I understand reflexive consciousness as the capacity to identify thoughts and intentions as belonging to a temporally continuous, singular identity, and to be able to have thoughts and realise intentions with respect to that identity, including its thoughts and intentions. In Ontological-Transcendental Defence of Metanormative Realism I argued that direct (monadic) self-reference is logically impossible and presented a model of conscious agency based on indirect, socially mediated self-reference, involving the synthesis of individual difference and the common identity of a social kind. In this article I explain reflexive consciousness with the focus on schematic representation.

An individual cannot relate to self all by itself. We exist as conscious selves vis-a-vis other beings of the same kind, whose recognition as conscious beings hinges on commonality and reciprocity of meaning. An individual a is reflexively conscious only if a relates to itself by relating to a different individual b that relates to itself by relating to a, in terms of properties f common to them both, and a is not identical to b. In the above diagram it is assumed that reflexive relations between a and b are perfectly consistent (a identifies with f in b as much as f in a, and b identifies with f in a as much as f in b), which implies that a and b are fully integrated selves, with the maximum degree of existence as conscious agents. Any inconsistency in identifying with f would create a reflexive inconsistency in the self, a meaningless void or a disassociation in self-identity, therefore incomplete self-reference, resulting in diminished reflexive consciousness. The present model is limited to only two individuals, but any number of individuals can maintain reflexive relations by means of a common part. The range of meaning held in common includes common reality, and the common reality includes common embodiment (f⊃R⊃n).

Informally, a conscious individual could not recognise another individual as conscious without sensing their point of contact (reality) and consciousness as something held in common and serving as a common reference; without the common sense there could be no correspondence of ‘the same’ sense, therefore no socially mediated reflexive relating and no consciousness. If individual consciousness is conditional on the consciousness of others, it cannot be fully encoded in the individual body but is determined simultaneously by internal and external factors. On this view, we sense others as instances of ourselves, biologically autonomous, with a different point of view and different experiences, but sharing in the same process of consciousness.

It follows from the previous inference that it is impossible to create consciousness by creating a brain outside of the process of embodied evolution and socialisation. Consciousness is coextensive with meaning, and meaning cannot be discovered or given because it is not something beyond consciousness but within it, something that is socially generated via countless mutations of prior meanings, and as such requires common conceptual continuity from the beginning of consciousness. Consciousness co-evolves its own, common reality and embodiment.*

The scope of common meaning can vary between communication-communities, ranging from the basic survival/sexual co-dependency to complex systemic abstractions. In the hierarchy of reflexive orders, common embodiment is a grounding condition for the more abstract orders of commonality. In the case of non-reflexive awareness of other individuals of the same kind, f and R are coextensive with the awareness of common embodiment.

The remaining challenge may be to explain how non-reflexive awareness could evolve into reflexive consciousness. On the other hand, since consciousness encompasses every theory and concept, including the concept of time, the theory of consciousness does not need to accommodate a non-conscious source or beginning, although it does require a theory of time that is consistent with the theory of consciousness. For a broader discussion of this topic please see my book Moral Ontology: a thesis on the interdependence of sense, integrity and agency.

ADDENDUM:

The reflexive identification A is A is possible only in relation to not-A, to the background and context that delimits every attribute of A, therefore everything else is differentially implicated in the identity of A. This is the negative condition of identification that incorporates the whole world. The positive condition of identifying A as an instance of something is the category of A’s, already differentiated from other categories, which permits attribution to that category and answers the question <what is A?> in terms of what it is alike but not identical to. A is A also means that nothing else can be identical to this A, or it would be the same A, this A, therefore not something ‘else’.

(*) Since consciousness is socially evolved together with its reality, their co-evolution would allow for the social connection to be encoded and physically manifested in that reality. The only known mechanisms that could satisfy this hypothesis are: entanglement on the subatomic level or coherent biophotonic emanation of all conscious bodies, directly sensing one another as the same consciousness.

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