Consciousness

and
Cognition
Consciousness and Cognition 16 (2007) 583–599
www.elsevier.com/locate/concog

Pre-reflective self-as-subject from experiential

and empirical perspectives
Dorothée Legrand *

CREA – CNRS, 1 rue Descartes, 75005 Paris, France

Received 8 January 2007

Available online 29 May 2007

Abstract

In the first part of this paper I characterize a minimal form of self-consciousness, namely pre-reflective self-conscious-
ness. It is a constant structural feature of conscious experience, and corresponds to the consciousness of the self-as-subject
that is not taken as an intentional object. In the second part, I argue that contemporary cognitive neuroscience has by and
large missed this fundamental form of self-consciousness in its investigation of various forms of self-experience. In the third
part, I exemplify how the notion of pre-reflective self-awareness can be of relevance for empirical research. In particular,
I propose to interpret processes of sensorimotor integration in light of the phenomenological approach that allows the
definition of pre-reflective self-consciousness.
Ó 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Subjectivity; Pre-reflectivity; Consciousness; Self-recognition; Neural correlates; Sensori-motor integration; Self-related
processes; Phenomenology; Cognitive neurosciences

1. Pre-reflective consciousness of the self-as-subject1

1.1. Self-consciousnesses

Self-recognition is by and large considered as an important criterion for self-consciousness. In developmen-

tal and comparative psychology, the so-called mirror-recognition task has occasionally been heralded as the
decisive test for self-consciousness (TaylorParker, Mitchell, & Boccia, 2006). Children would be self-conscious
only when capable of recognizing themselves in the mirror (cf. Lewis, 2003, pp. 281–282). The question
whether chimpanzees (Gallup & Povinelli, 1998; Gallup, 1970; Povinelli et al., 1997), non human primates
(Itakura, 2001), birds (Epstein, Lanza, & Skinner, 1981), dolphins (Reiss & Marino, 2001) or elephants (Plot-
nik, de Waal, & Reiss, 2006) are self-conscious is considered according to their ability or inability to behave in
front of a mirror as if in front of themselves vs. in front of a conspecific.
*
Fax: +33 1 55 55 90 40.
E-mail address: legrand@shs.polytechnique.fr
1
A good deal of the content and structure of this first part is indebted to published as well as still unpublished writings of Dan Zahavi.

1053-8100/$ - see front matter Ó 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.concog.2007.04.002
584 D. Legrand / Consciousness and Cognition 16 (2007) 583–599

However, self-consciousness comes in many forms and degrees and does not only emerge the moment one
recognizes one’s own mirror image or scrutinizes one’s experiences attentively. Rather, a more minimalist
account defends the view that the most primitive form of self-consciousness simply corresponds to the subjec-
tive dimension of experience (cf. Zahavi, 1999, 2005). In what follows, I designate this primary form of self-
consciousness as a pre-reflective consciousness of the self-as-subject. The first section intends to clarify this
notion, by comparing it with other conceptions of self-consciousness.

1.2. Primary self-consciousness

Pre-reflective self-consciousness specifically corresponds to consciousness of the self as it is the subject of

any given experience. Compare two different experiences: the smelling of fresh coffee and the seeing of mid-
night sun. These experiences differ in their phenomenality, i.e. in ‘‘what it feels like’’ to undergo them. More
precisely, the experiences differ from each other both in terms of content (coffee vs. sun) and mode of presen-
tation of these contents (smelling vs. seeing). However, these experiences do not differ in every aspect. They
share a specific dimension in the fact that they are all given from the first-person perspective, they are given
(at least tacitly) as my experiences, as experiences I am undergoing: they feel like something for me. This qual-
ity of mineness or for-me-ness is what the notion of pre-reflective consciousness of the self-as-subject
designates.
It is important to note that the specificity of pre-reflective consciousness of the self-as-subject is not fully
captured by the notion of phenomenal consciousness (Block, 1997; Zahavi, 2005, p. 224). Indeed, as the pre-
vious examples illustrate, pre-reflective self-consciousness remains constantly present even when other aspects
of phenomenal consciousness vary, implying that these dimensions of experience cannot be reduced to each
other. The ‘‘mineness’’ or subjectivity in question is not a quality as bitter or bright, black or orange that var-
ies with the intentional object experienced. Rather, it refers to the fact that every experience is characterized by
a subjective mode of givenness in the sense that it feels like something for the experiencing subject. For this
reason, pre-reflective self-consciousness does not vary either with the modulation of phenomenal experience
of the self taken as an intentional object (just like it does not vary with the modulation of phenomenal expe-
rience of any other intentional object). For example, when I experience myself as being hungry, I experience
myself in a double manner: I experience an intentional aspect (‘‘hunger’’), but the latter does not suffice to
capture the subjective aspect at stake here: pre-reflective consciousness of the self-as-subject (‘‘I’’). The point
here is that pre-reflective self-consciousness is not reducible to phenomenal consciousness, as evidenced by the
fact that the latter can change without involving any modulation of the former. Note that this does not imply
that pre-reflective self-consciousness always remains constant (it can be more or less recessive). It only implies
that its potential modulations are not directly and systematically due to changes of the intentional aspects of
experience.

1.3. Pre-reflective self-consciousness versus anonymity

One reason why this dimension of experience can be adequately described as a primary form of self-con-
sciousness is because it corresponds to a quality or dimension of mineness. However, according to what might
be termed the anonymity objection, there would be no experience of self at the pre-reflective level. Rather, expe-
riences would be characterized by a certain anonymity or neutrality. To claim that every experience has a qual-
ity or dimension of mineness would consequently be a post-hoc fabrication.
In reply, it is crucial to understand that the notion of pre-reflective self-consciousness does not suppose that
the self would be experienced as standing opposed to the stream of consciousness. Rather, at the pre-reflective
level, it is an integral part of conscious experience. I do not first experience a neutral or anonymous toothache
or intention to act, then ask the question ‘‘Whose experience is this actually?’’ to finally find myself as the
owner of these experiences (Legrand, in press; Shoemaker, 1968). Rather, any experience is pre-reflectively
experienced as intrinsically subjective in the sense that it is experienced from the perspective of the experienc-
ing subject (Zahavi, 2005). The latter is a first-person perspective; it is tied to a self in the sense of being tied to
the point of view of the experiencing, perceiving, acting subject. It could consequently be claimed that
 D. Legrand / Consciousness and Cognition 16 (2007) 583–599 585

anybody who denies the subjectivity of experiences and considers that experiences can be given in a neutral
way simply fails to recognize an essential aspect of what it feels like to undergo an experience.

