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Forthcoming in U. Kriegel (ed.): The Oxford Handbook of the Philosophy of Consciousness.

Oxford University Press. Please quote from published version.

Dan Zahavi

Consciousness and (minimal) selfhood:


Getting clearer on for-me-ness and mineness

Not that long ago, discussions of selfhood in philosophy of mind tended to focus on diachronic identity
and the so-called persistence question. What are the necessary and sufficient conditions that must be met
if I am to be identical to a past or future being? Is it the persistence of some psychological relation
(beliefs, memories, preferences etc.), or is my identity through time rather constituted by some brute
physical continuity? Important as this question might be, it does, however, not exhaust the topic of
selfhood. In recent years, the focus has shifted somewhat from diachronic to synchronic identity and
given rise to a lively debate concerning the relationship between phenomenal consciousness and
selfhood. Are our conscious experiences self-involving or self-disclosing (in a manner yet to be
determined) or was Lichtenberg right in his famous objection to Descartes: Experiences simply take
place, and that is all. To say cogito and to affirm the existence of an I is already to say too much
(Lichtenberg 2000: 190).

1. Denying the phenomenal presence of the experiencer

In A Treatise of Human Nature Hume famously wrote

For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some
particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I
never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe any thing but the
perception (Hume 2007: 165).

This quotation has often been taken as an expression of Humes commitment to a bundle theory. There
is nothing to consciousness apart from a manifold or bundle of changing experiences. There are various
experiences and perceptions, but no subject of experience, no experiencer or perceiver. As Jesse Prinz
has recently argued, Hume is committed to the thesis that, among the various phenomenal qualities that
make up an experience, there is none that can be characterized as an experience of the self or subject in
addition to qualities found in perceived features of the world, sensations, and emotions (Prinz 2012:
124). Whether this is a correct Hume interpretation is debatable,1 but Prinzs aim is in any case to defend

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It is not obvious that not being able to perceive the self without a perception is equivalent to not being able to perceive the
self (Margolis 1988: 32). Indeed, as Strawson has recently argued, far from entailing a denial of the existence of a self or
subject of experience, Humes principal target in the quotation in question is the view that the self or subject is something that
can be encountered in separation from the experience, i.e., the view that it is possible to have a naked or bare apprehension of

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a strong eliminativist position, according to which there is no phenomenal I. There might be a
phenomenal me, i.e., the self might figure as the object of a conscious experience, but qua subject of
experience, it is experientially invisible. In arguing for this view, Prinz asks us to focus on the actual
qualities that make up a concrete experience and then suggests that there are three options: The first
possibility is to claim that among these experiential qualities there is a specific item that we can label
the I. If we reject this proposal, as we ought to, we are, according to Prinz, left with two further
possibilities. We might maintain that there is an I-quale, some kind of mineness of experience, but then
argue that it is reducible to other kinds of qualia, i.e., that it is nothing over and beyond the qualities of
perception, sensation, and emotion. The final possibility, which is the one that Prinz favours, is to opt for
eliminativism and simply reject that there is any I-quale at all (Prinz 2012: 123-124). Interestingly,
Prinzs eliminativism should not be taken as a defence of metaphysical anti-realism about the self. Prinz
is not arguing that consciousness is selfless. Rather consciousness is, as he puts it, thoroughly permeated
by the self (Prinz 2012: 149). We always experience the world from a perspective or point of view. Who
we are, our goals, interests and histories, very much filters and constraints what we experience. Thus, the
self might be said to be present, not as an item of experience, but as a kind of constraint (Prinz 2012:
149).
By arguing in this manner, Prinz is getting close to what might be considered a more Kantian
approach to the self. According to this alternative proposal, each and every experience presupposes by
conceptual and metaphysical necessity a subject of experience. Just as there can be no jumping without
a jumper, there can be no experiencing without an experiencer. The latter, however, is a condition, rather
than a given datum. We can infer that it exists, but it is not itself something experiential. As Kant wrote
in Kritik der reinen Vernunft: I cannot cognize as an object itself that which I must presuppose in order
to cognize an object at all (Kant 1998: A 402). A recent version of this view has been defended by
Searle. According to Searle, the self is not a separate and distinct entity but rather a formal feature of the
conscious field. Searle claims that we fail to describe the conscious field correctly, if we think of it as a
field constituted only by its contents and their arrangements. The contents require a principle of unity,
but that principle, namely the self, is not a separate thing or entity. Searle then goes on to say that the
postulation of a self is like the postulation of a point of view in visual perception. Just as we cannot make
sense of our perceptions unless we suppose that they occur from a point of view, even though the point
of view is not itself perceived, we cannot, according to Searle, make sense of our conscious experiences
unless we suppose that they occur to a self, even though the self is not consciously experienced. The self
is not the object of consciousness, nor is it part of the content of consciousness, indeed we have on
Searles account no experience of the self at all, but since all (non-pathological) consciousness has to be
possessed by a self, we can infer that it must exist (Searle 2005: 16-18). One way to understand Searles
argument is consequently to see him distinguishing the question of whether an experience is necessarily
had by a self from the question of whether the self necessarily figures in experience. Whereas Searle

the self. Hume is denying this, just as he more generally speaking is denying that we in experience encounter a simple,
unchanging and persisting subject. But one can deny this, without defending a no-ownership theory, without denying that
whenever we observe an ongoing perception, we also observe ourselves, since any perceiving, any experiencing, is necessarily
and essentially a subject-involving occurrence (Strawson 2017: 258-259).

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denies the latter, he affirms the former, thereby taking ownership of experience to be a non-experiential
metaphysical relation rather than something phenomenally manifest.

