Consciousness and self awareness .2. Consciousness(4), consciousness(5), and consciousness(6)

Journal/Book: J Mind Behav. 1997; 18: PO Box 522, Village Station, New York, NY 10014. Inst Mind Behavior Inc. 75-94.

Abstract: Published in two parts, the present article addresses whether and how self-awareness is necessarily involved in each of the six kinds of consciousness that The Oxford English Dictionary identifies in its entry for the word consciousness. In this second part, I inquire into how self-awareness enters (a) consciousness(4), or the immediate (''inner'') awareness that we have of our mental-occurrence instances, (b) consciousness(5), or the constitution of the totality of mental-occurrence instances which is the person's conscious being, and (c) consciousness(6), or the highly adaptive general mode of the mind's functioning that we instantiate for most of the time that we are awake. Consciousness(4) is a kind of occurrent self-awareness because, in being conscious(4), it is part of oneself that one has occurrent awareness of; although one need not also, at those times, be aware of oneself as such. Consciousness(5) consists of those of one's mental-occurrence instances that one is now conscious(4) as one's own or one can remember being conscious(4) Of and appropriating to oneself. Whether consciousness(6) must involve self-awareness is difficult to answer because the common concept of consciousness(6) does not imply an answer, and we have no clear view of what consciousness(6) uniquely consists in; that is, no account of consciousness(6) as yet successfully distinguishes it from all of the mind's other general operating modes.

Note: Article Natsoulas T, Univ Calif Davis, Dept Psychol, Davis,CA 95616 USA

Keyword(s): HIGHER-ORDER THOUGHTS; APPENDAGE THEORY

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