1.4. Pre-reflective self-consciousness versus transparency

As just proposed, one way to cash out the notion of pre-reflective consciousness of the self-as-subject is by
defending that phenomenal experiences are intrinsically subjective: pre-reflective self-consciousness is an
intrinsic aspect of phenomenal experience. Insofar as conscious experiences are characterized by a subjective
‘feel’, i.e., a certain ‘what it is like’ or what it ‘feels like’ to have them, they also come together with a minimal
form of self-consciousness.
This description of pre-reflective self-consciousness can appear inconsistent with descriptions of experience
as transparent defended by both externalists and representationalists: ‘‘When we try to introspect the sensation
of blue, all we can see is the blue: the other element is as if it were diaphanous’’ (Moore, 1903, p. 25). The
darkness of a coffee and the brightness of the midnight sun are not qualities of experiences, they are qualities
of the things represented, the coffee and the sun. In this view, what it is like to have a certain experience is
reducible to the quality of what is being intentionally represented. The latter is not an intrinsic and non-inten-
tional quality of experiences themselves but consists entirely in the qualitative properties of the experienced
objects (Dretske, 1995, p. 1).
These views reduce intentional experiences to world-presenting components. Therefore, they give no place
to the primary form of self-consciousness that has been described above as being intrinsic to intentional expe-
riences: ‘‘introspection of your perceptual experiences seems to reveal only aspects of what you experience, fur-
ther aspects of the scenes, as represented. Why? The answer, I suggest, is that your perceptual experiences have
no introspectible features over and above those implicated in their intentional contents. So the phenomenal
character of such experiences . . . is identical with, or contained within, their intentional contents’’ (Tye,
1995, p. 136).
The externalist attempt to locate the intentional dimension of experience ‘‘outside’’ is in fact not incompat-
ible with the notion of pre-reflective self-consciousness. However, considering pre-reflective self-consciousness
in its specificity implies to refute the reduction of phenomenal experience to its intentional dimension (Legrand,
2005). In other terms, what might be called the ‘‘transparency objection’’ operates with a conception of phe-
nomenality that is too impoverished to address specifically the subjective dimension of experience that the
notion of pre-reflective consciousness of the self-as-subject intends to capture.
What it is like to be dazzled by the sun differs from what it is like to smell fresh coffee, and what it is like to
perceive differs from what it is like to remember or imagine. But what is crucial to account for pre-reflective
self-consciousness is to underline that all these different phenomenal experiences are necessarily experienced
by a given subject. These distinct experiences bring me into the presence of different intentional objects.
Not only am I phenomenally acquainted with various properties of these objects, but also these objects are
there for me. Given that this ‘‘for me’’ quality remains constant whatever the intentional object, it makes little
sense to suggest that this ‘‘mineness’’ can be reduced to a qualitative feature of the object experienced. Phe-
nomenality is world-presenting but it is also self-involving. To put it differently, it has an intentional and a
subjective component, both being irreducible to each other. The notion of transparency of experience as used
by externalist conceptions of consciousness only concerns the former aspect and does not consider specifically
(nor threaten) the notion of pre-reflective self-consciousness.

1.5. Pre-reflective self-consciousness versus objectifying consciousness

Considering pre-reflective self-consciousness in its specificity implies to refute the equation of consciousness
with object-consciousness. For example, Searle (2005) proposed that the conscious field should not be con-
ceived of as a field constituted only by its contents and their arrangements. The contents require a principle
of unity, a self that is not a separate entity distinct from the field. So far, this claim coheres with the present
account of pre-reflective self-consciousness. However, Searle further argues that the postulation of a self is like
the postulation of a point of view in visual perception. Just like we cannot make sense of our perceptions
unless we suppose that they occur from a point of view, even though the point of view is not itself perceived,
586 D. Legrand / Consciousness and Cognition 16 (2007) 583–599

we cannot, according to Searle, make sense of our conscious experiences unless we suppose that they occur to
a self, even though the self is not consciously experienced. All (nonpathological) consciousness has to be pos-
sessed by a self. This self is not the object of consciousness, nor is it part of the content of consciousness. In
Searle’s view this implies that there is no experience of the self, even though we have to infer that there is a self.
The problem is that Searle equates consciousness with object-consciousness. Failing to consider subject-
consciousness, he concludes that the self must either be given as an object or not be given at all. But as Evans
put it: ‘‘[F]rom the fact that the self is not an object of experience it does not follow that it is non-experiential’’
(Evans, 1970, p. 145).
The present view proposes that a crucial aspect of pre-reflective self-consciousness is that it is thoroughly
non-observational and non-objectifying in the sense that it does not correspond to any form of consciousness
of some object towards which I would occupy the position or perspective of a spectator or in(tro)spector. Pre-
reflective self-consciousness sensu stricto is an awareness of oneself as subject. Therefore, it cannot be a ques-
tion of the self taking itself as an object of experience.
More in detail, to understand the specificity of pre-reflective self-consciousness as a non-objectifying form
of consciousness of the self-as-subject, it is crucial to underline that subject-consciousness and object-con-
sciousness are fundamentally different modes of consciousness. This distinction between subject and object
is not ontological but phenomenological: ‘‘object’’ here means ‘‘object of intentional consciousness’’ and ‘‘sub-
ject’’ means ‘‘subject of intentional consciousness’’. For x to be given as an object of experience is for x to be
given as differing from the subjective experience that takes it as an object. In short, subject and object of expe-
rience are necessarily different from each other: an object of experience is something that stands in opposition
to the subject of experience. Even if x can be identical to y and be an object for y (Williford, 2006), the subject
cannot stand in a subject–object relation to itself at the pre-reflective level. Therefore pre-reflective self-
consciousness cannot be reduced to the experience of a particular object: Object-consciousness necessarily
entails a difference between the subject and the object of experience, and it is this very feature that makes
object-consciousness singularly unsuited as a model for self-consciousness.
This conception of the subjectivity of experience contrasts with the description of self-consciousness in
terms of a peripheral or marginal object-consciousness as well as with the view espoused by Brentano accord-
ing to which a mental state becomes conscious by taking itself as an object (Zahavi, 2004, 2006). For phenom-
enologists, experience is conscious without being itself an intentional object (Husserl, 1984a, 1984b, p. 399;
Sartre, 1936, pp. 28–29). Of course, we can direct our attention towards our experiences and thereby take them
as objects, but this only occurs the moment we reflect upon them. In everyday life, I rather enjoy a continuous
and pre-reflectively first-personal access to myself as the subject of the experiences I undergo.

1.6. Pre-reflective self-consciousness grounds consciousness of the self-as-object

These considerations raise the question of the link between consciousness of the self-as-subject and con-
sciousness of the self-as-object, i.e. between the subjective and the intentional aspects of phenomenal con-
sciousness. This section will argue that pre-reflective self-consciousness is the necessary ground to which
other forms of self-consciousness are anchored, i.e. the subjective first-person perspective anchors the experi-
ence of intentional objects (the self-as-intentional-object included).
Consider again self-recognition in a mirror. This is a case of consciousness of the self-as-object in the sense
that the self is taken as an object of visual observation. Such self-recognition is often taken as paradigmatic of
self-consciousness even though it let unexplored pre-reflective consciousness of the self-as-subject. It is crucial
to consider the latter not only because it is an essential constituent of consciousness and a primary form of
self-consciousness but also because it provides the necessary ground anchoring conscious self-recognition.
Recalling a well-known story described by John Perry (1993) will allow a better understanding of this point.
Ernst Mach enters a bus, he sees a person in front of him, and judges that this person is a ‘‘shabby peda-
gogue’’. Only latter on, he realizes that this shabby pedagogue is nobody else but himself who he was watching
in a mirror.
This story provides the occasion to describe a case of self-observation without self-consciousness and illus-
trates that observing the self-as-object (e.g. in a mirror) is insufficient for self-consciousness. More in detail,
self-observation implies that the same self is both the subject and the object of the observation. In addition,
 D. Legrand / Consciousness and Cognition 16 (2007) 583–599 587

