 But to limit ourselves to these remarks may be to neglect another (albeit related) dimension to the interest of these “nature and boundaries of mind and self” questions, one perhaps more evident in the phenomenological tradition—an inherent interest in understanding what sort of beings we are. If being minded (or being capable of understanding) is essential to what we are, the question of how consciousness figures in mind (or understanding) is also a question of how it figures in our nature. And, if a satisfactory philosophical conception of what sort of beings we are involves a grasp of how our consciousness reveals to us ourselves and the world, “boundary” questions about its detachability from our natural and social environments take on an additional dimension of interest. To answer them, we need also to address the themes of basic forms and reflexivity. If (as some phenomenologists’ views suggest) a pre-predicative, pre-reflective, practical understanding undetachable from the world is part of what makes us what we are, we may need to recognize the undetachability of our intentional consciousness. And if the right conception of basic forms and reflexivity sees us as essentially embodied understanders (as in Merleau-Ponty’s view), we should perhaps be suspicious of hopes or plans to keep our minds and leave our bodies behind. Further, we need to see—against this background—what kind of distinctive self-understanding reflective self-consciousness makes possible, if this is also part of what we are. We need to ask how much this sort of self-consciousness can do to detach us from social roles and practices, and what room this allows for authenticity, autonomy and self-constitution. (This brings us to issues prominent in Heidegger and Sartre—but also, in Korsgaard, and in Kantian moral psychology generally.)