Chapter 4 Self Consciousness and the Self From

Chapter 4: Self Consciousness and the Self: From Descartes to Kant Introducing Philosophy, 10 th edition Robert C. Solomon, Kathleen Higgins, and Clancy Martin

Rene Descartes (1596 -1650) • French philosopher who is usually considered the “father of modern philosophy” • Raised in the French aristocracy and educated at the Jesuit College of La Fléche • Became skilled in the classics, law, and medicine but decided these fell far short of proper knowledge, and so he turned to modern science and mathematics • First book was a defense of Copernicus, which he prudently did not publish

• Discovered, while still young, what we now call “analytic geometry” and used this discovery as a model for the rest of his career • Basing the principles of philosophy and theology on a similar mathematical basis, he was able to develop a method in philosophy that could be carried through according to individual reason and that no longer depended upon appeal to authorities whose insights and methods were questionable

• In Discourse on Method (1637), he set out these basic principles, which he had already used in Meditations on First Philosophy (not published until 1641), to reexamine the foundations of philosophy • He sought a basic premise from which, as in a geometrical proof, he could deduce all those principles that could be known with certainty

But what then am I? A thing which thinks. What is a thing which thinks? It is a thing which doubts, understands, affirms, denies, wills, refuses, which also imagines and feels —Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy • Descartes knows that he exists and continues to exist as long as he is a “thing that thinks” • This consciousness that allows us to know that we exist composes our soul, which is a substance • For Descartes, self-identity depends on consciousness

John Locke • Spent early life in the English countryside • Taught philosophy and the classics at Oxford until he earned a medical degree and turned to medicine • Much of his mature life was spent in politics; joined a group that was fighting for the overthrow of the government • Forced to flee England in 1683; lived in Holland until the Glorious Revolution of 1688

• Received a government position but spent most of his time writing his two Treatises on Government (1689) to justify the revolution and its political principles and defending his Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690), which he had written while in exile • Generally credited as not only the founder of British empiricism but also the father of modern political liberalism

• Self-identity depends on our having the same consciousness and memories • He distinguishes between a substance (the soul) and consciousness • Memory provides an infallible link between what we might call different stages of a person • Two objections: 1) We forget much of what we experience 2) Our memories are not always accurate

David Hume (1711 -1776) • Often admired as the outstanding genius of British philosophy • Born in Scotland (Edinburgh), where he spent much of his life; he often traveled to London and Paris • After a vacation in France, wrote the Treatise of Human Nature (1739) • Achieved notoriety as well as literary fame in his lifetime, was involved in scandals, and was proscribed by the Church

• Was refused professorships at the leading universities for his “heresies” and yet was, by all accounts, an utterly delightful man who never lost his sense of humor • Was “the life of the party” in London, Edinburgh, and Paris, and he had long set the standard of the ideal thinker for British philosophers • Hume’s Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (1751) created as much of a stir in the intellectual world as his Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748)

• Like the book on human understanding, the book on morality was a rewriting of his youthful Treatise, which never received the attention it deserved • Hume’s thesis in moral philosophy was as skeptical and shocking as his thesis in epistemology: – There is no knowledge of right and wrong and no rational defense of moral principles – These are based upon sentiment or feeling and, as such, cannot be defended by argument

. . . I may venture to affirm of the rest of mankind, that they are nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in perpetual flux and movement —David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature

• The self is a fiction. When we are selfconscious we are aware of only fleeting thoughts, feelings, and perceptions; we do not have an impression of the self or a thinking substance • We are accustomed to the spatiotemporal continuity of an object and rely on resemblance as a criterion of identity. We cannot even establish the identity of objects on this account • The argument “I can never catch myself” relies on a presupposition: that there is a “myself” to be caught

Immanuel Kant (1724 -1804) Life is the subjective condition of all our possible experience; consequently we can only infer the permanence of the soul in life, for the death of a man is the end of all experience —Immanuel Kant

• German philosopher, probably the greatest philosopher since Plato and Aristotle, who lived in a small town in East Prussia (Konigsburg) • Was a professor at the university there for more than thirty years; never married; his neighbors said that his habits were so regular that they could set their watches by him (a later German poet said, “It is hard to write about Kant’s life, for he had no life”) • Yet, from a safe distance, he was one of the most persistent defenders of the French Revolution and, in philosophy, created no less a revolution himself

• His philosophical system was embodied in three huge volumes: Critique of Pure Reason (1781), Critique of Practical Reason (1788), and Critique of Judgment (1790) • He changed the thinking of philosophers as much as the revolution changed France • His central thesis was the defense of what he called synthetic a priori judgments (and their moral and religious equivalents) by showing their necessity for all human experience • In this way, he escaped from Hume’s skepticism and avoided the dead-end intuitionism of his rational predecessors

Kant’s Transcendental Ego • Kant agrees with Hume: – Identity is not found in selfconsciousness – The enduring self is not an object of experience; it is transcendental

• If there was a different self at each moment of consciousness, we would not be able to perceive anything • Because we do experience objects, we must assume that we have a unified consciousness that combines all of these impressions into the perception of these objects • This is Kant’s self; the “I” that had the experience can always be found

• The self, for Kant, is also the activity of applying the rules by which we organize our experience. • We must “synthesize” our experiences into a unity, for we could not come to have any knowledge otherwise • He calls this the transcendental unity of apperception • The transcendental ego is basic and necessary for all human experience

Kant versus Descartes: Two Conceptions of the Self Kant objects to Descartes on three grounds: 1. Our concern with self-consciousness is given impetus because we are not often selfconscious 2. Kant does not believe that the thinking self is a thinking thing because the self is not in our experience but rather responsible for it. The self is an activity, which undermines the traditional concept of the soul

3. Kant believes that we need two very different conceptions of self. The first is that the transcendental self is essential to being a self, and the second is the idea of the empirical ego, which includes all of those particular things that make us different people. This allows us to differentiate between particular selves