Abstract
When the format or mode of acquisition of an item of information is such that it can onlyconcern the subject itself, it is not necessary to identify the person whom the information concerns as ourselves. The identification in question is pre-determined by the format or mode of acquisition of the information. Given this format or mode of acquisition, the information in question automatically goes into the Ego folder. So it's not true that the mental Ego folder can't function if the subject doesn't already have a self-concept. The Ego mental folder automatically receives information acquired in the egocentric mode. This information necessarily concerns the subject himself, and to integrate it into the file the subject does not need to identify the person whom this information concerns as being himself.
The information acquired in the egocentric mode forms the core of the Ego file, and is sufficient to constitute it. In addition to this core, the file also contains a periphery, namely all the information acquired in the third person but which the subject believes to be about himself. Such information cannot be integrated into the file in the absence of a self-representation enabling the subject to identify himself as the person the information concerns; but precisely such a self-representation is already available, corresponding to the core of the Ego mental file.
Information acquired in the egocentric mode possesses a distinctive property, spotted by Wittgenstein and dubbed "immunity to misidentification" by the American philosopher Sidney Shoemaker. This property derives from the way in which the subject is given to itself as the subject of conscious experience, without necessarily being represented in the content of that experience. This "pre-reflexive self-consciousness", as phenomenologists call it, has two aspects that need to be distinguished. On the one hand, there is the subject's awareness of being in a certain mental state (perceptual, mnesic or other). On the other hand, there is the correlative awareness of the relationship with the scene represented, which is the content of the state. In both respects, pre-reflexive self-awareness is immune to misidentification.
