Revisiting the Argument for Non-Conceptual Self-Consciousness Based on the Meaning of “I”

A widely shared view in the literature on first-person thought is that the ability to entertain first-person thoughts requires prior non-conceptual forms of self-consciousness. Many philosophers maintain that the distinctive awareness which accompanies the use of the first person already presupposes a non-conceptual consciousness of the fact that oneself is the owner of a first-person thought. I call this argument The Argument for Non-Conceptual Self-Consciousness based on the Meaning of “I” and will demonstrate that most proponents of the presented argument fail to establish their conclusion, even though I believe that the conclusion is actually true. The argument only justifies the claim that contextual information is needed in order to recognize oneself as the referent of an occurrence of the first person. However, it does not justify the thesis that this information needs to be given consciously and thus the existence of any non-conceptual self-consciousness. Finally, I shall present an argument for the assumption that some form of self-consciousness is needed to reflexively think about oneself via the first-person concept. In order to do so, I will draw on the general discussion about the functional role of consciousness. In particular, I will rely on results recently proposed by Frith and Metzinger ( 2016 ), Frith (Pragmatics & Cognition 18:497–551, 2010 , Cognitive Neuroscience 2:117–118, 2011 ), Graziano ( 2013 , Frontiers in Robotics and AI 4:article 60, 2017 ), and Graziano and Kastner (Cognitive Neuroscience 2:98–113, 2011 ), which suggest that one of the central functions of consciousness is to provide information about mental states for communication.