Shaping Pre-Reflective Self-Consciousness
Journal of Artificial Intelligence and Consciousness March 1, 2023 Anita Pacholik-Żuromska, Gerhard Preyer
Pre-reflective self-consciousness—the immediate awareness one has of oneself prior to any act of reflection—cannot be adequately captured by computational or mathematical models of the mind. Theories that treat this basic self-awareness as a relation (e.g., between a subject and an object) fall into a paradox. Following the New Heidelberg School, the paper argues that pre-reflective consciousness is instead a non-relational, intrinsic quality of experience. Such an approach avoids the paradox and better accounts for the self-determination of mental states that are not directed toward anything else.