Self-awareness is the explicit understanding that one exists. In common usage existence is the world of which we are aware through our senses but in Philosophy the word has a more specialized meaning and is often contrasted with Furthermore, it includes the concept that one exists as an individual, separate from other people, with private thoughts. Thought and thinking are mental forms and Processes respectively ("thought" is both It may also include the understanding that other people are similarly self-aware.

Self-consciousness is credited only with the development of identity (see the self). Self-consciousness is an acute sense of self-awareness It is a preoccupation with oneself as opposed to the philosophical state of Self-awareness, which is the awareness Self-concept or self identity refers to the global understanding a sentient being has of him or herself The self is a key construct in several schools of Psychology, broadly referring to the cognitive representation of one's identity In an epistemological sense, self-consciousness is a personal understanding of the very core of one's own identity. Epistemology (from Greek επιστήμη - episteme, "knowledge" + λόγος, " Logos " or theory of knowledge It is during periods of self-consciousness that people come the closest to knowing themselves objectively. Jean Paul Sartre describes self-consciousness as being "non-positional", in that it is not from any location in particular. Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre (21 June 1905 &ndash 15 April 1980 commonly known simply as Jean-Paul Sartre (ʒɑ̃ pol saʁtʁə was a French

Self-consciousness plays a large role in behavior, as it is common to act differently when people "lose one's self in a crowd". Behavior or behaviour (see spelling differences) refers to the actions or Reactions of an object or Organism, usually Flow is the mental state of operation in which the person is fully immersed in what he or she is doing by a feeling of energized focus full involvement and success in the process of the It is the basis for human traits, such as accountability and conscientiousness. Accountability is a concept in Ethics with several meanings It is often used synonymously with such concepts as answerability enforcement responsibility, blameworthiness Conscientiousness is the Trait of being painstaking and Careful, or the quality of acting according to the dictates of one's Conscience. Self-consciousness affects people in varying degrees, as some people self-monitor (or scrutinize) themselves more than others. Different cultures vary in the importance they place on self-consciousness.

The basis of personal identity

John Locke's chapter XXVII "On Identity and Diversity" in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689) has been said to be one of the first modern conceptualizations of consciousness as the repeated self-identification of oneself, through which moral responsibility could be attributed to the subject - and therefore punishment and guiltiness justified, as would critics such as Nietzsche point out. John Locke (29 August 1632 – 28 October 1704 was an English Philosopher. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding is one of John Locke 's two most famous works the other being his Second Treatise on Civil Government Self is broadly defined as the essential qualities that make a person distinct from all others Moral responsibility can refer to two different but related things Not to be confused with the subiectum or Hypokeimenon in Aristotelianism ---- Guilt is the Fact, state or Verdict (by a Court or other Tribunal) of an Offence, Crime, Violation Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (October 15 1844 August 25 1900 ( was a nineteenth-century German philosopher and classical philologist John Locke does not use the terms self-awareness or self-consciousness though. Self-consciousness is an acute sense of self-awareness It is a preoccupation with oneself as opposed to the philosophical state of Self-awareness, which is the awareness

According to Locke, personal identity (the self) "depends on consciousness, not on substance" nor on the retardedness of itsoul. Substance theory, or substance attribute theory, is an ontological theory about objecthood, positing that a substance is distinct from its The soul, according to many religious and philosophical beliefs is the self-awareness, or Consciousness, unique to a particular living We are the same person to the extent that we are conscious of our past and future thoughts and actions in the same way as we are conscious of our present thoughts and actions. If consciousness is this "thought" which doubles all thoughts, then personal identity is only founded on the repeated act of consciousness: "This may show us wherein personal identity consists: not in the identity of substance, but. . . in the identity of consciousness". For example, one may claim to be a reincarnation of Plato, therefore having the same soul. However, one would be the same person as Plato only if one had the same consciousness of Plato's thoughts and actions that he himself did. The term person is used in Common sense to mean an individual Human being. Therefore, self-identity is not based on the soul. One soul may have various personalities. Self-identity is not founded either on the body or the substance, argues Locke, as the substance may change while the person remains the same: "animal identity is preserved in identity of life, and not of substance", as the body of the animal grows and changes during its life. Take for example a prince's soul which enters the body of a cobbler: to all exterior eyes, the cobbler would remain a cobbler. But to the prince himself, the cobbler would be himself, as he would be conscious of the prince's thoughts and acts, and not of the cobbler's life. A prince's consciousness in a cobbler body: thus the cobbler is, in fact, a prince. But this interesting border-case leads to this problematic thought that since personal identity is based on consciousness, and that only oneself can be aware of his consciousness, exterior human judges may never know if they really are judging - and punishing - the same person, or simply the same body. In other words, Locke argues that you may be judged only for the acts of your body, as this is what is apparent to all but God; however, you are in truth only responsible for the acts for which you are conscious. This forms the basis of the insanity defense: one can't be held accountable for acts from which one was unconscious - and therefore leads to interesting philosophical questions:

