1. Agent Awareness and Self-Reference Remarks on 0’Brien’s Self-Knowing Agents

2. The journey thus far—and what’s still ahead A preliminary (3-fold) conception of consciousness tout court (phenomenality) as prelude to discussion of consciousness/self-consciousness relation. Distinction of (a) state self-consciousness and (b) subject self-consciousness. Critique of theories that try to explain consciousness tout court in terms of (a). This led to conception of (a) as reflective attention—developed so as to explain both how conscious states might be both distinctively first-personally available (to judgment, report) and how this mode of availability affords you the ability to improve your understanding of your own experience and at the same time enrich it. How now does (b) fit in? Is (b) perhaps explicable in terms of (a)? No--critique of Howell’s descriptivism and Humeanism led to recognize a basic non-attributive consciousness of self in reflection on experience. Now we want a deeper understanding of (b). Inquire into the notion that seeing how this is connected with agency, we discover a consciousness of self “as subject”—that promises to explain: how we acquire the concept of self that figures in reflection (O’Brien), and how a particular (morally significant) self is is generated (or “constituted”) (Korsgaard).

3. O’Brien and the agency account of self-awareness What will explain self-conscious self-reference? We can’t simply appeal to the self-reference rule SRR (I know that ‘I’ refers to the speaker). Because we need to add: and I know I myself am the one who’s saying ‘I’ now. And that self-conscious self-reference is unaccounted for. So to avoid circularity, we need to account for the subject’s knowledge that she herself is referring by appeal to a more primitive kind of self- awareness. Such that when we add in knowledge of the Self Reference Rule, this will yields her knowledge that she is referring to herself when she says ‘I’. The more primitive kind of self-awareness is: “agent awareness”

4. O’Brien on “agent awareness” It is an awareness of my own actions, what I am doing (e.g., in actively thinking, uttering a sentence) But it is NOT: – An awareness I have by judging that I am thinking, uttering a sentence, etc. – An awareness I have by having a perceptual or quasi-perceptual awareness of my judging, utterance, etc. – Thus (?) it involves neither a conceptualization of one’s own action, nor an ascription of it to oneself. Agent awareness IS: – A mode in which the action occurs – A way of being conscious – Which is either constituted or implied by the fact that my action results from my exercise of rational control – In other words, it is a way of the action’s being conscious that is constituted or implied by the fact that it is produced on the basis of my consideration of possibilities grasped as possibilities. – Otherwise put: it is a way of the action’s being conscious that is constituted or implied by the fact that it is produced on the background of determining what to do based on awareness of what I could do.

5. “Agent Awareness” “AGENT AWARENESS is the result of acting on the basis of an assessment of possibilities for acting.” (115) “acts of mind are subject to rational control in a variety of ways…we assume that our own rational assessments direct the course of our thoughts: our thoughts are the immediate product of such assessments…We…accept or endorse a given thought in the light of our AWARENESS OF THE POSSIBLE JUDGMENTS we could make and the reasons in favor of one over the other.” (116) “having this kind of control over one’s mental life provides a primitive, representationally independent kind of AWARENESS OF WHAT ONE IS DOING, and…this awareness is agent’s awareness.”(117) “for a subject to engage in an assessment of what to do is for a subject to determine what she should do. …any action produced directly on the basis of an ACTIVE ASSESSMENT BY AN AGENT will be an action of which the AGENT IS AWARE OF AS HERS.” (117) “A subject’s being AGENT AWARE OF HER ACTION is constituted by the action being the product of the subject’s CONSIDERATION OF POSSIBILITIES GRASPED AS POSSIBILITIES.” (120)

6. The Agent Awareness Explanation “The central idea is that a subject who uses ‘I’ in accordance with SRR, and who has agent’s awareness of what she is doing, thereby simultaneously refers to herself first-personally and is able to know that she is so referring. We can call this the agency account.” (p.77)

7. The Agent Awareness Explanation (?) 1.By being agent-aware of uttering ‘I’, I am warranted in judging that I myself am uttering ‘I’. 1.I know that ‘I’ refers to whomever is uttering it in a speech act (since I know the SRR). 1.Thus I know that my utterance of ‘I’ refers to me.

