Introduction : back to pre-reflectivity

• Type: Chapter or Part of a Book
• Date: 2016

Authors

Miguens, Sofia (Author) FLUP; Preyer, Gerhard (Author) Other; Morando, Clara Bravo (Author) FLUP

Book

Title: Pre-reflective consciousness : Sartre and Contemporary Philosophy of Mind

Pages: 1-26

ISBN: 978-1-138-92581-6

Publisher: Routledge

Scientific classification

FOS: Humanities

Other information

Abstract (EN): Looking back at philosophy in the twentieth century is not merely a historical exercise, especially if such a retrospective is undertaken with a systematic intent. In this book, our starting point for looking back are current debates in the philosophy of mind,1 in particular those around the pre-reflective foundations of consciousness. In those debates, so-called representationalists and self-representationalists2 are, once again, as Sartre did, evoking primitive pre-reflectivity for thinking about the nature of consciousness. Still, what they are not taking into account (whereas it was very much discussed before) is that there are serious problems with taking pre-reflectivity (as pour-soi, or being for-itself) to be representational and thereby relational (Williford 2006a, 2006b; Kriegel 2009). Needless to say, philosophers do not dispute the subjectivity of the mental. The question is, rather, whether it is possible to take a third-person, objective stance towards (first-person) mental states. What is, after all, the distinctive feature of mental states in a physical world? In what follows, we will argue in favor of an answer that points to ¿pre-reflective consciousness.¿ Pre-reflectivity means, first of all, that self-consciousness is not the result of reflection; rather, consciousness is ¿non-positional¿ consciousness of itself. This pre-reflectivity does not entail the identification of an object, such as an ¿I,¿ which can then present itself as ¿myself¿; rather, pre-reflective consciousness is a basic being and thus mental states are themselves conscious. If pre-reflective consciousness indeed has such features, then one should think of the mental as non-relational; there is no mediation to speak of here (one speaks, thus, of ¿translucidité ¿: ¿transparency,¿ ¿diaphanousness¿). This way of thinking finds a particularly rich example in Sartre¿s early philosophy, namely in The Transcendence of the Ego (1931936/1937)¿hence Sartre¿s centrality in this book. Sartre¿s approach, with its appeal to consciousness as activity, nihilation, and perpetual flight, might seem radically alien to contemporary philosophers of mind. If this book succeeds in its intent, we will have shown that this seeming distance between Sartrean and contemporary philosophy of mind is not a necessary division. Once one gets past the strangeness of Sartrean terminology, it should become apparent that what Sartre has to say, especially about consciousness in particular, bears upon contemporary discussions in very important ways.

Language: English

Type (Professor's evaluation): Scientific