 This argument is powerful, but can be challenged. Supporters of the autonomy thesis, beginning with Bermúdez (1994), have suggested that the interrelated capacities to represent the spatial configuration of the environment and to represent one’s own location within the environment need not depend on the possession of a primitive first-person concept. Rather, these capacities can be understood at the nonconceptual level. In particular, Bermúdez (1995, 1998) appeals to the notion of a nonconceptual point of view to explain the interdependence of spatial awareness of the distal environment and awareness of one’s own location within that environment at the nonconceptual level. For further discussion of this type of nonconceptual self-consciousness see section  7.