8. The Agent Awareness Account is not circular 1.By being agent-aware of uttering ’I’, I know that I myself am uttering ‘I’. 2.I know that ‘I’ refers to whomever is uttering it in a speech act (since I know the SRR). 3.Thus I know that my utterance of ‘I’ refers to me. If I am agent aware of uttering something, then it must be my utterance. It is not perceptual so it is not liable to errors of misidentification. But this agent awareness does not involve my using the concept I employ when I say ‘I’ and it does not involve attributing to myself the act of utterance. It is a kind of awareness of what I am doing, but it is not a representation of myself doing that thing. So it does not presuppose the kind of first-person awareness or reference that we are trying to explain by means of it.

9. Still, what is “agent awareness”? The conception of agent-awareness she offers is very thin All I know is that it is not a judgment whereby I classify that act under some concept, nor in any sense a perception of what I am doing, but some sort of awareness, which is implied by my act’s resulting from my awareness of options, and my choice from among them. So agent awareness is the non-conceptualizing, non-perceptual way I have of being aware of my own act when I have deliberately chosen it? But what positively is that way? I can’t agree that I even have this non-conceptual non-perceptual deliberation-implied awareness until it is clearer to me just what it is that I’m supposed to be agreeing I have.

10. Am I aware of my options in a non-attributive non-first- personal way when I assess them?. But just what kind of awareness of options do I have when I assess them? I am trying to decide what to name my dog: “Sparky” “Pickles” or “Mr Peabody” occur to me as options. This awareness can be expressed by saying, “I could name him Sparky, or…” But this awareness is conceptual and first personal. And O’Brien want to say there is a kind of awareness of options that figures in my decisions, in which I am NOT aware of them by thinking of them as my options. But this is not so clear. I can of course consider the dog naming issue with regards to someone else. “Help me think about what to name my dog!” you say to me, and I gladly comply. How then do I distinguish the awareness I have of the options and of the active assessment of them in this case, from that in the other case, if I am not regarding the options as your options in the one case and my options in the other?

11. Maybe though… Prior to my being able to engage in this kind of deliberative perspective shifting which does rely on mastery of personal pronoun concepts, there is a more basic, primitive kind of deliberation—thought about what to do—which doesn’t involve thinking of the options considered “as one’s own”. They simply are one’s own in virtue of being considered as they are, and issuing in choices. I think of naming the dog ‘Sparky’ or ‘Pickles,’ and then for some reason choose, ‘Sparky.’ Ok, but this leads to two additional concerns: 1.Is all agentive experience even primitively deliberative in this way? 2.Just how is the fact that my agent awareness of an act guarantees I am the actor (if it is a fact) supposed to confer knowledge that I am the actor my self attribution of the act?

12. First : does agentive awareness always involve conscious deliberation? O’Brien’s agent awareness is “an active assessment” involving an “consideration of possibilities grasped as possibilities.” But is all agent awareness like this? Think of everyday activities--of looking for something (your car in the lot, the bird in the tree, the matching sock), feeling for change in your pocket, washing the dishes, putting them away. Did you consciously consider possibilities for action, and choose your act (looking here, now here, reaching in your pocket, reaching deeper, reaching just there for that dish) from among other considered possibilities (looking in a different place, not reaching deeper, picking up a different dish)? Often, no—right?

13. Does agentive awareness always involve conscious deliberation? Sometimes to some extent one could rationalize one’s choices ex post facto relative to other options one can conjure up. But even where one can do this, what does that imply about the awareness of what one was doing? Does it imply that one had an awareness of what one was doing distinct in kind from that one would have had if one had no such after the fact rationalization to offer? And where one lacks the rationalization, are we to say one lacks agent awareness of what one is doing (looking, feeling, reaching, grasping)? Maybe we need to look for a more primitive experience of agency than the experience of deliberation.

14. Related concern-- Is it clear that agent awareness is non- perceptual? And if it is non-perceptual how can we understand its warranting role? It seems O’Brien thinks our awareness of what we are doing is non-perceptual because it is not the “passive reception of information.” But this conception of perceiving should be questioned. (115-116)

15. Second Concern: just how do we get from my “agent awareness” of act to knowledge that I am performing it? The crucial step: By being agent-aware of my utterance I know that I myself am uttering ‘I’. how does this agent-awareness have the power to confer knowledge when it is not perceptual (it does not “inform us” about what we are doing)? It seems the idea is that agent awareness has this power because it makes the corresponding judgment true. But the sheer fact that having this kind of awareness of a doing entails that it is my doing, doesn’t suffice to show that having that kind of awareness gives me the knowledge that it as my doing, does it?