self-consciousness implies that the subject recognizes that he is both the subject and the object of observation.
However, this cannot be given by observation itself since the latter implies a dissociation of the self which is cut
into an observing subject and an observed object. Therefore, self-observation itself cannot ground self-con-
sciousness. By analogy, Mach’s mirror reflection is not enough for him to consciously recognize himself as
himself.
One may think that self-recognition could be possible thanks to a second act of consciousness which would
take the first one as its object. Thanks to this additional act of consciousness, one would be able to observe the
subject and the object of the act of consciousness, and would be able to identify them as identical. However,
observing that the subject and the object of an act of consciousness are identical does not imply that I recog-
nize myself as being the subject. Quite the contrary, the self previously dissociated in a subject and an object of
observation is now dissociated in a meta-observer, an observer and an observed object. This conception thus
seems particularly unsuited to account for self-consciousness.
Shoemaker has provided a classical argument purporting to show why it is impossible to account for self-
consciousness only in terms of a successful object-identification. In order to identify someone as oneself, one
has to identify certain features and already know that these features characterize oneself. In some cases, this
self-knowledge might be grounded in some further identification, but, in turn, the latter also needs to rely on
some further self-knowledge. The supposition that every item of self-knowledge rests on identification thus
leads to an infinite regress (Shoemaker, 1968, p. 561). This holds even for self-identification of mental event
obtained through introspection. If no other self but me could possibly have the private and exclusive object
of exactly my introspection, it would still be insufficient to make this introspection immediately identified
as being held by me. Indeed, I would be unable to identify an introspected self as myself by the fact that it
is introspectively observed by me, unless I know it is the object of my introspection, i.e., unless I know that
it is in fact me who undertakes this introspection. Importantly, this knowledge cannot itself be based on iden-
tification, on pain of infinite regress (Shoemaker, 1968, pp. 562–563). The point here is that identification of
objects cannot ground consciousness of the self-as-subject: intentional aspects of consciousness cannot ground
its subjective aspects. Therefore, a non-objectifying form of self-consciousness where the self is not an inten-
tional object of consciousness detached from the subject of consciousness is a necessary condition to be con-
scious of oneself as such.

1.7. Pre-reflective self-consciousness as an intrinsic aspect of consciousness

Previous sections argue that consciousness of the self-as-subject grounds consciousness of the self-as-object.
More generally, it is crucial to understand that even though subjectivity and intentionality are fundamentally
different dimensions of experience, they are closely intertwined: subjectivity is an intrinsic, constitutive feature
of intentional consciousness. Without self-consciousness, there would be nothing it is like to undergo a mental
episode, which therefore could not be a phenomenally conscious process (Zahavi, 1999, 2005). This view has
been forcefully defended by numerous phenomenologists, and by a growing number of contemporary analyt-
ical philosophers and cognitive neuroscientists. As a case in point, consider the following quotes:
This self-consciousness we ought to consider not as a new consciousness, but as the only mode of existence
which is possible for a consciousness of something (Sartre, 1943, p. 20).
What would it be like to be conscious of something without being aware of this consciousness? It would
mean having an experience with no awareness whatever of its occurrence. This would be, precisely, a case
of unconscious experience. It appears, then, that being conscious is identical with being self-conscious. Con-
sciousness is self-consciousness (Frankfurt, 1988, p. 162).
If ‘self-consciousness’ is taken to mean ‘consciousness with a sense of self,’ then all human consciousness is
necessarily covered by the term—there is just no other kind of consciousness (Damasio, 1999, p. 19).

However, one might share the view that there is a close link between phenomenal consciousness and self-
consciousness and still disagree about the nature of the link. The specificity of self-consciousness at the pre-
reflective level is that it is not present only when I entertain some kind of reflection or introspection. Rather,
the primary form of self-consciousness is pre-reflective in the sense that it does not involve an additional
588 D. Legrand / Consciousness and Cognition 16 (2007) 583–599

mental state. It is not a quality added secondarily to the experience (Zahavi, 1999, 2005). Therefore, the spec-
ificity of this primary form of self-consciousness cannot be adequately accounted for in terms of higher-order
monitoring as suggested by higher-order theories (Armstrong, 1968; Carruthers, 1996; Lycan, 1987; Rosen-
thal, 1986). Pre-reflective self-consciousness is rather to be understood as an intrinsic feature of experience.
As clarified above, the intentional and the subjective dimensions of experience cannot be reduced to each other
but intentionality and subjectivity are nonetheless intertwined with each other and are both intrinsic dimen-
sions of experience.
Consider Wittgenstein’s examples of the ‘‘I-as-subject’’: ‘‘I see so-and-so’’, ‘‘I try to lift my arm’’, ‘‘I think it
will rain’’, ‘‘I have a toothache’’ (1958, pp. 66–67). The ‘‘I-as-object’’ is rather of the form: ‘‘I have grown 6
inches ‘‘, ‘‘I have a bump on my forehead’’. As these examples illustrate, in the case of an ‘‘I-as-object’’, I am
aware of a specific object ‘‘me’’ and I identify specific properties of it, as its shape and size. Conversely, in the
case of an ‘‘I-as-subject’’, the object of consciousness is not me. Rather, it is, e.g. a visual percept (I see so-and-
so), an attempt to move (I try to lift my arm), a thought (I think it will rain), a pain (I have a toothache). I am
conscious of myself only insofar as I experience these contents of consciousness as experienced by me: I am the
subject of the visual perception, of the trying to move, of the thought and of the pain, and I experience myself
as such at the pre-reflective level.
To put it differently, consciousness of the world and pre-reflective self-consciousness ‘‘are strictly contem-
porary. There is a world for me because I am not unaware of myself; and I am not concealed from myself
because I have a world’’ (Merleau-Ponty, 1962, p. 298). The self-as-subject is neither an external object (for
example, it is not my body that I can observe in the mirror) nor an internal object: when I am conscious
of myself as the subject of an experience, I am not scrutinizing an internal self looking at the external world.
I am simply looking outside at the external world, and within this single act of consciousness I pre-reflectively
experience myself-as-subject.
Interestingly, the framework defended here sheds light on what is probably the most quoted description of
self experience:

‘‘For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular
perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself
at any time without a perception, and never can observe any thing but the perception’’ (Hume, 1739).

This position is most often considered as dismissing the notion of self all together. However, in the current
framework, this description of the experience of oneself interestingly coheres with an anchoring of the self to
experiences of non-self intentional objects, to some ‘‘particular perception or other’’. Self-consciousness pri-
marily corresponds to pre-reflective consciousness of the self-as-subject, which corresponds to the subjective
dimension of experience, intertwined with its intentional dimension. At this pre-reflective level at least, there is
no such thing as a world-less self-experience, as well as there is no such thing as a self-less world-experience.

