Self-Representational Approaches to Consciousness

In this pioneering collection of essays, leading theorists examine theself-representational theory of consciousness, which holds that consciousness always involves someform of self-awareness. The self-representational theory of consciousness stands as an alternativeto the two dominant reductive theories of consciousness, the representational theory ofconsciousness (RTC) and the higher-order monitoring (HOM) theory, combining elements of both RTC andHOM theory in a novel fashion that may avoid the fundamental deficiencies of each.Althoughself-representationalist views have been common throughout the history of both Western and Easternphilosophy, they have been largely neglected in the recent literature on consciousness. This bookapproaches the self-representational theory from a range of perspectives, with contributions fromscholars in analytic philosophy, phenomenology, and history of philosophy, as well as two longeressays by Antonio Damasio and David Rudrauf and Douglas Hofstadter. The book opens with six essaysthat argue broadly in favor of self-representationalist views, which are followed by five that arguebroadly against them. Contributors next consider connections to such philosophical issues as thenature of propositional attitudes, knowledge, attention, and indexical reference. Finally, Damasioand Rudrauf link consciousness as lived with consciousness as described in neurobiological terms;and Hofstadter compares consciousness to the "strange loop" of mathematical self-reference broughtto light by Godel's incompleteness theorems.Contributors:Andrew Brook, Peter Carruthers, AntonioDamasio, John J. Drummond, Jason Ford, Rocco J. Gennaro, George Graham, Christopher S. Hill, DouglasR. Hofstadter, Terry Horgan, Tomis Kapitan, Uriah Kriegel, Keith Lehrer, Joseph Levine, Robert W.Lurz, David Rudrauf, David Woodruff Smith, John Tienson, Robert Van Gulick, Kathleen Wider, KennethWilliford, Dan Zahavi

Uriah Kriegel is Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy and Associate Director of the Center for Consciousness Studies at the University of Arizona.