1 Forthcoming in Protosociology. Please quote from published version Reflexivity, transparency, and illusionism: Engaging Garfield Dan Zahavi Abstract: The notion of pre-reflective self-awareness is much more accepted today than 20 years ago and has become part of the standard repertoire in philosophy of mind. The notion’s increasing popularity has not surprisingly also led to an increasing amount of criticism. My focus in the present contribution will be on a particular radical objection that can be found in Jay Garfield’s book Engaging Buddhism. It seeks to undercut the appeal to pre-reflective self-awareness by arguing that there ultimately is no such thing as phenomenal consciousness. The notion of pre-reflective self-awareness is often associated with the work of Sartre (1957, 2003), but the core idea, the idea that reflective self-awareness is a latecomer and depends on the contribution of a more basic form of self-awareness, one that is part and parcel of phenomenal consciousness, is widespread and has been defended by thinkers from a variety of different philosophical traditions, including phenomenology, analytic philosophy and German idealism. A persistent defense of the idea, which draws on resources from these three philosophical traditions, has also been a hallmark of the so-called Heidelberg School (see, e.g., Henrich 1970, Frank 1991, Zahavi 2007). The notion of pre-reflective self-awareness is much more accepted today than 20 years ago and has become part of the standard repertoire in philosophy of mind. The notion’s increasing popularity has not surprisingly also led to an increasing amount of criticism. One line of attack has focused on what might be called the universality question. Is it truly the case that all conscious mental states involve pre-reflective self-awareness? Does the link hold by necessity such that it characterizes all experiences, however primitive or disordered they might be, or might it, for instance, be something that only holds true for a more limited group of experiences, say, normal, adult, experiences? I have discussed some of these objections in other publications (Zahavi 2014, 2018). My focus in the present contribution will be on a particular radical objection, one that seeks to undercut the appeal to pre-reflective self-awareness by arguing that there ultimately is no such thing as phenomenal consciousness. Engaging with this radical view will also allow me to bring yet another diverse tradition into the conversation, namely Buddhist philosophy. 1. Engaging with Buddhism A classical division found in Indian philosophy is the one between reflectionist or other- illumination (paraprakāśa) theories and reflexivist or self-illumination (svaprakāśa) theories (MacKenzie 2007). Whereas the first group of positions held that self-awareness is the product of