2. Cognitive neuroscience misses the investigation of pre-reflective consciousness of the self-as-subject

In the first part of the present article, I proposed a shift of focus from consciousness of the self-as-object to
pre-reflective consciousness of the self-as-subject. In what follows, I will complement the phenomenological
perspective developed above with an empirical perspective. In the following sections, I will review the major
approaches in cognitive neuroscience that aim to investigate self-consciousness and will consider whether they
explore pre-reflective consciousness of the self-as-subject.

2.1. The content-approach

The most recurrent approach in the search for the ‘‘neuronal correlates of the self’’ records brain activa-
tions during tasks involving the representation of self-specific contents (e.g. my name, my face, my body,
my action vs. your name, your face, your body, your action).
A recent extensive review of such results concludes that most brain activations reported to be activated dur-
ing self-recognition did in fact lack self-specificity, e.g. they overlapped with cerebral activation involved in the
 D. Legrand / Consciousness and Cognition 16 (2007) 583–599 589

representation of other-related stimuli (Gillihan & Farah, 2005). But it is noteworthy that this review focused
on investigations of representational contents that are recognized as self-related (e.g. the recognition of my
face, the visual observation of my action). In other terms, the reviewed results shared two common features:
(1) they failed to involve self-specific brain activations; and (2) they only involved the self-as-object (as an
object of perception, attention), thereby ignoring the self-as-subject (as a subject of perception, representation,
action).
To clarify how these two features are linked to each other (see also Ruby & Legrand, in press), let me recall
the distinction between the ‘‘self-as-object’’ and the ‘‘self-as-subject’’. The term ‘‘object’’ is not meant to refer
exclusively to physical objects in the external world. Thus, the contrast between the self-as-object and the self-
as-subject does not contrast a physical object and a non-physical subject. The notions of self-as-subject and
self-as-object are neutral terms at the ontological level. The notion of self-as-object simply refers to the self
as an intentional object of consciousness, perception, attention, representation. In the same vein, the notion
of self-as-subject refers to the self as the subject of experience, i.e. the subject who consciously intends objects
(including potentially himself-as-object). For example, when I experience my body, I entertain a body image,
thereby having a double experience of myself characterized by intentional aspects of the self-as-object (‘‘the
body image’’) and subjective aspects of the self-as-subject (‘‘I’’).
The content-approach to the self seeks to record those brain activations that occur whenever a content
related to the self-as-object is processed. However, in such a way, it simply collects a variety of heterogeneous
brain activations correlated with such self-specific contents. This approach fails to identify a core brain acti-
vation that would be common across the processing of different contents attributed to the self. It reduces the
self to a collection of self-related traits characterizing a particular object, thereby failing to investigate the self-
as-subject, i.e., the self that is involved in the conscious processing of any content whatsoever. Because it
focuses on the former and excludes the latter, the content-approach is limited and misleading.
Moreover, the content-approach focuses on those features that allow me to be identified as myself from a
third-person perspective. I can refer to an object by way of a proper name, a demonstrative, or a definite
description, and occasionally this object is myself. When I refer to myself in this way, I am referring to myself
in exactly the same way that I can refer to others, and others can refer to me, the only difference being that I
am the one doing it, thus making the reference a self-reference. Apart from being contingent, this kind of self-
reference is also insufficient to account for self-consciousness, since it can occur without my knowledge of it,
that is, I can refer to myself from the third-person perspective without realizing that I myself am the referent
(as illustrated by E. Mach story recalled above). Because it focuses on this third-personal access to oneself and
excludes a specific consideration of the first-person perspective, the content-approach is of limited value. What
needs to be emphasized is that ‘‘the question of self-awareness is not primarily a question of a specific what,
but of a unique how. It does not concern the specific content of an experience, but its unique mode of given-
ness’’ (Zahavi, 2005, p. 204).

2.2. The baseline-approach

In the current framework, the content-approach is problematic because of its identification of the self with
some kind of self-specific content. It might therefore seem that a better alternative approach should detach the
self from the processing of any type of content. However, this approach is problematic as well.
More in detail, according to a recent suggestion, one crucial neuronal signature of the self could be the
‘‘baseline’’ cerebral activity that increases whenever the subject does not focus on a specific external content
(‘‘rest condition’’), and decreases whenever the subject is engaged in some task. It has been hypothesized that
the ‘‘resting state can be considered as an ultimate state of inspection of the self’’ (Wicker et al., 2003, p. 229),
and that being self-conscious corresponds to a default mode that is ‘‘ongoing unless attenuated during the
performance of an attentionally demanding task’’ (Gusnard, Akbudak, Shulman, & Raichle, 2001, p.
4262). Self-related activity could consequently be characterized by ‘‘’stimulus independent’ (self-related)
thought’’ (Gusnard, 2005, p. 680), also referred to as ‘‘uncontrolled self-referential or introspectively oriented
mental activity’’ (Gusnard et al., 2001, p. 4263).
The baseline-approach may seem related to the present consideration of pre-reflective self-consciousness in
that it conceives of the self at a basic level. However, it differs from it in two crucial ways. First, this approach
590 D. Legrand / Consciousness and Cognition 16 (2007) 583–599

invokes a conception of the self that makes it strongly linked to an introspective perspective that can be either
spontaneous or explicitly triggered by an attentional task. It is argued that, by contrast with tasks where the
subjects direct their attention towards external stimuli, ‘‘the rest state can . . . be considered as a task where
subjects had to direct their attention towards internal processes’’ (Wicker et al., 2003, p. 229). In other terms,
during introspection, the subject takes his own states as an object of conscious attention, thereby focusing on
the self-as-object. On this point, the baseline-approach is in line with the content-approach, the major differ-
ence being that the former recognizes the importance of self-directed cognitive processes during the so-called
‘‘resting state’’. Just like the content-approach, the baseline-approach consequently leaves the very subjectivity
of phenomenal consciousness unexplored.
Second, the baseline-approach operates with a rather peculiar ‘‘resting self’’. Any time it represents the
world, the resources allocated to its experience of itself would decrease. Its experience of itself would thus com-
pete with and contrast with its experience of the world. According to this view, ‘‘self-awareness requires the
ability to escape from ambient stimulus control so that attention may be disengaged from the salient stimulus
field and shifted ’internally’ to the processing of representations about the self, its attributes and experiences’’
(Gusnard, 2005, p. 689). Surely, while I experience objects in the world, I do not need to reflectively experience
myself as a particular object. However, it would be a mistake to conclude from this observation that the self is
not experienced at all when we experience the world, and that self-consciousness corresponds to consciousness
of a self withdrawn from the experienced world.
Rather, and as developed earlier, the phenomenology of conscious experience emphasizes the unity of
world-awareness and self-awareness. When perceiving an object, one is aware of the object as appearing in
a determinate manner to oneself. Furthermore, consciousness cannot be equated with object-consciousness.
It is thus misleading to consider that there is no self-consciousness when the subject does not thematically
experience himself but only the external world. Rather, our experience of the world includes a pre-reflective
consciousness of the self-as-subject. The latter does not compete nor contrast with the former, since the mine-
ness or for-me-ness of experience simply amounts to the first-personal givenness of its objects, i.e. to the first-
personal way of processing its content: Experiences are both and at the same time subjective and intentional.
In short, the baseline-approach fails to recognize that the ‘‘self-as-subject’’ is being-in-the-world. It disre-
gards the fact that self-experience and world-experience are two sides of the same coin. We experience our-
selves pre-reflectively precisely when we consciously experience some intentional object. The
characterization of the resting-self as being somehow in ‘‘competition’’ with the world is phenomenologically
unsound and thus inadequate for the present purpose.

