Earlier I briefly noted that at the phenomenological level we should probably not construe subjective character fundamentally as a matter of “mineness” or a “sense of self” where the latter is thought of as a sense of oneself as an owner of experiences. It is not that I do not think this description contains a grain of truth; I do. The worry, though, is that if we go this route, we might come to the conclusion that subjective character involves acquaintance with a haecceity—Zahavihood and Gallagherhood once again. Here I want to consider the same issue from a more ontologically oriented point of view.
We are indeed individuated and aware of ourselves (something individuated). And we can be aware of ourselves as distinct individuals and owners. But this does not at all entail the doctrine of haecceities immediately present to consciousness—for-me-ness or me-ishness as a special property that no one else can share. Rather, subjective character is a common form that all conscious states have; but having this form does not alone make something the individual it is, evidently. It may be that in virtue of which we can be aware of ourselves as individuals, but it is not that in virtue of which we are the individuals we are. Yes, there is a determinate individual (somehow construed) that is acquainted with itself. No, this does not necessarily mean that it is acquainted with that in virtue of which it is individuated. That could be whatever it is that individuates physical objects. Or, perhaps, nothing is metaphysically individuated by anything else. But it ought to be clear that simply in being aware of myself I need not be privy to anything non-trivial about my metaphysical individuation conditions.[36]
You are aware of your consciousness as something individual. You are a self-aware individual, if you prefer. But this does not mean that your subjectivity consists in being directly aware of what individuates you or the very property in virtue of which you are the individual you are. Or, perhaps, one may be aware of this property or set of properties, but only in the guise of being an individual that is thus and so. The “thus and so” part (all your contingent properties, your “facticity”) is radically changeable. You need not have been thus and so. (You could have been a contender! And if only you’d been rich!) You can also be aware that you are a particular instance. So, yes, you can become aware of your particularity. But everybody is aware of their own particularity. And it is, in a way, an empty and non-material (in the “formal vs. material” sense) property. It’s not as if my particularity has a special something that yours lacks and vice versa. Hence, I would not be able to tell, by phenomenological intuition alone (or in any other way for that matter), which of the infinitely many duplicate and near-duplicate worlds I am in (cf. Elga 2004). Am I in the world in which one of Napoleon’s buttons had a bit of his blood on them the morning of the Battle of Jena or in the world in which that was not the case? I cannot tell by introspection, yet, depending on the correct answer, I am one type of individual (and of course, one token of uncountably many of that type) and not of the other type (which type also contains uncountably many individual counterparts of mine). I am individuated, and I know that; I belong to just one of these worlds. But I do not have complete access to my individuation conditions or the conditions, if there are any, that determine that this individual is in one world as opposed to another. I have uncountably many counterparts who feel exactly the same way because, to speak loosely, they don't know that they are not me; none of us can tell the difference. I cannot locate my Homeworld on the map of worlds that contains my relevant counterparts.
It is a mistake, then, to make subjective character depend on the sense of individuality; this reverses the proper order of explanation. Self-acquaintance and concrete instantiation yield the sense of individuality, and they do it again and again in many places and in the same way. Evidently, the contingent filling that experience and history infuse into the formal shell of conscious subjectivity is not relevant at the level we are concerned with. Hence, it can also be metaphysically, not just phenomenologically, misleading to use terms like “for-me-ness,” “mineness,” “me-ishness,” etc. That is to make something derived seem like something basic. The basic things are self-acquaintance (“reflexivity”) and actual, concrete instantiation or constitution. The sense of individuality comes from these, not the other way around.
Of course, if you are a real, concrete individual, you are individuated. But individuation is evidently not self-acquaintance. The latter is, however, required if one is to get the sense of being an individual, to know, feel, and be concerned with oneself as an individual. If we generally equated self-acquaintance with something’s being the individual it is, then we'd have to hold either that every individuated thing in the cosmos is self-acquainted and conscious, or that conscious things have one type of metaphysical individuation conditions, and non-conscious things another, for very obscure reasons. Moreover, we either must not take subjective character to be a univocal notion or must resort to some sort of hopeful brute resemblance nominalism about subjective character and maintain that we cannot not really know that, say, I, qua subject, am in any meaningful sense like you, qua subject. This is not a very good dilemma to be in.[37] I think the more plausible view is that self-acquaintance is not the source of the individuation of consciousness but rather something that both concretely depends upon individuation and enables the knowledge of individuality and, consequently, self-location in surrounding spaces.
It is misleading, then, both phenomenologically and ontologically to refer to subjective character principally as “mineness” or “me-ishness” or “for-me-ness,” even though subjective character is one of the bases of the sense of individuality. We should not think of self-acquaintance (and subjective character) as anything more than this relation all episodes of consciousness bear to themselves. It is a perfectly uniform structure and a kind of universal—in that sense, supposing one is some sort of realist about universals, there is indeed some identical thing that unifies all episodes (or subjects) of consciousness, namely the very property of being self-manifesting; but we are all distinct instances. Thus, in a very special and non-Vedantist sense, we could say that there are many instances of consciousness but only one subject, with some instances connected to each other and grouped together in other important ways as well. But there is no substantial self. In this regard, I am with Hume, Sartre, Parfit, Strawson, Metzinger, the Buddhists, and other “non-egological” theorists of consciousness. Note that this does not mean that consciousness is “anonymous” in the sense of “subjectless.” Every stream of consciousness has its transient subject (viz., itself) but that is not a substantial self.