Self-consciousness denotes the human being’s knowledge of its own being, the reflexive awareness of itself as someone. It belongs to the second dimension of personhood and is therefore person-behavior, not the ground of being of the person.
Self-consciousness is not a condition of personhood
A central thesis of the book reads: the human being is a person before it becomes conscious of itself. Personhood ontologically precedes self-consciousness, in accordance with the principle agere sequitur esse (Bexten 2017, pp. 195 ff.). Robert Spaemann emphasizes: “There are no potential persons” — whoever once can develop self-consciousness is already a person.
Counter-position: Locke and functionalism
John Locke ties personhood to actual consciousness: a person is one who is conscious of itself as identical over time. From this it follows that embryos, the sleeping, and human beings with dementia would not be persons. The empirical-functionalist concept of person adopts this position. Derek Parfit radicalizes it: the person is merely an epiphenomenon of psychological continuity.
Self-consciousness and interiority
Self-consciousness presupposes interiority — that self-possession proper to the human person. Edith Stein speaks of the “illumined surface over a dark depth”: self-consciousness always grasps only a part of the personal depth.
Self-consciousness and reason
Reason and self-consciousness are closely connected, but not identical. Reason is directed toward the world (intentionality); self-consciousness turns the gaze upon the cognizing subject itself. The two together make possible the actus humanus and the responsibility for one’s own action.
Ontological classification: Superordinate concept: essential characteristic
Consciousness
The irreducible basic fact of lived experience and of intentionality — the directedness of the mind toward objects. Consciousness cannot be reduced to neuronal processes, functional states, or information processing. In realistic phenomenology (Husserl, Brentano, Seifert, Pfänder): the immediately given datum of lived experience that precedes any reduction.
For personal ontology it is decisive that, although consciousness is an archphenomenon, it must not be identified with personhood. The person has consciousness; it is not its consciousness. A human being who does not (yet, or no longer) actually exercise consciousness — for instance the embryo, the sleeping, or the severely demented — does not cease to be a person. Consciousness belongs to the second actuality, not to the first actuality of personhood (cf. Bexten 2017, pp. 143–149). David Chalmers formulated the hard problem of consciousness in 1995: why does subjective experience exist at all? This question confirms the irreducibility of consciousness as an archphenomenon — and shows why the Turing Test cannot, in principle, capture consciousness.
Ontological classification:
- Superordinate concept: archphenomenon
- Subordinate concepts: intentionality
Chapter assignment: Chapter 4: Personhood, Chapter 3: What is a person?
See also: intentionality, personhood, person-behavior, deutera energeia, prote energeia, self-consciousness, cognition, interiority, second dimension, first dimension, Edmund Husserl, Franz Brentano, Josef Seifert
The Self / I
The self or I denotes the inner core of the person — that unmistakable center from which the human being says “I”, experiences itself, and disposes over itself. It is not one part of the human being alongside other parts, but the person itself in its interiority. When the human being says “I think”, “I will”, “I love”, this “I” refers to the whole human being as a personal subject.
The self is not a construct, not an illusion, and not a mere result of neuronal processes. The immediate self-certainty — si fallor, sum (“if I am mistaken, I am”) — belongs to the most original experiences of the person. Self-consciousness is not something that is added to the person only afterward, but a mode in which it is present to itself.
In the second dimension of personhood, the I shows itself as master of itself: free, responsible, capable of cognition and of self-determination. At the same time, the self is not a closed system. It is essentially open to the other and capable of self-transcendence. The question “Who am I?” is ultimately the question of the someone that every human being is.
Sources: Generated by querying the Personhood ontology.
Further sources:
- Spaemann, Robert (2006): Persons. The Difference between ‘Someone’ and ‘Something’. Trans. Oliver O’Donovan. Oxford: Oxford University Press (“There are no potential persons”).
- Stein, Edith (1932/2004): Der Aufbau der menschlichen Person. Vorlesung zur philosophischen Anthropologie. ESGA 14. Herder (German) (“illumined surface over a dark depth”).
- Locke, John (1690): An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Book II, Ch. 27 (personal identity and consciousness).
- Parfit, Derek (1984): Reasons and Persons. Oxford: Clarendon Press (person as epiphenomenon of psychological continuity).
- Augustine: The City of God XI, 26 (si fallor, sum — immediate self-certainty).
- Chalmers, David J. (1995): “Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness”. Journal of Consciousness Studies 2(3), pp. 200–219 (hard problem of consciousness).