Aristotle and Inner Awareness

Abstract

Recent debates on phenomenal consciousness have focused on the idea that conscious experience includes an experience of the self, whatever else it may present the self with. When a subject has an experience as of a pink cube, she is not just aware of the world as being presented in a certain way (a pinkish, cubic way in this case); she is also aware of the fact that it is presented toher. According to Victor Caston, Aristotle defended an interesting version of this view inDe Anima, later developed in different directions by many other philosophers – outside current research in the Analytic tradition, particularly in Phenomenology and the Heidelberg school. My goal in this paper is to locate Aristotle’s views, as interpreted by Caston, in the context of the current debate, and to offer some considerations in favor of a view like Aristotle’s, also following Caston.