You are conscious of yourself

>You aren't entirety conscious.

Even granting this, there is at least some sliver of the totality that is conscious, and this sliver involves at least two elements: both an "I" that is conscious and a "myself" that this consciousness is of.

What am I looking at here?

A cross-section of a human body encased in something, probably resin.

No idea where from specifically, but it looks like a TV show so probably something by Gunther von Hagens.

Well, at the most basic root of my consciousness is a thing which may as well not even be considered a conscious entity. For reference, consider the difference between a virus and a cell- the cell is capable of making "choices" even if it isn't technically aware of why it's making them, but the virus has only one course of action, inherent to and defined by its structure.

This thing has accumulated layers of social protection which prevent its identification and ostracization. Certain of these protective barriers could be interpreted as being "me," with the root construct being the observer, or vice versa.

...

Stop triggering my Onism user. It hurts to think I sleep, wake and breath and experience the world in this one body, forever.

Don't worry, we're all doomed to eternal life. You'll get to experience everything there is to do, over and over, without end.

>Well, at the most basic root of my consciousness is a thing which may as well not even be considered a conscious entity.
>This thing has accumulated layers of social protection which prevent its identification and ostracization. Certain of these protective barriers could be interpreted as being "me," with the root construct being the observer, or vice versa.

Interesting thoughts. But, the question is: how could there be knowledge of the thinker that thinks this thought?

>The other question is whether or not we can even answer the question of how reflexivity is possible
because that's how grammar works dingus.

Feedback loops of observation between the layers of the self.

this guy gets it

You're asking the wrong questions.

It works because it works?

So if the self is an effect of such looping, how could the self reliably know the cause that gave rise to the effect that is itself? Especially since the self's experience teaches it that similar effects can arise from dissimilar causes (ripples in water can be caused by acorns from above or bubbles from below; an imbalanced stance can be caused by the shifting of the ground or by the shifting of the fluids of the inner ear).

Thank god there is at least on person on Veeky Forums with a brain.

"...let us imagine that there exists only a single being, then such a being needs no knowledge, because there would not then exist anything different from that being itself, - anything whose existence such a being would therefore have ti take up into itself only indirectly through knowledge, in other words, through picture and concept. It would already itself be all in all; consequently there would remain nothing for it to know, in other words nothing foreign that could be apprehended as object. On the other hand, with the plurality of beings, every individual finds itself in a state of isolation from all the rest, and from this arises the necessity for knowledge...

... Therefore knowledge and plurality, or individuation, stand and fall together, for they condition each other. It is to be concluded from this that, beyond the phenomenon, in the true being-in-itself of all things, to which time and space, and therefore plurality, must be foreign, there cannot exist any knowledge."