Consciousness as Intransitive Self-Consciousness: Two Views and an Argument

The word 'consciousness' is ambiguous because it is used in many everyday contexts rather than as a precise technical term. To address this, the author introduces a specific technical concept: intransitive self-consciousness, a form of self-awareness. The paper then discusses this particular sense of consciousness, distinguishing it from other meanings.

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Abstract

The word ‘consciousness’ is notoriously ambiguous. This is mainly because it isnota term of art, but a mundane word we all use quite frequently, for different purposes and in different everyday contexts. In this paper, I am going to discuss consciousness in one specific sense of the word. To avoid the ambiguities of the word ‘consciousness,’ I will introduce a term of art:intransitive self-consciousness.As the term suggests, the phenomenon I have in mind is a kind of self-consciousness, or self-awareness.