Self-consciousness — In a Naturalistic Framework

In this essay, I present a brand-new naturalistic model of self-consciousness that draws inspiration from Dretske's program for naturalizing the notion of representation. Dretske's naturalization program is very ambitious in many respects. However, one of the crucial aims is overlooked in the literature, namely the abandonment of the traditional conception of representational content as a "Vorstellung," in which the individual occupies both poles of representation: the represented subject and the represented object. Just as sensory states containing information about a mind-independent source are "recruited" by selection with the function of representing that source without a subject, an "EGO file" housing autobiographic information is "recruited" by selection with the function of representing the cognitive system itself without a subject. The most basic form of self-reference is not the result of an act carried over by an "underlying subject:" The subject does not need to occupy both poles of the representation, the subject and the object poles. Instead, it is the result of the "recruitment" of the autobiographic memory with the function of representing the subject itself.