If you reject the assumption that self-awareness is inherently social, then feel free to disagree. I guess I’m not actually arguing from first principles and we

If you reject the assumption that self-awareness is inherently social, then feel free to disagree. I guess I’m not actually arguing from first principles and we can’t properly get to the bottom of it here. > there are autistic children lacking theory-of-mind while ostensibly being conscious and self-aware I can’t speak for that. I don’t think this is a great example because they still exist in social context. > I'm conscious and self-aware even when I'm isolated from others We still exist over time, not discretely—if you are isolated, it doesn’t mean you lose consciousness immediately. However, I suspect that after a prolonged isolation from human contact (which would be a highly unethical experiment, of course) you’d likely exhibit behaviour consistent with waning self-awareness; and I would doubt that a human that is somehow (this is even more unethical) brought up in utter and total isolation could be considered conscious in any human sense of the word.