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1. Drawing on Gibson’s ecological approach, and the notion thatthe very flow pattern of optical information provides us with anawareness of our own movement and posture and that all perceptionconsequently involves a kind of self-sensitivity, a co-awareness ofself and of environment (Gibson 1966, 111–126), Bermúdez(1998, 128) writes: “If the pick-up of self-specifyinginformation starts at the very beginning of life, then there ceases tobe so much of a problem about how entry into the first-personperspective is achieved. In a very important sense, infants are borninto the first-person perspective. It is not something that they haveto acquireab initio.” See Gallagher (2005) for theconnection between the developmental research and phenomenologicalconceptions of self-consciousness. For a more extensive discussion ofthe similarities between the non-conceptual self-awareness and thephenomenological view, see Zahavi (2002).

2. For some interesting attempts at articulating the differences andsimilarities between the standard higher-order accounts,Brentano’s two-object account, and the non-objectifying approachof the phenomenologists, cf. Kriegel and Williford (2006), and Kriegel(2006).

3. Anna Giustina, has recently defended what she calls an acquaintancetheory of phenomenal consciousness. On this proposal, what makes amental state conscious is the fact that its subject is acquainted withthe mental state in question, where acquaintance is understood as ametaphysically and epistemically direct relation (2022, 2). Giustinaalso speaks of how acquaintanceilluminates the first-orderrepresentation and how the acquaintance relation is unique and only tobe found in conscious minds (2022, 22, 26). We would read suchstatements as testifying to an increasing rapprochement with thephenomenological account.

4. Given the complexity involved in discussions of the self andself-consciousness, given that available concepts of self targetbodily, narrative and reflective components, and given that therelevant neuroscience reflects multiple self-related phenomena(involving both the Default Mode Network and the Salience Network)– a complexity which is acknowledged by those who argue againstthe universalist claim on the basis of alleged ego dissolution ininstances of hallucinogenic or meditation experiences (e.g., Letheby& Gerrans, 2017) – it is not always clear that minimalprereflective self-consciousness is absent. Indeed, some of therelevant empirical studies of “absent” self-consciousnessdepend on subjective reports of non-dual experiences (e.g.,Dor-Ziderman et al. 2013; Nave et al. 2021), and it is difficult tounderstand how such reports would be possible without a form of“witness” consciousness or “reflexiveawareness” (Dunne 2011, 74)that could well be interpreted as aform of prereflective self-consciousness. See Zahavi (2014, 2018,2019) for further discussion. For discussions of these issues in thecontext of Buddhist meditation practices, see Gallagher 2023, Chapter9; Gallagher et al. 2023).

5. Husserl’s analysis is not inconsistent with the concepts ofecological perception and sensory-motor “affordances” asthey are later worked out in Gibsonian psychology. My actual andpotential bodily movements specify the possible uses for things that Iencounter in the world. This kind of analysis is further developed inMerleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of perception and embodiment. Thisview on perception also shares some obvious similarities with therecent so-called enactive approach to perception. CompareHusserl’s views with the following programmatic statement byAlva Noë: “Perception is not something that happens to us,or in us. It is something we do. Think of a blind person tap-tappinghis or her way around a cluttered space, perceiving that space bytouch, not all at once, but through time, by skilful probing andmovement. This is, or at least ought to be, our paradigm of whatperceiving is. The world makes itself available to the perceiverthrough physical movement and interaction. … [A]ll perceptionis touch-like in this way: Perceptual experience acquires contentthanks to our possession of bodily skills. What we perceive isdetermined by what we do (or what we know how to do); it is determinedby what we are ready to do. In ways I try to make precise, we enactour perceptual experience; we act it out” (Noë 2004,1).

6. Some analyses of schizophrenic experiences of thought insertion ordelusions of control claim that the pre-reflective sense of agency isdisrupted in such symptoms (Frith 1992; Gallagher 2004). This has ledto an ongoing debate about whether it is the sense of agency or thesense of ownership that is missing in these symptoms, or whether thedisruption occurs on a reflective level, or whether we should think ofsuch delusions as involving extra experiences of alienation (e.g.,Bortolotti & Broome 2009; Billon 2013; Billon & Kriegel2014).