A Higher Enlightenment
Member
Yes I would agree very much so that one must be aware of their own awareness in order to have self-consciousness.So, in an attempt to answer this question, we've spoken about or at least mentioned things like introspective thoughts, awareness, higher intelligence, personality, being aware of having been sleeping, being aware of being aware, etc. The first suggestion was that introspective thought was the difference between consciousness and self-consciousness.
You've denied that introspective thought was enough for self-consciousness, claiming that animals were 'a clearly defined' example of something having introspective thought but not having self-consciousness. When pressed on this matter though, it turns out that your claims about animals are what we call gratuitous assertions. That is, only to say that - thus far - they have not been properly argued for. Now, do not get me wrong, this is not necessarily a problem - especially at this juncture - because we're very early on in the discussion. However - and this is key - if a claim cannot be verified/falsified, then it must be a rational one at a bare minimum. It must be a valid conclusion following from a major(primary) and a minor(secondary) premiss. That's what logical arguments are all about. That is especially true when one denies the very definition of a commonly used notion such as "introspective thoughts". These are thoughts that an individual has about themselves. One cannot have thoughts about oneself without being aware of oneself.
So, either being aware of oneself is not equivalent to self-awareness(which is absurd to put it mildly) or self awareness is not equivalent to self-consciousness. It seems that you're claiming the latter - that self-consciousness requires being aware that one is aware as compared/contrasted to just being aware.
Would you agree with this summary, thus far?