2.3. The perspective-approach

The content-approach mistakenly considers only the self-as-object and the baseline-approach fails to do
justice to the fact that the self-as-subject is an intentional subject (a world-directed subject). To overcome these
problems, a promising approach would be one that sought to clarify self-experience by focusing on the first-
person perspective. Indeed, the latter involves both a subject holding a perspective, and a world on which this
perspective is held. Thus, this approach is relevant to consider at one and the same time the self as a subject
and its involvement into the world.
Such an account has recently been empirically implemented using neuroimagery (David et al., 2006; Ruby
& Decety, 2001, 2003, 2004). In contrast with the content approach, the distinguishing characteristic of the
perspective-approach is that the purpose of the different experimental conditions is not to contrast different
contents but rather to focus on situations where the same stimuli is represented either from the subject’s
own perspective or from a third-person perspective (e.g. the subject is asked either ‘‘what can you see?’’ or
‘‘what can he see?’’).
It is worth noticing, however, that even in the case where the subject adopts the so-called ‘‘third-person
perspective’’, he accomplishes the task from a perspective that remains his own (Gallagher, 2001, note 18).
The experiments involve a contrast between a first-person perspective anchored in the subject’s current posi-
tion and a first-person perspective moved towards the other (third) person’s position. Thus, strictly speaking,
they do not involve a contrast between a first-person perspective and a perspective that would not be first-
personal.
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Moreover, it should be underlined that the perspective-approach has been articulated in recent cogni-
tive neuroscience in a way that is particularly inadequate when it comes to an investigation
of pre-reflective self-consciousness. More specifically, despite its claim that ‘‘the ability to take a
first-person-perspective in contrast to a third-person-perspective is an essential constituent of human self-
consciousness’’ (Newen & Vogeley, 2003, p. 530), this view in fact conceives of the specificity of self-con-
sciousness not in terms of a first-person perspective (1PP) per se, but in terms of a ‘‘self-ascription or
reference to 1PP’’ (Newen & Vogeley, 2003, p. 540). In this view, self-consciousness would imply the
attribution to oneself of a perspective (hence a first-person perspective) and this process is thought to
require ‘‘the ability to refer to our body schema representation in the brain’’ (Vogeley & Fink, 2003,
p. 40). Possessing a first-person perspective would consequently entail having ‘‘a literally spatial model
of one’s own body, upon which the experiential space is centered’’ (Newen & Vogeley, 2003, p. 538;
Vogeley & Fink, 2003, p. 40). This approach consequently conceives of the first-person perspective as
involving the representation of one’s own (bodily) states in relation to some world model: ‘‘The specific
subjective perspectivalness in the first-person-account is realized by the integration of both the subject
and the world model as the two main constituents of the internal representation framework in our ner-
vous system’’ (Newen & Vogeley, 2003, p. 541).
These remarks clarify that this version of the perspective-approach defends a representationalist con-
ception of self-consciousness. Such representationalism relies on the content-approach discussed above
in that it considers that the first-person perspective itself has to be part of the content of the repre-
sentations of what is experienced from this first-person perspective. Therefore, for reasons already men-
tioned above, this account of the first-person perspective contrasts with the view defended here. When
we are pre-reflectively self-conscious, we are aware of the world from our own perspective, we are not
reflectively conscious of our own perspective on the world (Legrand, 2003). What is crucial to better
understand pre-reflective self-consciousness is that even when we are intentionally directed at the world
and not at ourselves, we remain pre-reflectively self-conscious. This point also coheres with Evans’ fol-
lowing description of an immediate awareness of oneself as an information-gainer and experiencing
subject:
It is of the utmost importance to appreciate that in order to understand the self-ascription of experience we
need to postulate no special faculty of inner sense or internal self-scanningldots For what we are aware of,
when we know that we see a tree, is nothing but a tree. In fact, we only have to be aware of some state of the
world in order to be in a position to make an assertion about ourselves (1982, 230–1).
From a phenomenological perspective, it is of the utmost importance to realize that pre-reflective self-
consciousness does not necessarily involve the processing of self-specific contents; it might be nothing but
the first-personal processing of non self-specific contents (Legrand, 2006; Ruby & Legrand, in press). To
consciously perceive a tree is already to be pre-reflectively self-conscious: it involves self-consciousness in
the sense that the tree is perceptually given to me, there is a conscious first-person-perspective, a dimension
of mineness. This self-consciousness is pre-reflective since the intentional object of the experience is the tree
rather than oneself. In its representationalist formulation, the perspective-approach does not consider the pos-
sibility of such self-consciousness without self-representation. Therefore, it fails to do justice to pre-reflective
self-consciousness.

2.4. The core-self

In the current framework, Damasio’s position is worth considering in its specificity since it is both very
close and crucially different from the present proposal. Our respective approaches to subjectivity cohere on
several points.
First, as a counter-position to attempts to eliminate the self, Rudrauf and Damasio (2006) recently claim
that ‘‘the idea of a perceiving or feeling subject interacting with an ‘‘object’’, which partly constitutes the con-
tent of its experience, has some phenomenological validity, and should not consequently be rejected as a
description of what it is like to perceive and feel. As a phenomenon, it constitutes an object of interest for
science and has to be explained, not dismissed’’ (431).
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Second, and more specifically, Damasio points out that ‘‘what we must explain if we are to address the
issue of consciousness is the generation of a sense of self and the generation of the sense that such a self is
involved in the process of perceiving the stimulus’’ (Damasio, 1998, 1880). In this sense, his position dif-
fers markedly from the baseline-approach, since it explicitly conceives of the self as a world-experiencing
subject.
Nevertheless, our respective positions differ on other crucial points and most notably on the conception
of what subjectivity involves specifically. According to Rudrauf & Damasio, ‘‘feeling and the core con-
sciousness are one and the same. (In the following we will often use core consciousness, consciousness,
self, sentience, and subjectivity interchangeably.)’’ (Rudrauf & Damasio, 2006, p. 423). Subjectivity is feel-
ing and ‘‘feeling is related to the sensing of body changes and constraints’’ (429). In other terms, what
grounds subjectivity is the feeling of one’s own (bodily) states. More specifically, even if they argue that
‘‘the biological substrate of feeling is . . . certainly not confined to seemingly passive brain representations
of body states’’ (430), they nonetheless ‘‘maintain that an essential constituent of the phenomenology of
subjectivity is the experience of a large range of body state changes and body state constraints, such as
those occurring during the unfolding of an emotion, and, more generally, pain- and pleasure-related
behaviours’’ (429).
Therefore, even if they avoid the problematic baseline-approach and representationalist perspective-
approach, they nevertheless consider that self-consciousness entails the processing of self-specific information.
Just like the content-approach identifies self-consciousness with an awareness of the self-as-object, Damasio
claims that the ‘‘core-self’’ emerges thanks to the dynamical processing of states of oneself (Damasio,
1999). In fact, Damasio even claims that living creatures such as ourselves ‘‘produce core consciousness when
our organisms construct images of a part of themselves forming images of something else’’ (Damasio, 1998,
1881, emphasis added).
Surely, this approach does not isolate a self-as-object from the rest of the world and one should not deny
the importance of such an attempt to pin down the biological basis of this form of self-consciousness. How-
ever, Damasio’s account suggests that core consciousness relies on a (implicit) body image (self-as-intentional-
object), thereby leaving unexplored the form of self-consciousness that involves a first-personal perspective on
non self-specific contents (self-as-subject): his investigation misses the specifically pre-reflective self-as-subject
that I am focusing on here.

