I know this is anecdotal, but I think it is a useful data point in thinking about this. Self-awareness and subjective experience can come apart based on my own personal experience with psychedelics as I have experienced it happen to me in a state of a deep trip. I remember a state of mind with no sense of self, no awareness or knowledge that I “am” someone or something, or that I ever was or will be, but still experiencing existence itself, devoid of all context.
This thought me there is a strict conceptual difference between being aware of yourself, environment and others, and the more basic concept of possibility for “receiving input or processing information” to have a signature of first person experience itself, which I like to define as that thing that rock definitely doesn’t have.
Another way of putting could be:
Level 1: Awareness of experience (it feels like something to exist)
Level 2: Awareness of self as an agent in an environment
I know this is anecdotal, but I think it is a useful data point in thinking about this. Self-awareness and subjective experience can come apart based on my own personal experience with psychedelics as I have experienced it happen to me in a state of a deep trip. I remember a state of mind with no sense of self, no awareness or knowledge that I “am” someone or something, or that I ever was or will be, but still experiencing existence itself, devoid of all context.
This thought me there is a strict conceptual difference between being aware of yourself, environment and others, and the more basic concept of possibility for “receiving input or processing information” to have a signature of first person experience itself, which I like to define as that thing that rock definitely doesn’t have.
Another way of putting could be:
Level 1: Awareness of experience (it feels like something to exist)
Level 2: Awareness of self as an agent in an environment