Essays on the role of the body in self-consciousness, showing that full-fledged, linguistic self-consciousness is built on a rich foundation of primitive, nonconceptual self-consciousness. These essays explore how the rich and sophisticated forms of self-consciousness with which we are most familiar--as philosophers, psychologists, and as ordinary, reflective individuals--depend on a complex underpinning that has been largely invisible to students of the self and self-consciousness. José Luis Bermúdez, extending the insights of his groundbreaking 1998 book,
The Paradox of Self-Consciousness, argues that full-fledged, linguistic self-consciousness is built on a rich foundation of primitive, nonconceptual self-consciousness, and that these more primitive forms of self-consciousness persist in ways that frame self-conscious thought. They extend throughout the animal kingdom, and some are present in newborn human infants.
Bermúdez makes the case that these primitive forms of self-awareness can indeed be described as forms of self-consciousness, arguing that they share certain structural and epistemological features with full-fledged, linguistic self-consciousness. He offers accounts of certain important classes of states of nonconceptual content, including the self-specifying dimension of visual perception and the content of bodily awareness, considering how they represent the self. And he explores the general role of nonconceptual self-consciousness in our cognitive and affective lives, examining in several essays the relation between nonconceptual awareness of our bodies and what has been called our "sense of ownership" for our own bodies.
這些論文探討了身體在自我意識中的角色，並指出完整的、語言化的自我意識是建立在豐富的原始、非概念性自我意識基礎之上的。
這些論文探索了我們最熟悉的豐富而複雜的自我意識形式，這些形式在哲學家、心理學家和普通的反思個體中都是常見的，但對於自我和自我意識的研究者來說，這些形式的複雜基礎往往是看不見的。約瑟·路易斯·貝爾穆德斯（José Luis Bermúdez）在他的開創性著作《自我意識的悖論》（The Paradox of Self-Consciousness）的基礎上，提出了一個觀點，即完整的、語言化的自我意識是建立在豐富的原始、非概念性自我意識基礎之上，而這些更原始的自我意識形式在某種程度上影響著自我意識思維。它們延伸到整個動物界，並且在新生兒中也存在一些形式。
貝爾穆德斯提出這些原始的自我意識形式確實可以被描述為自我意識的形式，並主張它們與完整的、語言化的自我意識具有某些結構和認識論特徵的共同之處。他對非概念性內容的某些重要類別進行了描述，包括視覺知覺的自我指定維度和身體意識的內容，考慮它們如何代表自我。他還探討了非概念性自我意識在我們的認知和情感生活中的一般作用，並在幾篇論文中探討了我們對自己身體的非概念性意識與所謂的「對自己身體的所有權感」之間的關係。
José Luis Bermúdez is Professor of Philosophy at Texas A&M University. He is the coeditor of The Body and the Self (MIT Press) and the author of The Paradox of Self-Consciousness (MIT Press) and several other books, including most recently Understanding "I" Language and Thought.
