Search results
7 Self and Self-Understanding* Lecture I: Some Origins of Self I will reflect on constitutive features of selves—especially a certain sort of self-understanding. This self-understanding is the main topic of these lectures. I ‘Self’ is a technical term, refined from ordinary usage. Ordinary usage is, however, very close to what I want.
It treats the “self” in a nuanced, non-arbitrary, and linguistically familiar way. It sets self-knowledge at the origins of a history of philosophy concerned with living well , orientation toward the truth, and the public debate of reasons for action. And it fi nds in self-knowledge simultaneously an epistemic, ethical, and prac-tical ideal.
- Preface
- 8 Human rationality and arti®cial intelligence
- 9 Action, intention and will
- 10 Personal identity and self-knowledge
- Introduction
- 1
- 1 I say more about the notion of a `subject of experience' in my book of that title, Subjects of Experience (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996): see espe-cially chs. 1 and 2.
- The philosophy of mind is not only concerned with the philo-sophical analysis of mental or psychological concepts, how-
Introduction Empirical psychology and philosophical analysis Metaphysics and the philosophy of mind A brief guide to the rest of this book Minds, bodies and people Cartesian dualism The conceivability argument The divisibility argument Non-Cartesian dualism Are persons simple substances? Conceptual objections to dualistic interaction Empirical obje...
Rationality and reasoning The Wason selection task The base rate fallacy Mental logic versus mental models Two kinds of rationality Arti®cial intelligence and the Turing test Searle's `Chinese room' thought-experiment The Frame Problem Connectionism and the mind Conclusions
Agents, actions and events Intentionality The individuation of actions Intentionality again Trying and willing Volitionism versus its rivals Freedom of the will Motives, reasons and causes Conclusions
The ®rst person Persons and criteria of identity Personal memory Memory and causation Animalism Knowing one's own mind Moore's paradox and the nature of conscious belief Externalism and self-knowledge Self-deception Conclusions
What is the philosophy of mind? One might be tempted to answer that it is the study of philosophical questions concerning the mind and its properties ± questions such as whether the mind is distinct from the body or some part of it, such as the brain, and whether the mind has properties, such as consciousness, which are unique to it. But such an an...
be minded. More speculatively, the things in question might even include disembodied spirits, such as angels and God, if such things do or could exist. Is there some single general term which embraces all minded things, actual and possible? Not, I think, in everyday language, but we can suggest one. My suggestion is that we use the term `subject' f...
ing how either ordinary people or empirical psychologists use the word `see'. Of course, we cannot completely ignore every-day usage in trying to analyse such a concept, but we must be ready to criticise and re®ne that usage where it is confused or vague. The philosophical study of any subject matter is above all a critical and re ̄ective exercise ...
2 It is in the Philosophical Investigations, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe, 2nd edn (Oxford: Blackwell, 1958), § 124, that Ludwig Wittgenstein famously says that `Philosophy may in no way interfere with the actual use of language . . . [i]t leaves everything as it is'. As will be gathered, I strongly disagree with this doctrine, which has, in my view, h...
- 89KB
- 12
The main entry focused on knowledge of one’s own mental states. Yet “self-knowledge” can also be used to refer to knowledge of the self and its nature. Issues about knowledge of the self include: (1) how it is that one distinguishes oneself from others, as the object of a self-attribution; (2) whether self-awareness yields a grasp of the ...
self-contained entity that exists prior to the particular happenings of one’s mental life, but rather as an entity that first emerges through self-formation in the course of mental activity.
- 330KB
- 20
Issues concerning “the self”—its nature, our knowledge of it, mechanisms for transforming it, and much else besides—are historically central and currently active areas of research in philosophy, theology, and psychology.
People also ask
What is the self-formation view of a psychological person?
Is self a purely psychological concept?
Why is the nature of the self important?
What does Kant mean by empirical self-knowledge?
How do you explain self-knowledge?
Is self-knowledge a reason that supports the knowledge?
The concept of the self has been theoretically important in philosophy, psychology, and related social sciences, including sociology, anthropology, and political science. The nature of the self is relevant to explaining many interesting phenomena, including self-consciousness, self-control, and self-esteem (see Thagard and Wood,
