Social Sciences in China (Chinese Edition)

No. 8, 2025

The Reflexivity of Consciousness: The Dilemmas of the Knower and the Author

(Abstract)

Zhao Tingyang

The Humean problem represents both the limit of the “knower’s dilemma” and the starting point of the “author’s dilemma”—the challenge of human beings as creators. These two dilemmas share a common difficulty: the reflexivity of thought. Reflexivity arises from the internal dialogic structure of language, or its self-referential explanatory system. Drawing on a philosophy of consciousness that rejects metaphysics but aligns with ontology, several counter-traditional propositions can be advanced: language is a system of tokens rather than a description of things; the meanings and connotations of words derive from the introversive interpretations within a language rather than from extroversive references; and complexity is not a property of things but of knowledge. By employing the system of verbs as a metalanguage to reflect upon and interpret the system of nouns, a G?delian model of self-reflexivity may be formed within language itself—one that allows us to better understand what thought is capable of thinking or creating.