Introspection 4 {ReadingNotesBeingNoOne}

Introspection₄ ("consciously experienced cognitive self-reference"). This type of introspection is a conceptual (or quasi-conceptual) kind of metarepresentation, again operating on a preexisting, coherent self-model. Phenomenal representational processes of this type generate conceptual forms of self-knowledge, by directing cognitive processes toward certain aspects of internal system states, the intentional content of which is being constituted by a part of the world depicted as internal.

• The general phenomenology associated with this type of representational activity includes all situations in which we consciously think about ourselves as ourselves (i.e., when we think what some philosophers call I*-thoughts; for an example see Baker 1998, and section 6.6.4). On a theoretical level, this last type of introspective experience clearly constitutes the case in which philosophers of mind have traditionally been most interested: the phenomenon of cognitive self-reference as exhibited in reflexive self-consciousness.