Philosophy of Self

• Philosophy of self examines the idea of the self at a conceptual level.

• Various ideas about what constitutes the self have been proposed, including:

  • The self as an activity.

  • The self as independent of the senses.

  • The bundle theory of the self.

  • The self as a narrative center of gravity.

  • The self as a linguistic or social construct rather than a physical entity.

• The concept of the self, or its non-existence, is also significant in Eastern philosophy, including Buddhist philosophy.

Definitions of the self

• Most philosophical definitions of self by thinkers like Descartes, Locke, Hume, and William James are expressed in the first person perspective.

• A third person definition of self aims for objectivity and operationalism, avoiding reference to specific mental qualia.

• To an observer, an individual’s behavior and speech reflect their true inner self and provide insight into their identity.

• The intentions of another person can only be inferred from something that emanates from that individual.

• The particular characteristics of the self are what determine its identity.

Concepts of self

Self as an Activity

• Aristotle, following Plato, defined the psyche as the core essence of a living being.

• He claimed the psyche did not exist apart from the body, but considered its “intellect” part to be immortal and perpetual, unlike the organism-dependent vegetative/nutritive and perceptual functions.

• In his theory of causes and of act and potency, Aristotle emphasized beings in relation to their actual manifestation, defining the soul by its actual effects.

• For example, if a knife had a soul, the act of cutting would be that soul, as cutting is part of the essence of what it means to be a knife.

• More precisely, the soul is the “first activity” of a living body, a state or potential for an actual or “second” activity.

• Aristotle compared “The axe has an edge for cutting” to “humans have bodies for rational activity,” making the potential for rational activity the essence of the human soul.

• He stated: “Soul is an actuality or formulable essence of something that possesses a potentiality of being besouled.”

• Also stated: “When mind is set free from its present conditions it appears as just what it is and nothing more: this alone is immortal and eternal.”

• Aristotle elaborated on the soul mainly in his work De Anima (On the Soul).

• He believed the soul had four parts: the calculative and scientific parts on the rational side used for decision-making, and the desiderative and vegetative parts on the irrational side responsible for identifying needs.

• This division of the soul’s functions resembles Plato’s tripartite theory.

• Aristotle discussed the problem of unity and divisibility of the soul: if the soul is naturally divisible, what holds it together?

• He argued that it is not the body that holds the soul together; rather, the soul holds the body together, because when the soul departs, the body expires and decomposes.

• If something else holds the soul together, one must ask whether that thing is one or many parts; if one, why not call it the soul? If divisible, then what holds it together? This leads to an infinite regress.

Self Independent of the Senses

• While imprisoned in a castle, Avicenna wrote the famous “floating man” thought experiment to demonstrate human self-awareness and the substantiality of the soul.

• The experiment asks readers to imagine themselves suspended in the air, completely isolated from all sensations, including no sensory contact with their own bodies.

• Avicenna argues that in this scenario, one would still retain self-consciousness.

• He concludes that the idea of the self is not dependent on any physical thing, and the soul should be understood as a primary given substance, not in relative terms.

• This argument was later refined and simplified by René Descartes in epistemic terms, who stated: “I can abstract from the supposition of all external things, but not from the supposition of my own consciousness.”

Bundle theory of self

• David Hume observed that we tend to think of ourselves as the same person over time, despite many changes.

• He questioned which features can change without altering the underlying self.

• Hume denies a distinction between the various features of a person and a separate, mysterious self that bears those features.

• Upon introspection, we are only ever conscious of particular perceptions; the self is a bundle or collection of different perceptions that succeed one another rapidly and are in constant flux.

• Our imagination naturally connects ideas by resemblance, creating a bond and association between them.

• The senses change their objects regularly and contiguously in space and time, so the imagination adopts a similar method of thinking along the parts of space and time.

• For Hume, these perceptions do not belong to anything enduring; instead, the soul is like a commonwealth, retaining identity through many different, related, yet constantly changing elements.

