Reflexive Awareness (Consciousness, Self-Consciousness, Self-Awareness)
type: CreativeWork
description: In four chapters, I conduct a phenomenological and analytical inquiry into the nature of a special sort of reflexive awareness, an awareness of unprojected or unobjectified awareness. The clearest example of this is the awareness that is felt to be in the background of an experience of dissociatively watching oneself. I call this awareness, RA*. It is to be contrasted with two other sorts of reflexive awareness: (i) awareness of the fact that I am now aware (e.g., there is a visual object before me, therefore I must be seeing), (ii) awareness of past awareness, which in being outside present experience is no longer unprojected, but projected in relation to the second-order awareness. I contend that these latter two sorts of reflexive awareness presuppose the occurrence of RA*.
abstract: In four chapters, I conduct a phenomenological and analytical inquiry into the nature of a special sort of reflexive awareness, an awareness of unprojected or unobjectified awareness. The clearest example of this is the awareness that is felt to be in the background of an experience of dissociatively watching oneself. I call this awareness, RA*. It is to be contrasted with two other sorts of reflexive awareness: (i) awareness of the fact that I am now aware (e.g., there is a visual object before me, therefore I must be seeing), (ii) awareness of past awareness, which in being outside present experience is no longer unprojected, but projected in relation to the second-order awareness. I contend that these latter two sorts of reflexive awareness presuppose the occurrence of RA*.
author: Harney, Denis Francis
keywords: Philosophy
date published: 10000-01-01
date modified: 2026-07-22T22:26:05Z
provider: University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

PropertyValue
property ID: Handle
value: http://hdl.handle.net/2142/71560