Ahmed Iskander puts forth a detailed, analytic argument that updates Galen Strawson’s view of the minimal and mental self.
In this essay, I argue that Strawson is right to locate the self fundamentally in the mental, but that his metaphysical minimalism commits him to more diachronic unity than he recognises. I accept Strawson’s materialism and equivalence constraints; however, I argue that once the SMS (sense of a mental self) is analysed in its own terms, its structural features entail a minimally persisting self. I first outline my formal grammar, reconstruct Strawson’s view, assess embodied and narrative alternatives, and then develop the Minimal Continuity Thesis, within Strawson’s own constraints.
Before reconstructing Strawson’s theory, it is imperative to define the conceptual grammar that will be used in this essay. This grammar will guide my discussion of Strawson and my argument. I define consciousness as minimal lived awareness, primarily the intentional directedness of action and basic categorical discrimination. When a person walks through town and sees a red flag, they immediately register its ontological properties (object, red, flag → red flag) without deliberation. Minimal consciousness here involves directedness and basic differentiation. I denote this as C(x,t). The next facet is temporal awareness, the ability to denote that t1 occurred before t2, and the ability to process that succession as “mine”: “I gave a lecture last week”. Represented by 𝑇(𝑥, 𝑡1, 𝑡2) Without this “mineness,” temporal ordering would not entail any persistence. Selfhood is defined as the minimally unified subject of experience; the formal locus of first givenness; metaphysically real, but phenomenologically defined, represented by S(x). I use P(x) to denote persistence of the subject, the condition under which experiences at various times belong to one subject. P(x) does not imply narrativity, only the minimal metaphysical relation for temporally ordered experiences to be mine across time. Each operator marks a necessary layer in the structure of selfhood: C(x,t) grounds experience; 𝑇(𝑥, 𝑡1, 𝑡2) structures it; P(x) stabilises it; and S(x) names its unified form.
These relations together form the core of this essay, the Minimal Continuity Thesis (MCT): the claim that continuity is neither a psychological illusion nor a narrative construct, but a transcendental condition of selfhood. Schematically:
C → T → P → S.
Here, C enables T, which presupposes P, and grounds S.
Strawson’s project is fundamentally metaphysical: he aims to determine what a self must be for experience to be possible at all. Strawson’s claim is realist: there is a mental subject, and it is something physical rather than a mere abstraction (1997, p.406). Strawson characterises this phenomenal “sense of a mental self” (SMS) through eight commonly attributed features, concluding only five are jointly sufficient: thinghood, mentality, synchronic unity, ontic distinctness, and subjecthood (1997, p.423), notably excluding a sense of diachronic unity.
Strawson introduces two equivalence constraints to avoid speculative metaphysics, and two challenge constraints to bind the metaphysical self to phenomenology:
- (E1): If the self is real, then a sense of having a self is an accurate representation of it.
- (E2): If SMS accurately represents something real, then there is a self. (1997, p.409).
E1 functions as a necessity constraint; if the self is real, our understanding of it is accurate. E2 is a sufficiency constraint: If SMS accurately represents something, that “something” is the self.
- (C1): What if the mental self is ineffable and different from our perceived experience of it?
- (C2): The SMS outlined represents something that exists, but it does not qualify as a self as it lacks some feature F, like being immaterial or immortal.
C1 functions as a Kantian ineffability objection[1]. Strawson rejects this on three grounds. First, phenomenologically—if a self exists, it must be experienced as such; any unexplained selfhood violates his original premises. Second, ineffability adds needless metaphysical complexity. Third, for Strawson, the mental is part of the physical world (1997, pp.409-411). C1 serves as a rejection of Kantianism; C2 of Cartesian Dualism. E1 and E2 are anti-inflationary constraints, binding ontology to experience. Here, the mental is as physical as any biological process, differing only in mode of presentation (1997, p.410). Thus, for Strawson, the self is fundamentally mental as the only thing that satisfies E1 and E2 is the subject of experience itself, located within first-personal consciousness.
