Reflexivity

Self-illumination/reflexivity

  • Every conscious experience is directly revealed to itself.
  • “In seeing blue, you experience seeing
  • Problems: Reflexivity as a concept is weird though
    • “A knife cannot cut itself, an acrobat can’t stand on their own shoulders.”
    • “How can one and the same awareness be both of an object/content and of itself?”

Reflectivity

Other-illumination/reflectivity

  • For a state to be a conscious state is for it to be the object of a higher-order mental state (an inner perception or inner thought).
  • “I see blue, I’m aware that I see blue”
  • Problems: how could two states that are nonconscious in themselves come together and make one of them conscious?
    • Curious how this applies to emergent behaviour
    • By having a higher layer that enables the reference of a lower layer, this is essentially a two-way recursive relation that opens the door to much more composable and perhaps complex behaviour

Nagarjana’s Argument

  • Infinite regress, you cannot use a fact to establish itself
  • Summarized in terms of reflectivity Opponents Argument
  • Can use recursive definition, a fact can have a ‘base case’