"Who am I? Self-consciousness as the key to self-awareness”

Self-consciousness doesn’t appear out of nowhere, but how do awareness and self-awareness–phenomena that are central to our human self image–develop?

Scientists are still trying to solve this mystery. Within the scope of the six-year research project "Self-consciousness and concept formation in humans” (2003-2009) funded by the VolkswagenStiftung and headed by Prof. Dr. Albert Newen (Ruhr-Universität Bochum, fellow at the Hanse Wissenschaftskolleg from 2002-2003) and in close collaboration with Prof. Dr. Dr. Kai Vogeley (University of Cologne), important progress has been made in our understanding of this question. The results of the project were presented at the closing meeting at the Hanse Wissenschaftskolleg (Delmenhorst).
One important aspect presented at the meeting was the theoretical and empirical principles of human self-consciousness. The research project illustrates, according to Prof. Newen, that science today is capable of systematically researching the empirical principles of human self-consciousness; that is why the assumption that humans, as biological beings, possess a special ability, which we call self-consciousness and which has neurobiological roots, is much more plausible than for example Kant’s transcendental philosophy, in which an inevitable, not investigable self-consciousness is postulated.
The other aspect dealt with by the neuroscientists, medical scientists and social scientists from Germany, the USA and Switzerland was the question of the role of memory in self-consciousness, self-understanding and self-delusion. Here, the point is not people’s especially confident manner, explained the project’s leader, Prof. Newen, but rather an awareness of ones own perceptions, desires, feelings and beliefs. Only when a person knows what his desires and beliefs are, can he direct his actions "self”-consciously. Memory plays a key role in this. The connection between memory and self-understanding is an exciting new development in memory research. A fully pronounced self-consciousness requires memories of important events (episodic memory) and, in humans, a speech-based memory (semantic memory). Understanding the neurobiological basis of memory has therefore also become a central task.