2. Highlighting the first-person perspective

Prinzs and Searles views might be contrasted with a position that can be called experiential minimalism.
It is a view I have been defending since the late nineties (Zahavi 1999, 2000, 2005, 2009, 2011, 2014),
but somewhat comparable views can also be found in the writings of, for instance, Galen Strawson (1994,
2009, 2011, 2017), Uriah Kriegel (2009, 2017), and Martine Nida-Rmelin (2016).
A guiding idea has been that if we wish to do justice to the subjective character of experiential
episodes, we should acknowledge that episodes characterized by a subjective what-it-is-likeness are not
merely episodes that happen to take place in a subject, regardless of whether the subject is aware of them
or not. Rather, the what-it-is-likeness of phenomenal states is properly speaking a what-it-is-like-for-me-
ness. On this view, experiential processes are intrinsically conscious and hence self-revealing. They are
characterized by an inherent reflexive (not reflective) or pre-reflective self-consciousness in the weak
sense that they are like something for the subject, i.e., in virtue of their mere existence, they are
phenomenally manifest to the subject of those experiences.
One objection that might be made to a proposal like this is the following. To claim that our
experiences are first-personally manifest is a fundamental mistake, since there is in fact no for-me-ness,
phenomenal consciousness or what-it-likeness. Indeed, there is nothing that it is like to have qualitative
experience (Garfield 2016: 73). This is not to deny that there is something it is like to experience the
blueness of the sky or the sweet scent of a mango, but what should be listed here are exclusively
properties of the objects, namely the blueness or the sweet scent. There is nothing in addition that it is
like to experience these objects: Consciousness is always consciousness of something, and when the
object is subtracted, nothing remains to be characterized (Garfield 2016: 75). To say that we are aware
of the experience of the object, and not simply of the object, is consequently to confuse the epistemic
instrument with the epistemic object (Garfield 2016: 79). As Dretske once put it, mental states are
something with which we are conscious, rather than something of which we are conscious (1995: 100-
1). In truth, the only thing that is manifest is the external object and its properties. Another way to make
the same point is by saying that whatever we are conscious of is completely objective. The fact that one
is aware of it doesnt add anything. Indeed, as Dretske willingly concedes, on this account, [e]verything
you are aware of would be the same if you were a zombie (Dretske 2003: 1, cf. Garfield 2016: 76).
One might wonder how an account like this is supposed to deal with qualitative experiences like
anguish, nausea or orgasm, but a more general worry concerns its (in)ability to address the difference
between conscious and non-conscious intentional states. If we compare the situation where there is a
mango with the situation where there is a visual awareness of a mango, the two situations differ, and they
differ not because the latter situation increases the amount of objectual properties in the world, i.e.,
because it provides us with more mango(ness), say, by adding a mental mango. Rather the difference is
that only the awareness of the mango allows the mango to appear, i.e., to be manifest itself. Experiential

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properties should not be equated with objectual properties. Phenomenality is not merely about what is
being presented, but also about how it is being presented. Whereas there is a phenomenal difference
between the manifest gustatory qualities of caviar and liquorice, there is also a phenomenal difference to
the taste of liquorice depending upon whether it is perceived, remembered, or imagined. Whenever
objectual properties appear, they always appear in specific ways (as perceived, remembered, imagined,
anticipated etc.), and they only appear, i.e., they only present themselves phenomenally, if the mental
state in question is conscious. A non-conscious perception of a mango might establish an informationally
rich causal connection between the mango and my visual system, but it doesnt make the object appear
to me, it doesnt make me aware of what the perception is about.
It could be objected, however, that any reference to the first-personal givenness of experience
commits one to the claim that every ordinary intentional experience involves two objects: The external
object and the experiencing of the external object, and that this is one object too many (Garfield 2015:
164). If we consider a visual perception of a bottle, Garfield is certainly right in objecting to the claim
that there next to the bottle should be another object, the perceptual state, which is either blocking the
view or somehow competing for our attention. But as should be clear by now, the claim is not that our
access to, say, a tasted mango or a touched bottle is indirect, or that it is mediated, contaminated, or
blocked by our awareness of the tasting or touching, since those experiences rather than being objects on
a par with the mango or the bottle are precisely what provides us with phenomenal access to the objects.
Indeed, what the objection overlooks is that part of the motivation for introducing the notion of pre-
reflective self-consciousness in the first place was to criticize the idea that the givenness of an experience
is always a form of object-givenness. To put it differently, pre-reflective self-consciousness is precisely
taken to differ from reflective self-consciousness by being an intrinsic non-objectifying form of self-
acquaintance. One that doesnt contain any subject-object structure, but where the experiential states are
rather aware of themselves in a non-dual manner. As Frankfurt once put it,

What would it be like to be conscious of something without being aware of this consciousness?
It would mean having an experience with no awareness whatever of its occurrence. This would
be, precisely, a case of unconscious experience. It appears, then, that being conscious is identical
with being self-conscious. Consciousness is self-consciousness. The claim that waking
consciousness is self-consciousness does not mean that consciousness is invariably dual in the
sense that every instance of it involves both a primary awareness and another instance of
consciousness which is somehow distinct and separable from the first and which has the first as
its object. That would threaten an intolerably infinite proliferation of instances of consciousness.
Rather, the self-consciousness in question is a sort of immanent reflexivity by virtue of which
every instance of being conscious grasps not only that of which it is an awareness but also the
awareness of it. It is like a source of light which, in addition to illuminating whatever other things
fall within its scope, renders itself visible as well (Frankfurt 1988: 162).

