to explain behavior in situations where the connections between sensory

serve
270 Chapter 10
to explain behavior in situations where the connections between sensory
input and behavioral output cannot be plotted in a lawlike manner. I
pointed out in chapter 2 (pace the functionalist theory of self-reference)
that not every instance of intentional behavior where there are no such
lawlike connections between sensory input and behavioral output needs
to be explained by attributing to the creature in question representational
states with first-person contents. Nonetheless, many such instances of intentional
behavior do need to be explained in this way. This offers a way
of establishing the legitimacy of nonconceptual first-person contents.
What would satisfactorily demonstrate the legitimacy of nonconceptual
first-person contents would be the existence of forms of behavior in prelinguistic
or nonlinguistic creatures for which inference to the best understanding
or explanation (which in this context includes inference to the
most parsimonious understanding or explanation) demands the ascription
of states with nonconceptual first-person contents.
I applied this methodological principle in four separate domains, each
of which yielded a different type of nonconceptual self-consciousness. In
chapter 5, drawing on J. J. Gibson’s account of perception, I developed
the view that the pick-up of self-specifying information in exteroceptive
perception is a source of nonconceptual first-person contents from the
beginning of life. This was argued partly on the basis of an analysis of the
structure of the visual field and of visual experience in general and partly
as a form of inference to the best explanation from experimental work
on the sensory capacities of human infants. The second domain where
I looked for evidence of nonconceptual self-consciousness was somatic
proprioception (the various forms of bodily awareness). This occupied
chapter 6. I suggested that somatic proprioception was best understood
as a form of perception of the body. The best explanation of the phenomenology
of bodily self-perception took the form of an account in which
somatic proprioception emerged as a distinctive form of awareness of the
material self as a spatially extended and bounded physical object that is
distinctive in being responsive to the will.
The nonconceptual first-person contents implicated in somatic proprioception
and the pick-up of self-specifying information in the structure
of exteroceptive perception provide very primitive forms of nonconceptual
self-consciousness, albeit forms that can plausibly be viewed as in
Solving the Paradox of Self-Consciousness 271
place from birth or shortly afterward. That such nonconceptual firstperson
contents exist is a necessary condition of there being a solution to
the paradox of self-consciousness, because they are an essential part of
the case against the central assumption generating the paradox (namely,
that it is incoherent to ascribe thoughts with a first-person content to
creatures who lack linguistic mastery of the first-person pronoun). Nonetheless,
they are far from sufficient. A solution to the paradox requires
showing how we can get from these primitive forms of self-consciousness
to the full-fledged self-consciousness that comes with linguistic mastery
of the first-person pronoun. This progression will have to be both logical
(in a way that will solve the problem of explanatory circularity) and ontogenetic
(in a way that will solve the problem of capacity circularity).
Clearly, this requires that there be forms of self-consciousness that, while
still counting as nonconceptual, are nonetheless more developed than
those yielded by somatic proprioception and the structure of exteroceptive
perception, and moreover that it 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 richness of the conception of the self that they provide. Nonetheless,
a crucial element in any form of self-consciousness is how it
enables the self-conscious subject to distinguish between self and environment—
what many developmental psychologists term self-world dualism.
In this sense, self-consciousness is essentially a contrastive notion. One
implication of this is that a proper understanding of the richness of the
conception of the self that a given form of self-consciousness provides
requires that we take into account the richness of the conception of the
environment with which it is associated. In the case of both somatic proprioception
and the pick-up of self-specifying information in exteroceptive
perception, there is a relatively impoverished conception of the self
associated with a comparably impoverished conception of the environment.
One prominent limitation is that both are synchronic rather than
diachronic. The distinction between self and environment that they offer
is a distinction that is effective at a time but not over time. The contrast
between propriospecific and exterospecific invariants in visual perception,
for example, provides a way for a creature to distinguish between
272 Chapter 10
itself and the world at any given moment, but this is not the same as a
conception of oneself as an enduring thing distinguishable over time from
an environment that also endures over time.
To capture this diachronic form of self-world dualism, I introduced the
notion of a nonconceptual point of view. Having a nonconceptual point
of view on the world involves taking a particular route through the environment
in such a way that one’s perception of the world is informed by
an awareness that one is taking such a route. This diachronic awareness
that one is taking a particular route through the environment turned out
to involve two principal components: a nonsolipsistic component and a
spatial awareness component. The nonsolipsistic component is a subject’s
capacity to draw a distinction between his experiences and what those
experiences are experiences of, and hence his ability to grasp that what is
experienced exists at times other than those at which it is experienced.
This requires the exercise of recognitional abilities involving conscious
memory and can be most primitively manifested in the feature-based recognition
of places. I glossed the spatial awareness component of a nonconceptual
point of view in terms of possession of an integrated
representation of the environment over time. That a creature possesses
such an integrated representation of the environment is manifested in
three central cognitive/navigational capacities: a capacity to think about
different routes to the same place, a capacity to keep track of changes in
spatial relations between objects caused by one’s own movements relative
to those objects, and a capacity to think about places independently of
the objects or features located at those places. I cited evidence from both
ethology and developmental psychology indicating that these central cognitive/
navigational capacities are present in both nonlinguistic and prelinguistic
creatures. Again, my argumentative strategy was inference to the
best explanation.
What is significant about the notion of a nonconceptual point of view
is that it manifests an awareness of the self as a spatial element moving
within, acting upon, and being acted upon by the spatial environment.
This is far richer than anything available through either somatic proprioception
or the self-specifying information available in exteroceptive
perception. Nonetheless, like these very primitive forms of self-consciousness,
a nonconceptual point of view is largely awareness of the material
self as a bearer of physical properties. This limitation raises the question