Functionalism and self-consciousness

I offer a philosophically well-motivated work-around for a problem that Geo rge Bealer ('Self-consciousness', Philosophical Review v. 106, 1997) has id entified, which he claims is fatal to functionalism. The problem concerns h ow to generate a satisfactory Ramsey sentence of a psychological theory in which mental predicates occur within the scopes of other mental predicates. My central claim is that the functional roles in terms of which a creature capable of self-consciousness identifies her own mental states must be rol es that items could play within creatures whose psychology is less complex than her own.