prereflection

Prereflection is a term used in philosophy and cognitive science to denote mental states or activities that occur before explicit self-reflection. It refers to a pre-conscious or pre-conceptual form of experience in which the subject is the agent of experience without reflective thought about that role. The term is most common in discussions of phenomenology, where prereflective or pre-reflective experience describes the immediate sense of being a subject of experience that is not yet turned onto itself as an object of thought.

The word combines the Latin prae- 'before' with reflection. In practice, prereflection covers bodily, perceptual, and affective processes that do not require self-evaluation. For example, the automatic coordination of perception and action, the felt sense of embodiment, or the emergence of an emotion before one can name it. In psychology and cognitive science, prereflective processes are associated with implicit or non-conscious processing that informs subsequent deliberate reasoning.

Debates surround the exact status and boundaries of prereflection. Some theorists treat it as a distinct phase that must be distinguished from non-conscious processing, while others merge it with broader pre-conscious or automatic cognition. Critics note that the term can be vague and difficult to operationalize in empirical research. In applied contexts, the idea of prereflection informs studies of self-awareness, embodied cognition, and the foundations of subjective experience.

See also prereflective self-consciousness, phenomenology, reflexivity, self-awareness.