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Some might consider the introduction of a non-objectifying form of self-consciousness an unwarranted
ad hoc stipulation, made purely in order to avoid certain troubling objections. It falls outside the scope
of the present chapter to offer a more comprehensive account of the different arguments that over time
has been offered in support of pre-reflective self-consciousness, but let me mention one influential
argument, which is rather transcendental in character.
Most authors are willing to recognize the existence of reflective self-consciousness. This is a form
of self-consciousness that involves a subject-object relation between two different mental states, the
reflecting and the reflected. Reflective self-consciousness isnt simply some form of other-directed mind-
reading, however. It doesnt merely provide the subject of experience with an awareness of somebodys
mental episode. To qualify as a form of self-consciousness, the identity of the subject and the object must
be affirmed. But how is this to be accomplished? How can the identity of the two relata be ascertained
without presupposing that which is meant to be explained? If the act of reflection is to recognize or
identify something as itself, it needs a prior self-familiarity. As Cramer puts it,

How should the reflective subject be able to know that it has itself as an object? Obviously
only by knowing that it is identical with its object. But it is impossible to ascribe this
knowledge to reflection and to ground it in reflection. The act of reflection presupposes
that the self already knows itself, in order to know that that which it knows when it takes
itself as an object is indeed identical with the one that accomplishes the act of reflective
thinking. The theory that tries to make the origin of self-awareness comprehensible through
reflection ends necessarily in a circle that presupposes the knowledge it wants to explain
(Cramer 1974: 563).

Any attempt to conceive of basic self-consciousness as a form of object cognition, i.e., as a subject-object
relation, seems bound to fail since it either leads to a regress or presupposes what it is supposed to explain.
The solution to this challenge has been to defend the existence of a more primitive form of non-
objectifying pre-reflective self-consciousness.2 In short, if reflective self-consciousness is to be possible,
pre-reflective self-consciousness has to be presupposed. As Sartre observed,

Thus reflection has no kind of primacy over the consciousness reflected-on. It is not reflection
which reveals the consciousness reflected-on to itself. Quite the contrary, it is the non-reflective
consciousness which renders the reflection possible; there is a pre-reflective cogito which is the
condition of the Cartesian cogito (Sartre 2003: 9).

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This view is not shared by all who defend the existence of a more primitive pre-reflective form of self-consciousness,
however. Kriegel has explicitly dismissed the notion of non-objectifying self-consciousness as a somewhat mysterious sui
generis intrinsic glow (2009: 102), and has instead proposed and defended a neo-Brentanian self-representationalism,
according to which each mental state takes itself as its own peripheral object (Kriegel 2004). For a critical discussion of self-
representationalism, see Zahavi 2004, 2014.

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But how do we get from pre-reflective self-consciousness to a sense of self? As Sartre also once wrote,
pre-reflective consciousness is self-consciousness. It is this same notion of self which must be studied,
for it defines the very being of consciousness (Sartre 2003: 100). Indeed, as he points out in the chapter
The self and the circuit of selfness in Being and Nothingness, consciousness is by no means impersonal
when pre-reflectively lived through. Rather it is characterized by a fundamental selfness (Sartre 2003:
127). As I read Sartre, his proposal is that rather than starting with a preconceived notion of self, we
should let our understanding of what it means to be a self arise out of our analysis of self-consciousness.
Put concisely, the proposal is to identify the self with the subject of experience, and to conceive of the
subject, not as an independent, separable entity, but as the subjectivity of experience, which is then
claimed to be something no experience can lack, neither metaphysically nor phenomenologically. To use
a formulation of Strawsons, if experience exists, subjectivity exists, and that entails that subject-of-
experience-hood exists (Strawson 2009: 419). On this construal, the self is something that is essentially
present in each and every experience. It is present, not as a separately existing entity, i.e., as something
that exists independently of, in separation from or in opposition to the stream of consciousness. Nor is it
given as an additional experiential object or as an extra experiential ingredient, as if there were a distinct
self-quale, next to and in addition to the quale of the smell of burnt hay and roasted almonds. No, the
claim is that all experiences regardless of their object and regardless of their act-type (or attitudinal
character) are necessarily subjective in the sense that they feel like something for someone. In virtue of
their inherent reflexive self-consciousness, in virtue of their self-presentational character, they are not
anonymous, but imbued with a fundamental subjectivity and first-personal character, and the proposal
has been to identify this first-personal presence, this experiential for-me-ness, with what has been called
the minimal self (Zahavi 2005, 2014). To deny the existence of this for-me-ness, to deny that we have a
distinctly different acquaintance with our own experiential life than with the experiential life of others
(and vice versa), and that this difference obtains, not only when we introspect or reflect, but already in
the very having of the experience, is to fail to recognize an essential aspect of experience.
At this point, however, it might be objected that more caution is needed. Is it really warranted to
equate for-me-ness, experiential subjectivity, the first-person perspective, pre-reflective self-
consciousness, the minimal self, etc.? As Guillot has recently argued, the indiscriminate use of the
notions of for-me-ness, me-ness, and mineness has introduced considerable confusion into the debate,
since the three notions are far from being conceptually equivalent and ultimately target three different
properties (Guillot 2017: 26).
On Guillots reading, for-me-ness is best understood as a label for the special awareness that the
subject has of the experience she is undergoing. On many construals, this special awareness comes about
as a result of the experience possessing a special inner awareness, such that in addition to being aware of
its ordinary (external) object it also has itself as object of awareness. In short, it is by being aware of
itself, that the experience possesses a subjective character that makes it be for me (Guillot 2017: 28-
29). Me-ness, by contrast, is when the subject of experience rather than simply being aware of the external
object (and of the experience of the object) is also aware of herself. Me-ness, in short, is when the subject
figures in experience as an object of phenomenal awareness (Guillot 2017: 35), or as Farrell and

