidation
of self-consciousness. Sadly, however, this would be premature.
The deflationary theory rests on insights that have an important role to
play in the development of a complete account of the higher, conceptual
forms of self-consciousness, but it would be a grave error to think that
such an account will be so easily forthcoming.
Let me grant the first part of the deflationary position, namely that an
account of the higher forms of self-consciousness will be an account of
the varieties of self-conscious thought at the conceptual level. It is natural
to agree with the deflationary theory that such an account will have two
components. The first component will elucidate the contents of firstperson
thoughts at the conceptual level, while the second component will
elucidate the nature of the complex propositional attitudes (such as memory
and desire) that a thinker can bear to those first-person thoughts. The
deflationary theory takes its stand on a clear demarcation between these
two components, viewing the second component as the business not of
the theory of self-consciousness but of a general theory of propositional
attitudes and the first component as exhausted by an account of what it
is to possess the first-person concept in conjunction with a general account
of concepts.
It is certainly true that there are no propositional attitudes that can be
taken only to first-person contents. Autobiographical memory, for ex-
Solving the Paradox of Self-Consciousness 295
ample, is best understood not as a distinctively first-person propositional
attitude but rather in terms of a distinctive set of first-person contents to
which the attitude of remembering can be taken. By the same token,
second-order desires are best understood in terms of a distinctive set of
first-person contents to which the attitude of desire can be taken. Nonetheless,
in both of these cases there are crucial facts, indeed defining facts,
about the distinctive set of first-person contents to which the relevant attitude
can be taken that cannot be captured by the deflationary theory.
Part of what makes something an autobiographical memory is that it
stands in certain inferential relations to other autobiographical memories
and to other first-person contents. Similarly, second-order desires have a
distinctive role to play in practical reasoning that is also capturable in
terms of the inferential relations in which they stand and the dispositions
(both cognitive and behavioral) to which they give rise. More generally,
each of the higher, conceptual forms of self-consciousness is partially individuated
by a different set of inferential patterns and dispositions to
behavior that govern any first-person content to which that attitude is
taken. Now, as suggested earlier, these inferential patterns and behavioral
dispositions must be described at the level of content rather than the level
of attitude. What makes memories autobiographical memories, or desires
second-order desires, is simply that they are memories or desires with
distinctive first-person contents. Of course, for the very reasons at the
heart of the deflationary theory, it is at the level of the first-person concept
that we will need to explain what this distinctiveness amounts to and how
it emerges. This is quite compatible with the deflationary theorist’s central
tenet that an account of the first-person concept is the key to explaining
the conceptual forms of self-consciousness. On the other hand, it seems
to be clearly incompatible with the deflationary theorist’s proposal for
implementing that central tenet, namely that an account of the firstperson
concept will be derivable from an account of linguistic mastery of
the first-person pronoun. There are no facts about linguistic mastery of
the first-person pronoun that will determine or explain what might, following
David Kaplan, be termed the cognitive dynamics of the firstperson
concept.
The way forward for a theory of self-consciousness, it seems to me, is,
first, to chart the characteristic features individuating the various distinct
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conceptual forms of self-consciousness in a way that will provide a taxonomy
of self-consciousness and then, second, to show how these characteristic
features can be determined at the level of content. What I hope is
now clear is that these higher forms of self-consciousness emerge from a
rich foundation of nonconceptual first-person thought, which I have tried
to expose and clarify in this book. It is my firm conviction that these
different forms of nonconceptual first-person thought hold the key, not
just to an eventual account of how mastery of the first-person pronoun
meets the Acquisition Constraint, but to a proper understanding of the
complex phenomenon of self-consciousness.