Dilemma della prima persona e fenomenologia dell’azione: quanto è minimale l’autocoscienza?

The paper argues that self-consciousness is not an essential component of every conscious experience, even in its minimal, pre-reflective form. By examining the phenomenology of agency and exceptions to the Immunity to Error Through Misidentification principle, the author suggests that self-attribution of agency involves an extended, reflective self-consciousness rather than a minimal, pre-reflective one. This challenges the view that a thin notion of self-consciousness is a necessary prerequisite of consciousness.

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Abstract

First Person Dilemma and the Phenomenology of Action: How Minimal is Self-consciousness? - In recent years, increasing attention has been given to the possibility that a minimal, pre-reflective form of self-consciousness precedes introspective self-consciousness. Several attempts to argue that this “thin” notion of self-consciousness is a necessary prerequisite of consciousness have been provided. After briefly considering the semantic and epistemological issues related to the first-person pronoun, this paper refers to the literature that investigates exceptions to the Immunity to Error Through Misidentification principle from the point of view of the phenomenology of agency. We interrogate the relationship between the epistemological and the phenomenological issues for the purpose of questioning the idea that self-consciousness is an essential component of every conscious experience, even and especially when it is considered to be a minimal form of self-consciousness. The phenomenology of the self-attribution of agency seems to suggest that self-consciousness corresponds to an extended rather than a minimal self, namely to a reflective rather than a pre-reflective self-consciousness.