The Phenomenology of Self-Conscious Perception

When I perceive, I not only experience the scene before me, but also my seeing of that scene. I perceive self-consciously. Classical phenomenologists understand self-consciousness as intrinsic to the experience, not the result of a separate, self-monitoring state. They also suppose that self-consciousness is different in kind from the consciousness I have of the scene before me. The latter is an intentional act, the former isn’t. This conception, which I take as my starting point, faces two difficulties. First, perception primarily reveals the world, not itself. It is ‘transparent.’ If that’s so, it is unclear what exactly I might be aware of in being aware of my experience. Second, granting that no separate mental state is needed to render perception self-conscious and that its self-consciousness isn’t a form of self-observation, it remains mysterious what does make perception self-conscious. I critically review extant proposals and present an alternative, inspired by both classical phenomenology and recent work. Both difficulties can be addressed, I argue, by appreciating the normative character of perception, that part of perceiving is experiencing how well I am perceiving in bringing discriminative and recognitional capacities to bear on the world.