The crucial problem of self-consciousness is how to account for knowing self-reference without launching into a regress or without presupposing self-consciousness rather than accounting for it (circle). In the literature we find two bottom-up proposals for solving the traditional problem: the postulation of nonconceptual forms of self-consciousness and the postulation of a pre-reflexive form of self-consciousness. However, none of them seems satisfactory for several reasons. In contrast, I believe that the only way of solving this traditional puzzle is to assume another bottom-up approach, namely the one that accepts Baker’ s challenge to naturalism and provides a naturalist framework for self-consciousness; in Baker’ s terms, to account for self-consciousness in non-intentional, non-semantic, and nonmental terms. That is the aim of this paper. My thesis rests on two claims. The first is the metaphysical claim that every creature enjoys a fundamental relation to itself, namely identity. The second is Dretske’ s epistemological claim that representations do not require a Self, traditionally understood as the principle that spontaneously organizes mental activity and lies behind all intentional acts. Briefly, I argue for a naturalization of self-consciousness that postulates nonlinguistic, naturalized, and selfless form of representation of the cognitive system based on the metaphysical, fundamental relation everyone has to himself, namely identity. Selfconsciousness emerges when brain states are selflessly recruited through learning to represent the cognitive system itself as a subject.