16. Non-perceptually experienced in a way that makes it mine  I have a right to call it mine? “…thoughts and utterances that arise out of process of agency arise as possibilities that the subject has realized on the background of determining what she will do given a grasp of what she could do. Thus in being determined by her, I this way, an act of a subject arises as hers.” (120) But even if we grant that being determined in this way by your awareness makes the act “arise as yours”—just how does that connect with your knowledge that it is your or your warrant for attributing it to yourself? Maybe there is a “mode” of experiencing an action that makes it your action. But why does its being experienced in a mode that makes it yours give you the right to call it yours?

17. Some provisional responses to O’Brien What I want to lose from her picture (?) the idea that agent awareness of what you’re doing must result from deliberate choice of that doing from among considered options. The idea that we can explain how some more primitive form of self-awareness enables you to acquire a grasp of the “I” concept by appeal to the fact that your mode of experiencing your act warrants your attributing it to yourself in judgment The idea that agent awareness is always non-perceptual.

18. What I want to keep from O’Brien’s picture (?) There is some form of self-consciousness we have because of our knowledge of the self-reference rule, plus the fact that we ourselves are the speakers. But there is also some more primitive form of self-consciousness is needed to account this, and for our grasp of the “I” concept in judgment This basic form of self-awareness is indeed an aspect of ordinary consciousness— amounting to a form of self-experience, with a distinctive motivational role. This experience of one’s own agency is not a matter of representing oneself to be an agent, but rather has to do with the mode of experience. Because our acts are experienced in this mode they are owned (possessed and authored), and because of this, our most primitive deliberative thoughts are guaranteed to take as their subject the experientially implied owner/author of these acts.

19. A sketch of how to develop this picture My idea of how to develop this: – our most primitive deliberative thoughts are guaranteed to take as their subject the experientially implied owner/author of the acts – because the most basic materials of deliberation are primitive self-directed desires, – which arise, not from self-directed thoughts, or deliberations, – but from sensorimotor agentive experience, whose subject is the implied subject of that experience.

20. How primitive self-consciousness might underlie self-reference So the proposal is: the subjective character of experience (centrally--the experience of looking, touching/feeling): – implies a subject of experience—a sensory phenomenal perspective-maker-- (the one who looks at and feels for things, and to whom they look feel some way, and who creates an experienced perspective on an environment by so doing), and – determines primitive reflexive desires whose subject is the one experientially implied (including the desire to get a look at that, to get a hold of it, to eat it). Now: this very experientially implied situated subject is the guaranteed referent of whatever basic deliberative thought then arises in the same subject. How this might work: in virtue of the subjective character of my experience: I look around, something appears to me faintly apple-ish, I want to get a better look, it becomes more apparent to me in color, shape, location, more recognizably an apple; I want to eat it; now I think about how to get to it (jump? climb?). Who am I thinking about, in thinking about jumping or climbing? Who is the candidate jumper or climber? The one who wanted to get (and got) a better look at something and to whom it became apparent as an apple. Because it’s this one’s desires and sensorimotor activity that engage with the thought about whether to jump or climb to get the apple so as to motivate subsequent action. Notice this doesn’t assume I “attributed to myself” the action of jumping or climbing in some entertained scenario.

21. How primitive self-consciousness might underlie self-reference So this very experientially implied situated subject is the guaranteed subject of whatever action-options are considering in basic deliberative thought that then arises in the same subject. And because the self-reference in deliberation is thus guaranteed, we can each think of ourselves in a non-attributive, referent-guaranteed way when we think as agents. This is subject self-consciousness. So then when I later come to think of myself as the utterer of ‘I’, I can do so via a prior form of subject self-consciousness, with does not presuppose mastery of the first-person pronoun, and which I can acquire without already attributing acts to my self. Assuming then I am also entitled to think of myself of the utter of ‘I’, we can then employ grasp of the SRR to non-circularly explain how linguistically expressed self-conscious thought arises from more basic forms of self-consciousness.