In Different Times and Places

Abstract

The idea of pre-intentional self-awareness is extended to incorporate awareness of one’s mental states or acts and of the “lived” body. The temporal parameters of pre-intentional self-awareness are also extended by way of a detailed consideration of episodic memory in animals. Whether animals are capable of such memory is controversial, due to our inability to determine whether they represent past episodes in the right way. Even if animals cannot episodically remember, they still have pre-intentional awareness of themselves through time. This pre-intentional awareness of the self through time consists in a sense of familiarity, which is explained in parallel with perception: in terms of a generated series of anticipations in which the person who remembers is implicated.