Self-Awareness and The Elusive Subject

Self-Awareness and The Elusive Subject explores the puzzling fact that we are certain of the existence of a subject of experience despite its being objectively and subjectively elusive. It is objectively elusive in that, like phenomenal states, it cannot be found from the third-person perspective. It is subjectively elusive because it also cannot be found in introspection. On the one hand, then, the author agrees with the Buddhists and philosophers like Hume and Sartre that the self cannot be found in experience. He sides with Descartes', on the other hand, arguing the subject of experience exists and that we have certainty of the cogito. Along the way the book considers the claim that phenomenal states have “subjective character” or “mineness” and argues instead that they are phenomenally anonymous. Howell concludes with a deflationary account of pre-reflective self-consciousness and provides an account of basic self-awareness according to which we are most fundamentally aware of ourselves indirectly as the subject of our conscious states.

Robert J. Howell, Professor of Philosophy, Southern Methodist University

Robert J. Howell is Professor and Chair of the Philosophy Department at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. He has published numerous articles in a wide range of areas including philosophy of mind, metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics. He is the author of Consciousness and the Limits of Objectivity (Oxford University Press, 2013). With Torin Alter he has co-authored A Dialogue on Consciousness (Oxford University Press, 2009) and The God Dialogues (Oxford University Press, 2011). He is a member of SMU's Academy of Distinguished Teachers.