"personal identity consists [not in the identity of substance] but in the identity of consciousness, wherein if Socrates and the present mayor of Queenborough agree, they are the same person: if the same Socrates waking and sleeping do not partake of the same consciousness, Socrates waking and sleeping is not the same person. In Criminal trials the insanity defenses are possible defenses by Excuse, an Affirmative defense by which Defendants argue that See also Unconscious mind. Unconsciousness, more appropriately referred to as loss of Consciousness or lack of consciousness is And to punish Socrates waking for what sleeping Socrates thought, and waking Socrates was never conscious of, would be no more right, than to punish one twin for what his brother-twin did, whereof he knew nothing, because their outsides were so like, that they could not be distinguished; for such twins have been seen. "^[1]

Or again:

"PERSON, as I take it, is the name for this self. Wherever a man finds what he calls himself, there, I think, another may say is the same person. It is a forensic term, appropriating actions and their merit; and so belong only to intelligent agents, capable of a law, and happiness, and misery. This personality extends itself beyond present existence to what is past, only by consciousness, --whereby it becomes concerned and accountable; owns and imputes to itself past actions, just upon the same ground and for the same reason as it does the present. All which is founded in a concern for happiness, the unavoidable concomitant of consciousness; that which is conscious of pleasure and pain, desiring that that self that is conscious should be happy. And therefore whatever past actions it cannot reconcile or APPROPRIATE to that present self by consciousness, it can be no more concerned in it than if they had never been done: and to receive pleasure or pain, i. e. reward or punishment, on the account of any such action, is all one as to be made happy or miserable in its first being, without any demerit at all. For, supposing a MAN punished now for what he had done in another life, whereof he could be made to have no consciousness at all, what difference is there between that punishment and being CREATED miserable? And therefore, conformable to this, the apostle tells us, that, at the great day, when every one shall 'receive according to his doings, the secrets of all hearts shall be laid open. ' The sentence shall be justified by the consciousness all person shall have, that THEY THEMSELVES, in what bodies soever they appear, or what substances soever that consciousness adheres to, are the SAME that committed those actions, and deserve that punishment for them. " ^[4]

Henceforth, Locke's conception of personal identity founds it not on the substance or the body, but in the "same continued consciousness", which is also distinct from the soul since the soul may have no consciousness of itself (as in reincarnation). He creates a third term between the soul and the body - and Locke's thought may certainly be meditated by those who, following a scientist ideology, would identify too quickly the brain to consciousness. A scientist, in the broadest sense refers to any person that engages in a systematic activity to acquire Knowledge or an individual that engages in such practices For the brain, as the body and as any substance, may change, while consciousness remains the same. Therefore personal identity is not in the brain, but in consciousness. However, Locke's theory also reveals his debt to theology and to Apocalyptic "great day", which by advance excuse any failings of human justice and therefore humanity's miserable state. Theology is the study of a god or the gods from a religious perspective

Self-awareness in theater

In theater, self-awareness refers to a fictional character who is depicted as breaking character, perhaps by breaking the fourth wall. Theatre (or theater, see spelling differences) is the branch of the Performing arts defined by Bernard Beckerman as what "occurs when one Breaking character, "to break character" is a theatrical term used to describe when an Actor, while actively performing In character, slips out The fourth wall is the imaginary wall at the front of the stage in a Proscenium Theater, through which the audience sees the action in the world of the play In some plays, such as Six Characters in Search of an Author and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, this may be associated with inviting the audience to continue their suspension of disbelief; that is to say, to believe that the characters depicted by the cast are "really" self-aware fictional characters who know that they are fictional characters, but can do nothing about it. Six Characters in Search of an Author ( Sei personaggi in cerca d'autore) is the most famous and celebrated play by the Italian writer Luigi Pirandello. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is a 2005 crime / Black comedy Film, which follows many conventions of the classic Film noir genre Suspension of disbelief or "willing suspension of disbelief" is an aesthetic theory intended to characterize people's relationships to art (See also Metafiction. Metafiction is a literary term for a type of Fiction that systematically and self-consciously addresses the devices of fiction including the relationship between fiction and )

Theater also concerns itself with other awareness besides self-awareness. There is a possible correlation between the experience of the theater audience and individual self-awareness. As actors and audiences must not 'break' the fourth wall in order to maintain context, so individuals must not be aware of the artificial, or the constructed perception of his or her reality. Reality, in everyday usage means "the state of things as they actually exist" This suggests that self-awareness is an artificial continuum just as theater is. Theatrical efforts such as Six Characters in Search of an Author or say, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, construct yet another layer of the fourth wall, but they do not destroy the primary illusion. Refer to Erving Goffman's Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience. Erving Goffman ( June 11, 1922 – November 19, 1982) was a Canadian and American sociologist and writer

Self-awareness in animals

Humans are not the only creatures who are self-aware. Observations and experiments have shown that some animals are self-aware. Thus far, there is evidence that bottlenose dolphins, apes, and elephants have the capability to be self aware. The Bottlenose Dolphin is one of the most common and well-known Dolphins. Elephants ( family: Elephantidae) are large land Mammals of the order Proboscidea.

See also

• Boltzmann brain
• Mindfulness
• Cartesian theater
• Confidence
• Feldenkrais Method
• Higher consciousness
• Memory suppression
• Modesty
• Self-consciousness
• Sentience
• Vedanta
• Yoga Nidra
• Mirror test