3. Empirical relevance of the proposed approach

The preceding set of remarks on the major neuroscientific approaches to self-consciousness leads to the fol-
lowing conclusion: their common point is that they conceive of the processing of self-specific contents as a
necessary ingredient of self-consciousness. I have underlined above several reasons why this position is prob-
lematic, the main reason being that it focuses on consciousness of the self-as-object thereby failing to account
for the primary form of self-as-subject experienced at a pre-reflective level.
At this point, sceptics might argue that the present approach faces an insurmountable difficulty in that the
very notion of self and self-consciousness at a pre-reflective level does not seem to be a scientifically address-
able question. However, in the next sections, I propose that the consideration of pre-reflective self-conscious-
ness in the empirical domain requires only a change of perspective on already available methodologies, in
order to ask phenomenologically sound questions, and a change of perspective on already available results,
in order to propose phenomenologically sound interpretations.
In what follows, I first propose that some classical experiments developed in the standard framework are
not only limited in scope but also importantly misleading. Specifically, they cannot be fully understood with-
out a consideration of subjectivity at the pre-reflective level: self-recognition (that is the central component of
self-consciousness according to standard approaches) is grounded on pre-reflective self-consciousness. These
considerations will underline the relevance of a fine-grained phenomenological approach to the empirical
investigation of self-consciousness, by clarifying their explanandum (what needs to be explained). Moreover,
I will also consider the relevance of the present approach at the level of the explanans (what intends to provide
an explanation) by showing that the shift away from a narrow focus on the self-as-object can be interestingly
implemented at the sub-personal level.
 D. Legrand / Consciousness and Cognition 16 (2007) 583–599 593

3.1. Self-recognition implies pre-reflective self-consciousness

Following standard empirical approaches, one way to investigate the self is to consider the process of
self-recognition, e.g., the ability to attribute one’s action to oneself. In a classical setup, the subject is asked
to perform a simple action (e.g. lift his finger). She then receives an indirect visual feedback from a computer
monitor or a set of mirrors. This visual feedback can be biased so that in some condition, the experimenter’s
action is presented in place of the subject’s action, or the subject’s own action is presented with a temporal or
angular distortion. The subject is then asked to report if the action seen is her own or not, and as a result of the
manipulation she either attributes the seen action to herself or to the experimenter (e.g. Daprati et al., 1997;
Farrer et al., 2003). These experiments ask the subject to focus her attention on an action and attribute it to an
agent (herself or somebody else). In other terms, this paradigm explicitly conceives of self-consciousness in
terms of identification and attribution to oneself of self-specific contents (‘‘This is my action’’).
In such experimental conditions (Daprati et al., 1997), normal subjects were able to correctly attribute the
action to its proper agent regardless of whether they were observing their own hand or the experimenter’s
hand as long as the two were performing different actions. However, they made erroneous attribution of
the experimenter’s hand to themselves in 30% of the cases when the actions performed by the two hands were
similar. In order to explain these results, Daprati et al., 1997 differentiate between the processes that are
involved in generating an action and the processes that are involved in generating a judgement about the
action; or to put it differently, they distinguished simply being an agent from reporting that one is an agent.
In accordance with this distinction, they then argued that consciousness of one’s own actions requires the abil-
ity to consciously report being the agent of the action, that is, it involves processes necessary for the generation
of a perceptual judgement regarding the action, over and above the processes necessary for simply generating
the action itself.
To repeat in this particular case what has been said generally above, one important problem of these studies
is that their focus on observational consciousness of the self-as-object (object of identification and attribution)
does not allow the investigation of the primary form of self-consciousness (consciousness of oneself-as-subject,
agent). Now, to fully appreciate the importance of this remark, it must be clarified that even if one restricts the
scope to consciousness of the self-as-object, the content approach cannot avoid the consideration of the notion
of pre-reflective self-consciousness. To clarify this point, consider the following question: How can the subject
achieve the task? What is self-specific in this task which allows the subject to accurately answer the question ‘‘is
this my action?’’
First, the subject cannot succeed in this task by simply relying on the perceptual appearance of the hand she
observes since the distinguishing visual features of the hand have been empirically neutralized: For example,
the subject and the experimenter typically wear identical gloves so that visual cues cannot be used for self-rec-
ognition. Moreover, the task cannot be solved on the sole basis of proprioceptive information either, since the
subject—who is acting in either condition—will receive the same proprioceptive information regardless of
whether she attributes the action to herself or not.
Second, it is important to underline that the appeal to visual observation and cognitive processes of
identification and attribution is insufficient too. These processes are not self-specific since the subject
employs the very same kind of processes both for self-attribution as for other-attribution, i.e. regardless
of whether she attributes a visually observed action to herself or to somebody else. At this level, there
is no fundamental difference between seeing one’s own hand and attributing it to an agent and seeing
the hand of another and attributing it to an agent, so the crucial difference between self-attribution
and other-attribution cannot be based on processes of observation and attribution. Coherently with this
observation, the neuronal resources involved in the attribution of features to oneself would overlap with
those activated during attribution of features to others, and would also be shared with general evaluative
cognitive processing. This suggests that such high-level cognitive processes are not specifically involved in
self-related tasks (Ruby & Legrand, in press).
In short, the crucial difference between self-attribution and other-attribution cannot be explained simply
with reference to the available perceptual information nor to any judgements based on it. Therefore, an
account of how we attribute action to ourselves cannot explain self-recognition if it reduces self-consciousness
to a judgement on the self-as-(perceptual)-object.
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What such an account fails to realize is that one’s action and other’s action do not primarily differ at the
level of perceptual judgement but at the pre-reflective level, where we are pre-reflectively conscious of ourselves
as agents when acting, independently of any judgement about the action. At this level, the subject is simply
conscious of herself as acting (self-as-subject). According to the view developed above, this corresponds to
a pre-reflective consciousness of the self-as-subject that does not rely on the ‘‘perceptual judgement’’ ground-
ing consciousness of the self-as-object (Hanna & Thompson, 2003; Legrand, 2006; Thompson, 2005).
Importantly, it only makes sense to ask the subject whether she recognizes her action as her own if it is
presupposed that she already experiences herself as acting. If that is correct, it implies that self-recognition
presupposes pre-reflective consciousness of the self-as-subject. Therefore, standard approaches do not only
have too narrow a focus on the self-as-object, thereby failing to account for the self-as-subject. More impor-
tantly the point here is that even accounts of reflective self-recognition need to consider pre-reflective self-con-
sciousness since the former is grounded on the latter.