• The question of personal identity becomes about characterizing the loose cohesion of one’s personal experiences.

• In the Appendix to his Treatise, Hume expressed dissatisfaction with his account of the self but did not revisit the issue.

• The Ship of Theseus paradox serves as an analogy for the self as a bundle of parts in flux.

Self as a narrative center of gravity

• Daniel Dennett proposes a deflationary theory of the self, arguing that selves are not physically detectable.

• He compares the self to a convenient fiction, similar to a center of gravity in physics, which is useful for solving problems but does not correspond to a tangible entity.

• Just as the center of gravity of a hoop is a point in thin air, the self is not a physical object but a conceptual tool.

• People continuously tell themselves stories to make sense of their world, featuring a character within these narratives.

• This convenient but fictional character in the stories is what we call the self.

Self as merely syntactic

• Aaron Sloman proposed that words like self, selves, herself, itself, themselves, myself, etc., do not refer to a special type of entity.

• Instead, these words provide powerful syntactical mechanisms for constructing utterances.

• They allow for repeated reference to the same thing without tedious or obscure repetition of names or other referring expressions.

Self as perspective

• One conception of the self arises from the observation of one existing as oneself and not as someone else.

• Benj Hellie coined the phrase “the vertiginous question” referring to why I am me and not someone else.

• The question asks why, among all subjects of experience, this particular one (e.g., Hellie) has live experiences.

• A common response reduces the question to a tautology: why are Hellie’s experiences live from Hellie’s perspective?

• Hellie argues this response leaves something out, illustrated by a parable contrasting a global view of the world and an embedded single-subject perspective.

• Other philosophers have addressed this question with different terms:

  • Tim S. Roberts calls it the “Even Harder Problem of Consciousness“.

  • Herbert Spiegelberg refers to it as the “I-am-me experience“.

  • German psychologists term it “Ich-Erlebnis“.

• Thomas Nagel discusses personal identity and first-person perspectives in The View from Nowhere.

• Nagel contrasts passive and active points of view and differentiates between the subjective perspective and the objective perspective or the “view from nowhere“.

• The objective perspective values ideas derived independently of any particular point of view.

• Christian List argues the existence of first-personal facts has metaphysical implications, challenging physicalism and some forms of dualism.

• List proposes a “quadrilemma” for consciousness theories: at most three of the following can be true—first-person realism, non-solipsism, non-fragmentation, and one world—thus at least one must be false.

• To reconcile subjectivity without solipsism, List proposes the “many-worlds theory of consciousness“.

• Some philosophers link the nature of the self to theories of time:

  • Vincent Conitzer relates the self to A-series and B-series theories of time, arguing for a metaphysically privileged “I” alongside A-theory.

  • Caspar Hare argues for egocentric presentism, a form of solipsism where others’ experiences are not equally present, and perspectival realism, where perceptual awareness has absolute intrinsic properties.

• Several philosophers have reviewed Hare’s theories.

• Related philosophical discussions include:

  • J. J. Valberg’s horizonal view of the self.

  • Hitoshi Nagai defines the self as the “one who directly experiences the consciousness of oneself“.

  • The self has been argued to be an “idiomodific” concept, emphasizing its unique, self-modifying nature.

Self as nonexistent

• In I am You: The Metaphysical Foundations for Global Ethics, Daniel Kolak argues that the entire concept of the self is incoherent.

• Kolak describes three opposing philosophical views of personal identity: closed individualism, empty individualism, and open individualism.

• Closed individualism is the default view: personal identity is a continuous ray or line through time, where one has a future self.

• Empty individualism holds that personal identity exists only for an infinitesimally small amount of time, meaning the future “you” is an ontologically different being from the present “you”.

• Kolak advocates for open individualism, which claims that individual personal identity does not truly exist, and all conscious beings are, in reality, the same being.

• Similar ideas have been discussed by Derek Parfit in Reasons and Persons, notably through thought experiments like the teletransportation paradox.