Bodily awareness and self-consciousness

Abstract

We will seek, in this paper, present and analyze some of the issues since the end of the last century, they have mobilized the sector of the philosophy of mind responsible for discussing the relationship between self processes, consciousness, the body, the environment, and our representation of ourselves and the world. From the presentation of our understanding on the notion of self, that is, of the criteria which makes us to be and/or to recognize what we are over time, we will try to present our particular, critical, and expanded view of the position assumed by the authors of the paper we have studied (Eilan et al., 1995), as well as we will seek to add our understanding of the role played by the corporeality in the constitution of cognition and mind. In this paper, we propose to investigate how Eilan et al. (1995) think the reconciliation of the so-called (i) the I-as-subject and (ii) the thesis of substantive self-consciousness theses. This endeavor will be carried out from the discussion of two general questions: (i) the role of the I-as-subject and substantive self-consciousness theses in the discussions about self-consciousness and body relationships; (ii) the relations between the notions of I-as-subject, ownership, and the elusiveness of self.