3.2. From representations of the self-as-object to self-related processes

So far, I have considered the personal level of description and illustrated the relevance of a fine-grained
phenomenological account of the explanandum. In what follows, I will consider to what extent these consid-
erations are also applicable to the explanans, at the sub-personal level.
Classical empirical investigations describe mental states (e.g. reflective consciousness of the self) as involv-
ing mental representations (e.g. representation of the self-as-object) and correlates the latter with neuronal
representations, themselves corresponding to neuronal activations (e.g. the prefrontal cortex). This methodol-
ogy is obviously unsuited for investigating pre-reflective consciousness of the self-as-subject since the latter
does not involve any representation of the self-as-object. However, there are other ways to approach the
pre-reflective dimension from a neuroscientific perspective.
To clarify this point, let me recall the distinction between re-afferent and ex-afferent signals (Ruby &
Legrand, in press). The latter amounts to signals coming from the external world while the former amounts
to signals issuing from the perceiving subject’s own action. The relevant point for the issue at stake here is that
a given perceptual signal will be processed differently depending on whether it is re-afferent or
ex-afferent, i.e., whether or not it is directly related to oneself as a perceiving agent/active perceiver. The inter-
esting fact is that there is no way to define what a re-afference is (by contrast with an ex-afference) without
mentioning the fact that it is related to the perceiving subject’s own action. In other words, there is nothing
like a non self-related re-afference.
At the sub-personal level, the notion of self-relatedness captures the fact that one’s perception is related to
one’s own (hence the use of the term ‘‘self’’) action. In what follows, I will use the notion of ‘‘self-relatedness’’
only to refer to processes at the sub-personal level of description. Moreover, it should be clear that the mere
use of the term ‘‘self’’ at this level does not suffice to conclude that pre-reflective self-consciousness emerges
from the processing of afferent signals in a self-related manner. Rather, what I want to underline is that
the present approach proves to have repercussions both at the personal level (allowing a shift of focus from
consciousness of the self-as-object to consciousness of the self-as-subject) and at the sub-personal level (allow-
ing a shift of focus from representation of the self-as-object to self-related processes that are not self-
representational).
To see the neuroscientific relevance of the notion of self-related processes, let me now return to the exper-
iments on self-attribution of actions described above. When I perceive my own action and when the feedback
is not biased, the afferent information is not a mere ex-afference but a re-afference, i.e., it is a consequence of
the execution of my action. By contrast, when I perceive another’s action or when the feedback from my own
action is biased, the afferent information is not re-afferent but ex-afferent. The proposal here is that the subject
accurately perceives his hand as his own if he can accurately differentiate between self-induced (re-afferent) and
externally-induced (ex-afferent) perceptual information, i.e. if the feedback is accurately processed as a percep-
tual consequence of his action.
If this hypothesis is correct, an experimental manipulation of the afferent feedback that disrupted the link
between perception and action thereby transforming a re-afference into an ex-afference would also impede the
subject’s recognition of her action as her own. This is exactly what the experiments on the self-attribution of
 D. Legrand / Consciousness and Cognition 16 (2007) 583–599 595

actions show. When the experimenter wants to influence the accuracy of the subject’s reply to the experimental
question (‘‘is this your action; are you observing your own action?’’) he in fact does not manipulate self-spe-
cific content. Rather, he specifically manipulates the relation between the subject’s action and her perception
(e.g. he introduces a temporal or spatial bias between the action and the perceptual feedback). When the per-
ceptual feedback is not biased, it is processed as a re-afference and leads to self-recognition. When the percep-
tual feedback is biased, it is processed as an ex-afference and leads to the attribution of the observed action to
another agent. In other words, the subject’s answer to the experimental task specifically depends on the self-
relatedness of his perceptual experience.
This consideration implies that the classical experiments on the self-attribution of action are importantly
ambiguous: they interpret their own results as related to the representation and self-ascription of self-specific
features, thereby confining their investigation to the framework of consciousness of the self-as-object. How-
ever, they in fact manipulate non self-representational processes, specifically the self-relatedness of one’s percep-
tion and action. Of course, this ambiguity is problematic in that it precludes any clear-cut interpretation of the
results. But interestingly, it also coheres with the hypothesis that in these experiments, what distinguishes self
from others (one’s action from others’) is not only a self-specific content, but also and crucially a self-related
way of processing this content: one’s own actions only, and not others’ actions, specifically generate re-afferent
information. Therefore, I propose that the ability to report that an observed action is one’s own is grounded
on the ability to process the content of one’s perception in a self-related manner (in this particular case, related
to one’s own action). This process grounds self-recognition on a process that does not involve representation
of the self-as-object but rather involves self-related processing of contents, while these contents are not intrin-
sically self-specific.
The present approach proposes to complement the consideration of the self-as-object with a consideration
of the self-as-subject. At the personal level, it allows me to describe the specific state of pre-reflective self-con-
sciousness. At the sub-personal level, it allows me to consider self-related processes that are non self-represen-
tational. So far, this cannot justify any reduction of one level of investigation to the other. However, note that
from the two previous sections, it appears that these two levels are correlated with each other: at the personal
level, self-recognition is grounded on the pre-reflective experience of the self-as-subject, which is correlated
with non self-representational self-related processing at the sub-personal level.
This conception of pre-reflective self-consciousness (at the personal level) and of self-related processes (at
the sub-personal level) does not only allow the reinterpretation of these particular experiments on explicit self-
recognition. Most importantly, two additional points needs to be underlined, that I will develop in the next
sections. First, implicit self-recognition (modulating the subject’s behaviour without explicit reports) corre-
sponds to cases of recognition of the self-as-object just like explicit (verbally reported) self-recognition. As
such, it differs from but is grounded on pre-reflective self-consciousness and self-related processes. Second,
pre-reflective self-consciousness and non self-representational self-related processes are not only involved in
explicit and implicit self-recognition but are also found at a more primary level that does not rely on any
self-recognition (i.e. on any form of consciousness of the self-as-object).

3.3. The pre-reflective self in developmental psychology

The relevance of the present approach is not restricted to cognitive neurosciences. Due to space constraints,
I will only take one example in another field, namely developmental psychology, and show that the same
approach holds. This will allow the consideration of more basic forms of self-consciousness.
All healthy infants have an innate rooting response. When the corner of the infant’s mouth is touched, the
infant turns her head and opens her mouth toward the stimulation. Rochat and Hespos (1997) have observed
this response in two contrasted conditions: a self-stimulation (a ‘‘double touch’’ where hand and cheek touch
each other) and an external stimulation (a ‘‘simple touch’’ where only the cheek is touched by an external stim-
ulus). Newborns (24-h-old) showed the rooting reflex three times more frequently in response to an external
stimulation than in response to a self-stimulation. For the authors, ‘‘such discrimination [between self-stimu-
lation and external stimulation] is fundamentally self-specifying as it involves proprioception, a perceptual
system that conveys first and foremost information about the body and its situation in the environment. Pro-
prioception in conjunction with other perceptual systems, is indeed the modality of the self ‘par excellence’’’
596 D. Legrand / Consciousness and Cognition 16 (2007) 583–599

