“Who is the I that knows the bodily me, who has an image of myself and a sense of identity over time, who knows that I have propriate strivings?” I know all these things, and what is more, I know that I know them. But who is it who has this perspectival grasp? It is much easier to feel the self than to define the self (Allport 1961, p. 128).

I think Allport has it the wrong way round. It is easy to define the self, as he in fact does, as the entity that thinks, feels, perceives and has a sense of identity over time. It is hard, however, to a find an entity that fits the definition. Furthermore ,even though, according to Allport, experiencing being a self is unproblematic (“it is easier to feel the self”) the experience of being someone is actually very elusive, phenomenologically and conceptually. On some accounts self-awareness is actually the experience of Being No-One[1] I will argue that the precise nature of experiences reported as self-awareness is best inferred from those cases when it goes awry, in particular disorders involving the experience of depersonalisation. There are some modest consequences for philosophical theories of self awareness.

[1] So, strictly speaking, the experience is not of being no one, since there is no one to be. Rather it is an experience we cannot help but take to be of being someone, even though there is no entity causing the experience. There is no substantial Cartesian, or bodily, or neural, entity that sustains the properties ascribed by Allport. Thus part of Metzinger’s project is to explain why we feel as though we are substantial entities.