These clarifications lead to his pearl view of the self, where the mental self is real and physical but only as a discrete event in time. Strawson proceeds to argue that the sense of a mental self can be vivid and complete, even while relating only to the present, brief stretches of consciousness (1997, p.423). He thus denies the necessity of diachronic persistence, concurring with the Buddhists that there is no enduring mental self (1997, p.424).
Formal Reconstruction
- □(S(x) → SMS(x)) [2](E1 – necessity)
- □(SMS(x) → S(x)) (E2 – Sufficiency)
x
t [S(x,t) → C(x,t)] (A self must be conscious)
x
t [C(x,t) → Ph(x)3] (Conscious subjects are physical)
- ¬□(S(x,t₁) → S(x,t₂)) for all t₁ ≠ t₂ (No diachronic unity)
Within this framework, each episode constitutes a physically real self; persistence is biological and embodied, the mental is transient, as no single subject endures across episodes. Strawson represents a plurality of selves4, each existing at various times like “pearls on a string” (p.424). The self is metaphysically substantive but temporarily discontinuous. I accept Strawson’s materialist account of the self, but not the fragmentation of it. I challenge the conclusion that vivid selfhood can occur entirely within momentary episodes, but the very awareness of temporal succession presupposes minimal persistence. Even basic object-recognition presupposes a persisting subject; continuity is not a linguistic construct but a transcendental condition of its possibility.[3]
I agree with Strawson’s mental account of the self, as any embodied or narrative explanation presupposes the very mental subject it attempts to explain. To describe myself as moving my leg, or belonging to a social category, or embodied environment, requires a prior sense of mineness—a subject for whom bodily states or social roles belong. This sense of mineness cannot be derived from embodiment or narrative; both function as manifestations and translations of that basic consciousness. Embodiment can generate structure, orientation, and agency, but not the first-personal point of view itself; the very fact that we can acknowledge proprioceptive information as ‘mine’ presupposes the subject for whom it appears.
Gallagher offers the clearest account of the embodied self, in which it is defined as “the prereflective consciousness of oneself as an immediate subject of experience, embodied and situated in action” (2000, p.15). Selfhood thus originates in proprioceptive and sensorimotor awareness of the subject’s movement and position (2005, pp.173-176). Gallagher’s account specifies the embodied mode of C(x,t), showing how minimal consciousness is enacted through proprioceptive and sensorimotor organisation. Hibshman (2022) argues that conceiving of one’s life narratively serves to foster self-understanding, through meditating on a “second-person experience of oneself” (p.616). Hibshman suggests that narrativity grants the subject a productive distance from itself, allowing one to perceive one’s own life as another might. The narrative self thus serves to temporalise and socialise Gallagher’s minimal self by allowing consciousness to re-encounter itself across time. So, the choice between mental, embodied, and narrative conceptions is false.
Each theory isolates a different dimension of a single ontological process. My Dual-Aspect Minimal Self captures this unity. I do not believe these are contradictory, but in fact, complementary. Strawson’s own established materialism holds that the mental and physical are not two distinct, abstract subjects, but an inseparable aspect of one underlying reality. The self is fundamentally mental, as to move my arm presupposes the existence of a subject that controls the body, but the mental is also physical. The dual-aspect structure is not merely descriptive but metaphysically necessary. In Kantian terms, this continuity functions as the transcendental condition of possibility for experience itself. The ground of the “Unity of apperception,” through which consciousness can apprehend itself as a subject (Kant, 1781, B131-132).
Strawson writes the metaphysical grammar for our established C(x,t), the minimal field of lived consciousness that grounds all experiences. Strawson argues that the self is simply “the thing whose mental states these are”(pp.406-407): the immediate subject of awareness, and mineness, rather than a construct of body or story. This framework is fundamentally metaphysical, not psychological; C(x,t) names the condition by which experiences belong to a singular subject. Consciousness for Strawson is the intrinsic nature of matter, making mentality and physicality unified, rather than separate. This dual aspect view makes embodiment a worldly articulation of the mental self, rather than an alternative. Thus, embodiment is not external to the self here, but the mode in which consciousness becomes worldly, and intelligible. Gallagher’s minimal self to me articulates the transition from C(x,t,) to 𝑇(𝑥, 𝑡1, 𝑡2), the temporal structuring of consciousness, enacted through bodily action. This shows how proprioception and sensorimotor agency organise experience over time (2005, pp.173-176). To experience the world as “I move” is already to experience oneself as embodied; action is the lived articulation of the subject’s temporal awareness.