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McClelland rephrase it in their summary of Guillots view, as a thing-that-appears (2017: 3). Mineness,
finally, is when the experience is phenomenally given as mine. On this reading, mineness is the more
complex notion, since it not only requires that the subject is aware of her experience, and aware of herself,
but also aware of the possessive relation between herself and the experience, i.e., aware that she is owning
the experience (Guillot 2017: 31, 43).
As Guillot then points out, there is prima facie a fairly clear distinction to be drawn between an
awareness of an experience, an awareness of an experiencer, and an awareness of the experience as
owned by the experiencer, and it is neither obvious that the three notions are co-extensive nor that they
stand in relations of mutual entailment (Guillot 2017: 32). Since the experience and the subject of
experience are normally taken to be distinct particulars, one cannot without further ado argue that for-
me-ness (an awareness of the experience) necessarily entails me-ness (an awareness of the experiencer)
(Guillot 2017: 34). One cannot without further ado move from the familiar point that a subject is aware
of her present experience in a way that others are not to the claim that what makes this way of being
aware special is that it encompasses [] the subject of awareness, the object of her awareness and their
relation (Guillot 2017: 34).
Guillot is surely right in saying that there is a difference between letting the self figure as the
dative of experience, i.e. as the subject of experience, and letting it figure in the accusative as an object
of awareness, and that this again is different from being explicitly aware of the possessive relation
between the subject and its experience (Guillot 2017: 34-35). But have these differences really been
overlooked in the previous debate? One cannot conclude from the fact that certain authors have used,
say, the notions of for-me-ness and mineness interchangeably to the fact that an important conceptual
distinction has thereby been overlooked, since it all depends on how the authors in question have been
defining the terms.3 Given how Guillot is defining me-ness and mineness, I, for instance, would dispute
that for-me-ness entails either. Being pre-reflectively aware of ones experiences is neither tantamount
to being aware of oneself as an object, nor equivalent to being thematically aware of the experiences as
ones own. In fact, whereas Guillot claims that for-me-ness, me-ness and mineness co-occur in the
ordinary experience of normal subjects (2017: 45), I would argue that they only co-occur quite rarely.4
It is also possible, however, to define mineness differently than Guillot. Consider, for instance,
Rowlands distinction between two ways of understanding mineness. In the first case, mineness is an
introspectively discerned feature or property of my experiences. On the second reading, which is
Rowlands own, mineness is understood in adverbial terms as the way or mode in which the intentional
objects of my experience are presented to me. When I have experiences of objects, I have them minely.

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In my own case, I started out by primarily using the term mineness (e.g., Zahavi 2005: 16), but later increasingly opted for
the term for-me-ness (e.g., Zahavi 2014: 24). The main motivation for this terminological change was that various critics
seemed to have taken mineness to refer to a specific I-quale, whereas it was intended to refer to the subjective how of
experiencing. The notion of for-me-ness seemed less amenable to that kind of misunderstanding. The difficulty, though, is
that the latter notion also runs the risk of being misunderstood, namely as referring to a merely formal, i.e., non-experiential,
structure. As a result, I have occasionally used both notions interchangeably.
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Farrell and McClelland are consequently mistaken when they argue that I am committed to a conception of experience
according to which all conscious states possess all three features (as they are defined by Guillot) (2017: 5).

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The objects are given for-me (Rowlands 2015: 117). On this latter interpretation, mineness and for-me-
ness amount to the same.
The real issue of controversy, however, is arguably different. It concerns the question of how
much can be packed into the for-me-ness that is arguably present whenever and wherever there is
phenomenal consciousness. Does for-me-ness entail some sense of self, some form of self-awareness?
Guillot denies both. The fact that the experience manifests itself to me does not entail that I am thereby
aware of myself in any way. Likewise, the fact that experiences are given first-personally to the subject
does not entail that the experiencing subject is thereby self-aware (Guillot 2017: 48-49).
What is overlooked by this objection is the fact that there are many different types of self-
awareness or self-consciousness (and I am here using both terms synonymously). Crucial distinctions
include the previously mentioned difference between (1) objectifying and non-objectifying forms of self-
consciousness, but also (2) the important distinction between egological and non-egological forms of
self-consciousness. Given the first distinction, one cannot conclude that the self is not experientially
present unless it is given in the accusative, i.e., as an object. In fact, as we saw above, there is a long-
standing tradition in philosophy which argues that self-consciousness cannot primarily be a form of
object-consciousness. As for the latter distinction, which can also be found in the classical literature on
self-consciousness (see, e.g., Thiel 2011), it bears on the question of whether self-consciousness is best
understood as consciousness of self or rather simply as the reflexive acquaintance that each conscious
episode has to itself. In short, it is perfectly respectable to designate the case where consciousness is
aware of itself as a case of self-consciousness.
More generally speaking, what seems to have been somewhat forgotten is the fact that much of
the relevant discussion of self-consciousness has taken place in the context of an attempt to understand
the difference between conscious and non-conscious mental states. Whereas higher-order
representationalists have typically argued that the difference in question rests upon the presence or
absence of a relevant meta-mental state, and therefore claimed that it is the addition of the relevant meta-
intentional self-awareness that transforms a nonconscious mental state into a conscious one (Van Gulick
2000: 276), defenders of one-level alternatives have argued that conscious mental states possess an
inherent pre-reflective self-consciousness. In either case, however, the claim has been that there is a
constitutive link between phenomenal consciousness and self-consciousness. One might disagree, but
then one should provide arguments that either deny the difference between conscious and non-conscious
mental states or offer an alternative account of their difference.
Now, one possible reply would be to argue that even if for-me-ness does in fact entail a kind of
self-consciousness, namely a kind of state-self-consciousness, where a mental state is aware of itself
(which obviously doesnt necessarily entail that it is also aware of itself as a mental state), it remains the
wrong kind of self-consciousness, it isnt subject-self-consciousness, it isnt a consciousness of self. And
as Guillot insists, since the self and the experience are distinct particulars, an awareness of the latter does
not automatically involve an awareness of the former (2017: 34). However, this objection lacks purchase
against those who opt for a deflationary or thin notion of self, according to which the self rather than
having the experience is in some way identical with (or part of) the experience. Guillot has argued that

