Theo Todman's Web Page - Notes Pages

Personal Identity

Consciousness

(Text as at 26/11/2007 23:25:26)

*** THIS IS NOT THE LATEST VERSION OF THIS NOTE ***

This is a place-holder¹. Currently, just see the categorised reading-list.

Note that in the philosophy of personal identity, a saltation is usually diagnosed between the phenomenal consciousness of the higher (and maybe lower) animals, and self-consciousness² (ie. awareness of self³), usually assumed to be the preserve of human beings only.

Lynne Rudder Baker alleges an ontological change (an ontological novelty) when beings with a first-person perspective⁴ come on the scene. I think first-person perspective is the same as a consciousness of self, though I suspect that if the non-human great apes are found to have the latter, she would allege the ontological novelty occurs with the arrival of the former, taken to be a more profound awareness.

I think the real ontological novelty arises with the emergence of phenomenally conscious beings, and that consciousness of self is a culturally-acquired phenomenon (though – despite the Buddhist attempt to eradicate it – a universal one).