Sartre and contemporary philosophy of consciousness

This chapter shows that Jean-Paul Sartre's account of the structure of pre-reflective consciousness offers potential resources to address various problems that emerge within contemporary debates that revolve around the problematics of internalism and externalism. Recalling early Sartre's jeu reflet-refletant, he is a mediator between internalism and externalism in contemporary philosophy of consciousness. Sartre begins his ontologie phenomenologique by showing that the regress results when self-consciousness is considered as a return to oneself as a reflection. Sartre's view connects Martin Heidegger's temporally structured ecstatic being with Brentano's analysis of the pre-reflectivity of consciousness. A re-interpretation of Sartre's concept of consciousness of time with Schelling's distinction between the noetic and the reel consequence is instructive giving a solution of the problem of stream consciousness. Within the philosophical landscape surrounding consciousness and mind, certain figures motivate to reinterpret Sartre's early philosophy and locate an enduring insight relevant to contemporary philosophy of mind.