The Stream of Consciousness: XII. Consciousness and Self-Awareness

Abstract

Consciousness and self-awareness—how are they mutually related? This contribution to the present series of articles begins to consider replies to this question from the Jamesian perspective of The Principles. First, several relevant senses of consciousness are made explicit. Then, I give attention to James's notion of personal consciousness: How do the basic durational components of a stream of consciousness “cohere” to form a stream, given that, on James's mind—body dualism, they do not have a spatial location? Continuities of content among the components of a single stream is supposed to be the unifying factor; James held bodily feelings are an intrinsic feature of every component of a stream. The diachronic unity of consciousness rests heavily on a kind of self-awareness. Also addressed here are inner awareness, or the immediate awareness that one can have of one's mental-occurrence instances, and whether remembering past experiences requires that one had not only inner awareness of them when they occurred, but self-awareness as well.