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such a move is controversial and in need of independent arguments (2017: 37). That such arguments can
be found in the literature, and has been provided by defenders of the thesis that Guillot is criticizing is,
however, indisputable (cf. Strawson 2009, Zahavi 2014). As already mentioned, the basic idea is to
highlight the irreducible first-personal character of experience, i.e., the ineliminable perspectivalness of
phenomenal consciousness. Intentional experiences are Janus-faced. They are of something other than
the subject and they are like something for the subject. There is a genitive and dative of intentional
manifestation. The proposal is to identify the (minimal) self with this dative of manifestation, which
doesnt designate something experientially invisible, but rather the very subjectivity of experience. On
this account, the self is an experiential being and is not something that can ever be encountered in
separation from the experiences, nor is it something that can be absent whenever experiences are lived
through. Of course, some might find this line of reasoning unconvincing, but the proper task would then
be to engage with it critically, rather than simply to ignore it. There might be a price to pay for insisting
on a very tight constitutive link between self and experience, but the same certainly holds true for any
theory that wants to separate the two. There is something counterintuitive to the claim that the subject,
self or I is entirely non-experiential, such that I would remain a self even if I were zombified and ceased
having experiences, simply because a brain, a body or a living organism continued to exist. In fact, if self
and experience are separated, it is unclear how self-experience would ever be possible, and how a certain
object (be it a brain, a body, or a living organism) could ever be singled out and identified as myself. It
should not come as a surprise that some Buddhist philosophers after having insisted upon the difference
between self and consciousness, and after having defined the self as the possessor or owner of
consciousness, argue that there is no such thing and that it can easily be eliminated without loss (Garfield
2015: 106, 129, cf. Siderits, Thompson, Zahavi 2011).
Let me add, that no proponent of the minimal account of self currently under consideration would
present it as an exhaustive account of selfhood. Indeed, the label minimal (or thin) is partially employed
in order to highlight how limited the notion is and how much more has to be said in order to account for
the full-fledged human self (Zahavi 2014: 50). Consider, by comparison, the relation between the
logically and ontogenetically primitive kind of self-consciousness that any phenomenal consciousness
arguably entails and the more complex form of self-consciousness that one engages in when one is
appraising how one is perceived by others. The former kind of self-consciousness might be necessary for
the latter but it is certainly not sufficient. Likewise, although there is certainly more to being a human
self than being an experiential self, the claim is that the latter is a necessary precondition, not only for
self-conscious thinking and first-person self-reference, but also for mature selfhood (cf. Grnbaum &
Zahavi 2013).
To sum up: Whereas distinguishing between for-me-ness, mineness and me-ness might be helpful
as long as the terms are defined in the specific way Guillot does, I am not persuaded by the claim that
the for-me-ness that is part and parcel of phenomenal consciousness doesnt involve any sense of self.
Moreover, if it really hadnt, I think it would be a misnomer to label it for-me-ness.

3. Critiquing the minimal self

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Over the years, the position just outlined has been subjected to various criticisms. One line of attack has
been that the notion of a minimal self is too deflationary and that it is urgent to maintain the distinction
between subjectivity and selfhood, since the requirements that must be met in order to qualify as a self
are higher than those needed in order to be conscious or sentient. One way to bolster that line of criticism
would be by arguing that selfhood is situated within the space of normativity, and that we come to have
a perspective and thereby an identity of our own in virtue of our normative commitments and
endorsements (see Frankfurt 1988, Rovane 2012). Another recent criticism has been that even though
there is indeed something like a minimal self, existing accounts have underestimated the role of sociality,
and failed to realize to what extent that self is interpersonally constituted (Ratcliffe 2017). In the
following, however, I will focus on criticisms that in various ways engage with the universality question.
If it is the case that our experiences are accompanied by a sense of self, is it then something that holds
with necessity, such that it characterizes all experiences, however primitive or disordered they might be?
Is it something that only holds for normal, adult, experiences? Or might it be something that only holds
under rather special circumstances, say, when we reflectively scrutinize and appropriate our experiences?
Let us first consider the view of Howell and Thompson, who argue that experiences with for-me-
ness are real but exceptional, and who more specifically defend what they call the Unreflective Naive
Transparency thesis. On their account, our pre-reflective intentional life is so completely world-engaged
that it remains entirely oblivious to itself. There is at that stage and on that level no room for any self-
consciousness or for-me-ness; rather, experiential ownership is the outcome of a meta-cognitive
operation that involves conceptual and linguistic resources. To suggest that experiences are always
characterized by for-me-ness is in their view to fall prey to the so-called refrigerator fallacy, i.e., thinking
that the light is always on, simply because it is always on whenever we open the door of the refrigerator
(Howell and Thompson 2017: 114, cf. Schear 2009).
Howell and Thompson are not disputing that it is a metaphysical fact and conceptual truth that
experiences are owned in the sense of necessarily being someones experiences. Nor are they disputing
that individuals have a privileged access to their own experiential states in the sense that they enjoy a
special kind of first-person authority vis--vis these states, which they lack when it comes to the
experiential states of others. Their target is the phenomenological claim that the presence of for-me-mess
makes a difference to the overall phenomenal character of experience. And in their view, the attempt to
define for-me-ness in terms of the distinct first-personal presence of experience (cf. Zahavi 2011: 59)
conflates an epistemic point with a phenomenal one (Howell and Thompson 2017: 113). Indeed, they
explicitly question whether the epistemic feature is phenomenally manifest, or [] constitutes a feature
of phenomenal character (Howell & Thompson 2017: 111).
This is a somewhat surprising claim. Is it not rather odd to insist that the difference between my
access to my own feeling of nausea (as it is subjectively lived through) and the access I have to your
feeling of nausea (as it is displayed in your contorted facial expressions and verbal reports) is a difference
with no phenomenal impact? Is there not an experiential, i.e. phenomenal, difference between being
nauseous oneself and observing somebody elses nausea? Given their defence of the unreflective nave

