| My dissertation presents an argument for the claim that awareness of oneself and awareness of others is symmetrical and mutually dependent. My work challenges the traditional account of self-consciousness according to which individuals can be aware of themselves even though they have never been aware of individuals like themselves.;First, I provide an analysis of self-consciousness as the self-ascription of experiences that shows that if a subject is to be able to think "I am experiencing F," then he must be able to ascribe experiential predicates, e.g., "b is F," "c is F," to arbitrarily distinguishable individuals.;Second, I argue that in order for one to be self-conscious, one must be able to identify oneself as a subject of experience. However, the traditional account of self-ascription holds that self-ascriptions do not involve identification of a subject, because 'I' is immune to error through misidentification. Contrary to universal opinion, I argue that self-ascriptions are not immune to error through misidentification through a conceptual and empirical argument.;Third, I argue that the identification of the subject of self-ascription is only possible given the perception of oneself as a person among persons, which I call the Persons Theory. The Persons Theory provides us with a genuinely unique account of thought about other minds that differs from two extant accounts of experience ascription---the simulation theory and the theory-theory. According to the Persons Theory, rather than imagination or thought, perception of persons enables the self-ascription and other-ascription of experiences. I elucidate types of recognition and acknowledgement between subjects in joint perception, action and emotion that are pivotal for self-awareness. An implication of the Persons Theory is that awareness of oneself and awareness of others develops in tandem and involves interaction between persons. |
