Prereflective

Prereflective is an adjective used to describe states or processes that occur before, or without, deliberate reflection. In philosophy, especially phenomenology and philosophy of mind, prereflective self-consciousness refers to the immediate, pre-conceptual sense that one is the subject of one’s own experiences. This prereflective mode is non-judgmental and pre-analytic: a person experiences perception, sensation, or action with an implicit sense of ownership or mineness, without deliberately thinking "I am experiencing this" or "this is mine."

It contrasts with reflective self-consciousness, where one explicitly contemplates oneself, evaluates reasons, or treats oneself as an object of thought. The prereflective layer is thought to underlie everyday perception, bodily experience, and action: for example, while moving a limb or seeing a color, the subject already has a felt sense that the experience is happening to them before any reflective judgment arises.

Within phenomenology, prereflective self-awareness is tied to concepts like ipseity and pre-reflective ownership of experience. It is used to explain how experiences feel inherently mine and first-person; some debates question how such prereflective content is constituted and how it differs from, or gives rise to, higher-order self-awareness and linguistic reporting. The term is also used in cognitive science and psychology to discuss non-deliberative aspects of perception and action.