10
transparency thesis, however, Howell and Thompson would presumably argue that pre-reflectively there
is no difference in givenness between the experience that metaphysically belongs to me and the
experience that metaphysically belongs to another. There is no such difference in givenness, since the
experiences are not given pre-reflectively at all. They do not make any pre-reflective appearance.
Creatures who do not possess (or do not yet possess) the cognitive sophistication to reflect upon their
experiences will consequently remain oblivious to whatever experiential episodes they undergo, there
will be nothing it is like for them to feel nausea. Through reflection, however, and through the imposition
of a theoretical framework on the original experience, we can lay claim to and appropriate the experience,
and thereby bring it to givenness. As for the sense of self, it is precisely a product of rather than a
condition for such appropriation (2017: 123). Howell and Thompson agree, of course, that very few are
inclined to deny, upon reflection, that their experiences are theirs, but on their view, there is nothing
phenomenal that motivates this appropriation (2017: 114).
For Howell and Thompson, it is consequently not the conscious episodes themselves that provide
part of the justification for the subsequent self-ascription of the episodes in question. But if one denies
that a reflective self-ascription such as I am nauseous is based on experiential evidence, if one insists
that it entirely lacks experiential grounding and is in no way answerable to experiential facts, it is difficult
to see how one can then preserve and accommodate something like first-person authority. Ultimately,
one must ask whether there is any fact of the matter that can constrain our higher-order beliefs. This
seems to be a view Garfield approaches when he claims that it is a myth to think that there is a way our
inner life is, independent of how we might imagine it (Garfield 2016: 81).
Were our experience really completely anonymous, impersonal, and invisible when lived
through, it is hard to understand how we could even start to target it in reflection, let alone appropriate it
as ours, i.e., imbue it with first-personal character. This is also why the obvious reply to the refrigerator
objection is that it leaves it quite mysterious how our reflective gaze or monitoring stance could possibly
have that kind of illuminating effect. At one point, Howell and Thompson argue that a mental state cannot
be imbued with for-me-ness simply as a result of being the object of a further mental state. Rather, if
awareness of awareness is to give rise to for-me-ness, the first order state must already be imbued
with some phenomenally apparent quality of mine-ness (Howell and Thompson 2017: 119). I think this
is exactly right. Their point is intended as a criticism of self-representationalism,5 but it also affects their
own proposal. If there is no phenomenal for-me-ness on the pre-reflective level, it is quite unclear how
such a sense can arise in and through reflection.

5
As Garfield has pointed out, one can find an argument purporting to show why self-representationalism cannot escape the
regress problem already in the work of the Buddhist philosopher Candrakrti (570-650 CE). Either the reflexive awareness is
awareness of a state that already possesses for-me-ness, and if so, for-me-ness is presupposed. Alternatively, the state is
initially non-conscious, but acquires conscious for-me-ness by being self-directed. But if a higher-order state cannot imbue a
first-order state with for-me-ness by taking it as an object, it is not clear why a non-conscious state should be able to generate
conscious for-me-ness simply by taking itself as an object (Garfield 2015: 143-144). As Henrich once remarked, The
circularity in the concept of such a self-related knowledge is not removed by attributing to it a quality of immediacy (Henrich
1971: 13).

11
Whereas Howell and Thompson want to restrict for-me-ness to experiences that are reflectively
grasped, Dainton is more liberal. If I, say, look at a trout in the fishmongers window, it wouldnt be
correct, according to Dainton, to describe my experience in impersonal terms as trout-like object a few
feet away, rather, if the description were to capture the experience, it would have to be something like
trout-like object being looked at by me (Dainton 2016: 121). But whereas Dainton is prepared to accept
that ordinary experiences seem to be bound up with a sense of self, he is critical of the claim that the for-
me-ness of experience is a primitive and irreducible feature, and he also challenges the claim that it is
something that necessarily characterizes all conscious states (Dainton 2016: 129).6
In some places, Dainton suggests that it is the fact that a certain experience is co-conscious with
my other experiences that clearly and unambiguously makes it belong to me (Dainton 2008: 242). Indeed,
as he writes,

Any sense I have that a typical experience is experienced by a subject when it occurs is due to
the fact that this experience is co-conscious with certain other experiences, namely those
comprising the inner component of the phenomenal background. The inner background largely
constitutes what it feels like to be me, or so I have just argued. If so, then when the inner
background is present, so too am I, phenomenologically speaking. Consequently, any experience
which is co-conscious with the inner background will seem as though it is occurring to a subject
(= me) (Dainton 2008: 243).