Petherbridge (2019) develops this embodied account phenomenologically, showing that identity persists even when reflective cognition deteriorates. In her case study of “Mrs N”, a woman with advanced Alzheimer’s who can no longer recognise her family, but continues to hum songs, smooth her hair, and retain basic mannerisms. Petherbridge argues that habitual embodiment and affective attunement preserve some form of selfhood (pp.317-318). These behaviours alone do not constitute identity; they manifest the underlying field of consciousness denoted by C(x,t). The subject of awareness persists even as reflective cognition fails, stabilised through embodied rhythm and affective coherence. This case leads into the MCT, as Mrs. N’s case exemplified P(x), the metaphysical continuity of subjectivity, across disruption. Under this light, Petherbridge completes the extensions I found in Gallagher and Hibshman: embodiment, affectivity, and narrative are not opposing theories, but successive articulations of one ontological phenomenon, a persisting consciousness through time.
For Strawson, selves are “pearls on a string” (1997, p.424). I agree with Strawson’s materialism: there are mental subjects, which are physical but experientially given. Where he and I part ways is within his denial of a persisting sense of selfhood. I argue that once we take seriously the structure of consciousness he describes, we are forced from episodic realism to instead, a minimally diachronic self. A merely phenomenological awareness of succession is insufficient for my argument. What is most important is that 𝑇(𝑥, 𝑡1, 𝑡2) is experienced by the subject as belonging to them. This is not indexical labelling within an isolated episode, but rather, a relation between two different temporal points under the same subjective mode of presentation. A relation cannot obtain unless both relata exist; thus, ownership of succession presupposes a subject that spans the interval it represents. The metaphysical commitment follows from the structure of mineness, not from introspective description.
Let C(x,t) be minimal lived consciousness at 𝑇(𝑥, 𝑡1, 𝑡2) temporal awareness of 𝑡1 as preceding 𝑡2, for x, P(x) is then indicated as the persistence of x, and S(x) is the minimally unified subject of said experiences. Then:
- ∀x∀t₁∀t₂[(T(x,t₁,t₂) ∧ t₁ < t₂) → P(x)]
Temporal mineness entails minimal persistence.
2. ∀x∀t[C(x,t) → ∃t₁,t₂ (t₁ < t₂ ∧ T(x,t₁,t₂))]
Minimal consciousness is temporally thick: it includes some understanding of before/after. [4]
3. ∀x∀t[(C(x,t) ∧ ∃t₁,t₂ T(x,t₁,t₂)) → S(x)]
Temporally aware consciousness is a minimal self.
From (1)-(3) it follows that:
- □(S(x) → P(x))[5]
Any minimal self necessarily entails minimal persistence.
If there is an SMS, it cannot be instantaneous, its very structure involves temporal awareness, which presupposes a subject that endures across the times it perceives as its own. This puts pressure on the pearl view. On his own terms, we have □(S → SMS) and □(SMS →) via E1 and E2. Premise (3) in my model unpacks what SMS involves: not only synchronic singleness and subject-of-experience, but also temporal mineness. Given (1), temporal mineness entails some sort of P(x). If Strawson is right about what the SMS is experientially, he is wrong about its episodic nature. As he argues, some sense of a self is exactly how it would be. Given this, we obtain □(SMS(x) → P(x)), and by E2, □(S(x) → P(x)). This directly contradicts Strawson’s denial of an episodic self, as if we consider the sense of mineness as an SMS, persistence is inevitable.
This argument is not circular, as I do not assume that 𝑇(𝑥, 𝑡1, 𝑡2) involves a persisting subject. This argument was built within Strawson’s framework; a notion of mineness is built into the SMS as a necessary component in his fifth component of the SMS subjecthood (1997, p.409). Applying this subjecthood to a temporal succession, a subject spanning the represented interval is logically presupposed by Strawson’s SMS. For subjecthood to apply across distinct times, the subject must be the relatum of both intentional contents; otherwise, the identity condition for mineness collapses. Persistence is not an independent posit, but a logical consequence of SMS representing temporality at all.