(Rochat & Striano, 2000, pp. 516–7). Their hypothesis is that the sense of self would rely on a multi-sensorial
integration characterized by an invariant correlation of exteroceptive information (touch in the case reported
above) with proprioception (due to the touching movement performed only in the case of the double-touch).
This invariant multi-sensory correlation is specific to the self, and would thus be self-specifying. Infants would
be able to pick up these intermodal invariants that specify self- versus nonself-stimulation, and thereby possess
the ability to develop an early sense of self (Rochat, 2001, pp. 40–41).
The problem with this account is that this ‘‘multi-sensory’’ hypothesis leaves open the following questions:
how is the redundancy of sensory information recognized as such, and how is it recognized as self-specific?
Recording and explaining that the child behaviourally reacts in distinctive ways to simple-touch and dou-
ble-touch does not suffice to account for the child’s experience of the latter as self-related. One reason why
this question remains unexplored is that this account (among others, like Stern’s and Neisser’s) conceives
of ‘‘the embodied self as an object, and of embodied self-experience as a kind of object-awareness’’ (Zahavi,
2005, p. 204). Indeed, their interpretation focuses exclusively on the determination of self-specific contents,
which they characterize by the redundancy of sensory information about the same ‘‘thing’’. ‘‘In contrast, phe-
nomenology has insisted that first-personal experience presents me with an immediate, nonobjectifying and
nonobservational access to myself’’ (Zahavi, 2005, p. 204).
While Rochat differentiates the experience of self from the both the experience of objects and of other peo-
ple (Rochat, 2001, p. 27), he nonetheless describes the body as an object of exploration and self-perception as a
question of differentiating one’s own body from other objects in the environment (Rochat, 2001, pp. 34, 37).
This reduces self-experience to the ability to discriminate correctly between two different objects. However,
this mistakenly equates self-experience with object-identification and to recapitulate a point made earlier, it
is importantly mistaken to identify pre-reflective consciousness of the self-as-subject with some kind of periph-
eral, marginal or merely implicit object-consciousness.
Now considering the sub-personal level of investigation, can the notion of self-related processes described
above allow for a better understanding of the mechanisms involved in recognizing certain features as one’s
own? Let me propose a positive answer to this question by considering the following experimental result:
Rochat (1998) showed that 3-month-old infants are able to differentiate between their own moving legs and
the moving legs of other infants (both were presented to them on a TV monitor), even when the legs look alike.
Rochat explained this result by proposing that only the perception of one’s own legs involves a visuo-propri-
oceptive coherence. But again the question remains: what does allow the infant to experience this coherence as
self-specific?
In line with the hypothesis presented above, I propose that the reason why vision and proprioception are
integrated when one perceives one’s leg moving, and not when one perceives another’s leg moving, is because
the visual and the proprioceptive contents are both generated by the subject’s own action only in the case of
self-perception: in these experiments, what makes some contents (rather than others) recognized as self-related
is that they are self-generated rather than externally-generated. In fact, the crucial difference between perceiv-
ing oneself and perceiving others is not purely sensory but sensory-motor: what is self-specific is not a multi-
sensory redundancy but a sensori-motor coherence.
In other terms, an afferent information processed as re-afferent rather than as ex-afferent does not involve
representation of the self at the sub-personal level but it is nonetheless processed in a self-related manner, and
it is correlated with self-recognition, i.e. with a representation of oneself as such, at the personal level. I con-
sequently suggest that the empirical data reported here support the view that reflexive self-recognition relies on
pre-reflective self-consciousness and hypothesize that this is matched at the sub-personal level by self-related
processes that do not involve the representation of self-specific contents.

3.4. Experiencing the world in a self-related manner

The preceding sections proposed that the representation of the self-as-object is not sufficient to determine
self-specificity: pre-reflective self-consciousness and self-related processes are necessary at the personal and
sub-personal level, respectively. Now I would like to defend that the representation of the self-as-object is
not necessary either: pre-reflective self-consciousness and self-related processes are involved in situations
where no representation of the self-as-object occurs.
 D. Legrand / Consciousness and Cognition 16 (2007) 583–599 597

The hypothesis proposed above is that one way a perceptual content becomes self-specific and allows self-
recognition is thanks to self-related processes that link the content of one’s perception to one’s action. There is
no reason to think that such processes are confined to features characterizing oneself (one’s action, one’s legs,
one’s face. . .). Rather, the perception of non-self stimuli can be processed in a self-related manner as well.
For example, it has been shown (Rochat & Striano, 1999) that two-month-old children react differently
depending on the perceptual consequence of their actions. In an experiment, children would suck on a dummy
pacifier and each time they did so, they would hear different sounds. Depending on the experimental condi-
tions, the auditory feedbacks were either analogue or non-analogue to the sucking. Results show that children
modulate their sucking differently in the analogue condition, i.e., when the perceptual content was self-initi-
ated. In the same vein, it has been shown with adult subjects that the temporal structure of one’s auditory
perception depends on whether the sounds are produced as an outcome of one’s intentional action or not
(Haggard, Clark, & Kalogeras, 2002). This effect is called ‘‘intentional binding’’ since it does not occur with
passive movement but only with intentional actions, and since it ‘‘binds’’ together in time the intentional
action and its sensory outcome.
At the sub-personal level, these results imply that perceptual contents are processed differently when the
subject is involved in their formation. However, no representation of the self-as-object is involved. In par-
allel, at the personal level, the fact that the experience of the perceptual content is modulated when it is
influenced by one’s own action suggests the presence of a minimal form of self-consciousness, namely a
pre-reflective sense of oneself as an active perceiver. This form of self-consciousness is non-objectifying,
since the represented content is not self-specific: here the object of attention is the sound rather than
the subject herself. The framework developed here thus allows for an investigation of one of the crucial
features of the pre-reflective self: without taking herself as an intentional object, the subject remains self-
conscious when intentionally experiencing the world: As defended above, subjectivity and intentionality are
closely intertwined.
These considerations open an interesting question: What allows the distinction between self-related process-
ing correlated to self-recognition (of one’s body, one’s action, etc.), on the one hand, and self-related process-
ing correlated to the first-personal experience of non-self stimuli (e.g. sounds), on the other? One possibility,
coherent with the empirical results recalled above, is that, at this level, proprioception would play a crucial
role. If this hypothesis were correct, it would imply that proprioception, by itself or in conjunction with other
sensory modalities, might not be sufficient but might nonetheless be necessary to allow self-recognition.

4. Conclusion

Neither correlation nor isomorphism between the personal and the sub-personal levels allow any easy
reduction or even explanation of the former by the latter. Nevertheless, the present investigation illustrates
the experiential and empirical relevance of the phenomenological approach (see also Gallagher & Sorensen,
2005). The notion of pre-reflective self-consciousness seems crucial when it comes to characterizing the expe-
riential states that ground the very possibility of self-recognition. Moreover, at the sub-personal level this
approach leads to draw a fundamental distinction between representations of the self-as-object and non
self-representational self-related processes. This approach intends to provide a framework that allows the
development of a more complete theory of self-consciousness that anchors subjectivity to intentionality and
that is applicable both at the personal and the sub-personal levels, thereby meeting both with phenomenolog-
ical and naturalistic constraints.

Acknowledgments

I express my gratitude to Dan Zahavi for his patient assistance and his critical appraisal. Thanks to Samantha
Pérez for her linguistic help.

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