Rather than being due to some primitive and irreducible feature, an experience consequently
comes to possess ownership by being embedded within, and experienced together with, a multitude of
other experiences that make up its inner background. If the background is present, so will my sense of
(being a) self (Dainton 2016: 123). In effect, Dainton is consequently offering a reductionist account of
selfhood, where the sense of self is largely the resultant of the various specific forms of experience
which jointly constitute the inner component of the phenomenal background: bodily sense-fields,
conscious thinking, emotional feelings, mental images and mental acts of various kinds (Dainton 2016:
124).
However, Dainton also proposes that the presentational and perspectival character of experience
is partially explicable by certain spatial aspects of experience (Dainton 2016: 129). The reason that the
tree you perceive seems to be presented to you is precisely that you yourself seem to have a determinate
spatial location. Indeed, as Dainton writes The same applies more generally: in any perceiving,

6
In his article, Dainton remarks that Zahavi & Kriegel in a paper from 2016 offer some useful clarifications of their position,
for instance, by making it clear that for-me-ness isnt to be associated with a distinctive quale of its own, it is not an additional
ingredient in experience that can occur on its own. Rather, it reflects how phenomenal contents are apprehended: whenever I
experience something, I always experience it as presented to me (Dainton 2016: 125). This is correct, but the very same
clarification can already be found in earlier writings of mine (cf. Zahavi 2005: 124, Gallagher & Zahavi 2008: 50). More
generally speaking, I find it regrettable that Guillot, Dainton and Howell & Thompson, while discussing the Zahavi & Kriegel
paper all fail to engage with Zahavi 2014, which the former article draws on, and which anticipates and addresses several of
their subsequent criticisms.

12
experiential contents of whatever type can only seem to be presented to a subject if the subject itself has
the impression of being itself spatially related to what it is perceiving. Ordinary human phenomenal fields
are thus centred rather than centreless (Dainton 2016: 130). The emphasis must be on ordinary. More
primitive or exceptional creatures, be it newborn infants or a deaf and blind baby puppy floating in a
well-heated capsule in outer space, would have bodily experiences, but the experiences in question would
according to Dainton hardly be centred or presentational in any kind of way (2016: 139).
In addition to rejecting the proposal that the sense of self is a primitive and irreducible feature of
experience, Dainton consequently also rejects the claim that it is necessarily a feature of all experiences.
Whereas normal adult experience might indeed be centred and owned, there are not only primitive forms
of experience, which lacks it, but also pathologically distorted forms of experience (such as can be found
in Cotards syndrome, in advanced stages of Alzheimer or in schizophrenic thought-insertion) where it
is absent (2016: 126-127).
I will shortly return to the question of whether pathology provides us with exceptions to the claim
that experiences are characterized by for-me-ness, and for now instead focus on the plausibility of
Daintons reductive explanation. Is it plausible to account for the first-personal presentational character
of experience by appealing to certain spatial features? This attempt is somewhat reminiscent of the
definition of a weak first-person perspective provided by Blanke & Metzinger, which they argue can be
understood as a purely geometrical feature of our visuospatial presentation of reality. When we
perceive objects, we see objects as being to the right or left, further away or closer by. On this account,
the weak first-person perspective is simply the zero-point of projection that functions as the geometrical
origin of the seeing organisms embodied perspective (Blanke & Metzinger 2009). The problem with
this definition, and also with Daintons own proposal, is that it doesnt at all target the relevant subjective
or experiential character of the first-person perspective. Not only would a robot presumably also possess
the weak first-person perspective in question, although there is nothing it is like for it to undergo such
presentations, but consider also something as self-involving and first-personal as emotions. Consider
feelings of joy, anger, jealousy, despair or shame. It is somewhat hard to see how their first-personal
character, their for-me-ness, could at all be explained or explicated with reference to the fact that the
experiencing subject seems to have a determinate spatial location.
What about the more general ambition of trying to account for the sense of self by appealing to a
certain network of experiences? There seem to be two ways to understand the claim. One option is that
the inner components of the phenomenal background already possess for-me-ness and that the current
experience then acquires for-me-ness by being associated with the background. But this would hardly
constitute a reductive explanation. The alternative would be to claim that none of the experiences
possesses intrinsic for-me-ness. They are all anonymous. And they then come to acquire for-me-ness by
somehow being related to each other. But this proposal seems to run up against the same kind of problem
that Cramer was addressing in the quotation given earlier. As Snowdon observes, how does the
background help me appreciate I am having the experience in question, unless I already appreciate that
the background is mine too? (Snowdon 2016: 155).