The minimal self is not a collection of instantaneous, separate consciousness; each moment serves to retain the past, and anticipate the imminent, as a single “I” who lives through them. The earlier explored embodied self, and the dementia case, can show how this structure is enacted and stabilised through expression and affective life. But these are variations all in experience and not in metaphysics. The point is that the self is fundamentally grounded in consciousness, and continuity is generated by SMS, through minimal awareness. It serves as the transcendental condition of the SMS Strawson himself defined. If there is some SMS at all, then all the premises stand in the relation C → T → P → S, and it is not merely contingently but necessarily the case, logically, that S(x) entails P(x) when some awareness is there. The self is a minimally persisting subject whose continuity is the transcendental condition of its own first-personal life.
Strawson would resist my argument by appealing to his phenomenological austerity, denying that continuity is a part of the self. However, the temporal thickness of experience is evident phenomenologically. The foregoing shows that every experienced moment has an immediate past and anticipated future. Under E1, Strawson must treat acknowledgement of temporal mineness as an accurate representation of SMS.
Strawson might insist that my appeal to continuity subtly smuggles in some form of narrative construction. However, the MCT is not narrative coherence, or a view of life as unfolding; it is simply the condition that might make narrative continuity pre-reflective and structural, simply just awareness of the passage of time, not any rationalising of said time.
Another pushback is a materialist one, arguing that insisting on persistence reintroduces a speculative metaphysics, violating his rejection of C1. Continuity here is not an abstract substance, but a mere relation across consciousness, realised physically in the organism’s persistence and experienced mentally as mineness. No noumenal self was posited; only the unity Strawson himself requires for experience.
Strawson is right to insist that the self is a mental phenomenon. His SMS correctly identifies the structural features in which subjectivity appears, and his materialism correctly avoids the inflationary metaphysics that have historically obscured investigations into selfhood. But once we take the SMS seriously, its own internal structure can undermine Strawson’s episodic picture. Temporal mineness is not an optional embellishment, but a part of what it is to experience oneself as a subject at all. Embodied and narrative accounts serve to extend my thesis rather than replace it; they successfully articulate how the subject is lived, expressed, and re-encountered, though none can generate first-personal consciousness from below. The mental remains fundamental, but it is not momentary. If Strawson accepts his equivalence constraints, he must logically accept that the self persists minimally across time. Strawson’s ontology is valid: the self is mental and physical, but temporally thick. His phenomenology unwittingly commits him to a diachronic subject, and that view, grounded in ontology and experience, is more convincing.
Footnotes:
[1] Against any argument that the self differs to how it appears—a soul, etc.
[2] Let SMS(X)) denote Strawson’s definition of some sense of the mental self. 3 Let Ph(x) indicates that x is a physical object.
[3] This should not be confused with an empirical argument about perceptual mechanisms, but a phenomenological one: recognising an object as appearing to me, involves the ownership structure Strawson builds into the SMS.
[4] This claim reflects extensional theories of the specious present, most clearly defended by Dainton (2000, pp.121-122).
[5] Here the modality is conceptual rather than empirical: Considering Strawson’s SMS definition, any entity satisfying S(x) must satisfy P(x) on pain of contradiction.
Bibliography:
Dainton, B. (2000) Stream of Consciousness: Unity and Continuity in Conscious Experience. London: Routledge.
Gallagher, S. (2000) ‘Philosophical conceptions of the self: Implications for cognitive science’, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 4(1), pp. 14–21.
Gallagher, S. (2005) How the Body Shapes the Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hibshman, C. (2022) ‘Narrative, second-person experience, and self-perception: A reason it is good to conceive of one’s life narratively’, Philosophical Studies, 179(2), pp. 613–634.
Kant, I. (1781/1998) Critique of Pure Reason. Translated by P. Guyer and A.W. Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Petherbridge, D. (2019) ‘Beyond empathy: Vulnerability, relationality and dementia’, International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 27(2), pp. 307–326.
Strawson, G. (1997) ‘The self’, Journal of Consciousness Studies, 4(5–6), pp. 405–427.