13
4. Psychopathology

Whatever qualms one might have about Daintons reductive explanation, he is certainly right, however,
when remarking that the the full story concerning the sense of ownership is a complex and multifaceted
one (2016: 128). Even if one were to claim that for-me-ness is a feature of all experiential life, it would
be implausible to deny that there is no relevant experiential difference between, say, being absorbed in a
movie, daydreaming, playing Russian roulette, or being told that one has been sacked. When comparing
such experiences, it should be evident to most that they are self-involving and self-conscious in different
ways. To deny this is to distort phenomenology. Arguing that our experiential life is as such characterized
by for-me-ness is, however, not to deny that we need to recognize a diversity of qualitatively different
self-experiences. Indeed, the latter recognition is quite compatible with the view that there is also
something that this diversity has in common.
In recent decades, the experiential reality of for-me-ness has become more widely accepted. The
main issue of recent controversy concerns its scope and frequency. Whereas quite a few authors are now
prepared to defend the view that self-experience is ubiquitous in normal life, the domain of
psychopathology has often been considered to offer informative contrast cases. Even if consciousness
and self are ordinarily tightly interwoven, their relation cannot be necessary and essential, the argument
goes, since pathology offers relevant exceptions, i.e., cases of experiences that lack for-me-ness
altogether. In the literature, schizophrenic thought-insertion and severe depersonalization are among the
most widely discussed cases. Whereas thought-insertion has been claimed to present cases of alienated
conscious thoughts that lack mineness (Metzinger 2003: 334, 382, 445-446) or even taken to be thoughts
that lack phenomenality and subjectivity altogether (Billon 2011: 306), severe depersonalisation in its
delusional form (Cotard syndrome) has been claimed to exemplify cases where the subjective character
seems to recede from all mental states of which the patient is aware (Billon 2014: 742). Whether these
psychopathological phenomena really constitute relevant exceptions, i.e., cases of experiences that
phenomenologically speaking are nobodys, is, however, open to interpretation. As might be expected,
much depends on how robustly one interprets the entailed notions of subjectivity, subjective character,
mineness etc.
Guillot has proposed that her distinction between for-me-ness, me-ness and mineness can be
used to describe the different pathologies more accurately (2016: 18). She has resisted the claim that
these pathological experiences are entirely deprived of subjective character. After all, the experiences are
for the subjects undergoing them; they are given to them in ways that are quite unlike how they are
available to everybody else. More specifically, she argues that whereas the experiences of Cotard patients
exemplify cases where for-me-ness is retained, but me-ness and mineness has been lost, schizophrenic
experiences of inserted thoughts exhibit for-me-ness and me-ness, but no mineness (Guillot 2017: 44).
I have already expressed some doubts about the way Guillot defines these terms, but I think her
basic intuition is sound (cf. Zahavi 2014: 39-41). The pathological experiences continue to be
characterized by a subjective presence and a what-it-is-likeness that make them utterly unlike public
objects that in principle are accessible in the same way to a plurality of subjects. Regardless of how

14
alienated or distanced the patient feels vis--vis the experiences, the experiences do not manifest
themselves entirely in the public domain whatever the patients might be claiming. This is what most
fundamentally make the experiences first-personal, and this is why even these pathological experiences
retain their for-me-ness. On my understanding of the concept, this also entails that a certain dimension
of self and self-awareness is preserved. But of course, denying that thought-insertion and
depersonalization involve a complete effacement of self and self-awareness is not to deny that something
is amiss. Parnas and Sass have described and defined schizophrenia as a self-disorder and argued that it
involves a fragile and unstable first-person perspective. Unstable in what sense? In the sense that the for-
me-ness of the patients has lost some of its normal obviousness, familiarity and unquestionability. It
doesnt any longer effortlessly lead to or permit reflective self-ascription (Sass & Parnas 2003; Parnas &
Sass 2011). James famously argued that our own present thoughts were characterized by a quality of
warmth and intimacy (James 1890: 239). This sense of endorsement and self-familiarity seems lost.
We are indeed dealing with a kind of self-alienation or alienated self-consciousness, but as these
phrasings also make clear a dimension of self and self-consciousness remains.7

5. Conclusion

In the preceding, I have attempted to explain and motivate the view that phenomenal consciousness, self-
consciousness and selfhood are constitutively interlinked. I have then considered several recent
objections that have been raised against the view. As my discussion has hopefully made clear, even if
there might be a price to pay for upholding the essential for-me-ness of experience, its denial also comes
with a price.
In the beginning of this chapter, I mentioned that the recent discussion of the relation between
consciousness and self could be seen as involving a change of focus from diachronic to synchronic
identity. Let me end by briefly acknowledging that the question of diachronicity has not entirely been
lost from sight and in fact continues to be a somewhat contentious issue among defenders of a minimalist
approach to selfhood. It is one thing to claim that an occurrent experience in virtue of its for-me-ness is
self-involving and self-disclosing, but what does this tell us about the existence of an enduring and
temporally extended self? Is the for-me-ness something that remains invariant across all other
experiential changes? Is the for-me-ness something that remains identical between different experiences?
Are two non-overlapping experiences that occur in the same stream of consciousness characterized by
the very same for-me-ness? Or is the identity of the experiencer so tightly linked to the identity of the
experience that the cessation of the experience entails the cessation of the experiential self? And the

7
Whereas Billon initially argued that depersonalization provides evidence for the possibility of phenomenal consciousness
without subjective character (Billon 2014), he has in more recent publications revised this interpretation and is now arguing
that such experiences indicate the existence (and pathological alteration) of a form of self-experience (Billon 2016: 17). His
claim is consequently no more that they lack basic self-awareness, but rather that their basic self-awareness is impaired (Billon
2016: 14).

15
arising of a new experience, the birth of a new self? Different proposals currently available cover quite
a range of options. Whereas Strawson has argued that each distinct experience has its own experiencer
(Strawson 2009: 276), such that one and same human organism over its lifetime might be said to be
inhabited by a vast multitude of ontologically distinct short-lived selves, I have previously argued that
the experiential self should be identified with the ubiquitous dimension of first-personal character.
Although it is not a separately existing entity, it is not reducible to any specific experience, but can be
shared by a multitude of changing experiences (Zahavi 2014: 72-77). It falls outside the scope of the
present chapter to engage properly with this topic, but it is worth emphasizing that disagreements
concerning the duration of the self dont challenge or threaten the fundamental idea: That there is a thin
experiential self at any given moment of experience.

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