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Single Idea 5551

[filed under theme 16. Persons / C. Self-Awareness / 3. Limits of Introspection ]

Full Idea

I have no cognition of myself as I am, but only as I appear to myself.

Gist of Idea

I have no cognition of myself as I am, but only as I appear to myself

Source

Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B158)

Book Ref

Kant,Immanuel: 'Critique of Pure Reason', ed/tr. Guyer,P /Wood,A W [CUO 1998], p.260

A Reaction

The key thought of the 'transcendental ego', showing a clear difference from Descartes, who thinks he directly knows himself (Idea 1401). He disagrees with Hume (Idea 1317) when he says there is an appearance. What could the true ego be like?

Related Ideas

Idea 1401 Since I only observe myself to be thinking, I conclude that that is my essence [Descartes]

Idea 1317 A person is just a fast-moving bundle of perceptions [Hume]

The 23 ideas with the same theme [what may be unknowable by introspection]:

5886 Like the eye, the soul has no power to see itself, but sees other things [Cicero]
1316 Introspection always discovers perceptions, and never a Self without perceptions [Hume]
5551 I have no cognition of myself as I am, but only as I appear to myself [Kant]
12115 Introspection is pure illusion; we can obviously observe everything except ourselves [Comte]
24144 A cognitive mechanism wanting to know itself is absurd! [Nietzsche]
2932 'Know thyself' is impossible and ridiculous [Nietzsche]
7157 We think each thought causes the next, unaware of the hidden struggle beneath [Nietzsche]
5689 Freud and others have shown that we don't know our own beliefs, feelings, motive and attitudes [Freud, by Shoemaker]
20429 Most of us are too close to our own motives to understand them [Fry]
5380 In perceiving the sun, I am aware of sun sense-data, and of the perceiver of the data [Russell]
7116 When we are unreflective (as when chasing a tram) there is no 'I' [Sartre]
7124 The Ego never appears except when we are not looking for it [Sartre]
1353 Reporting on myself has the same problems as reporting on you [Ryle]
1354 We cannot introspect states of anger or panic [Ryle]
5661 We identify experiences by their owners, so we can't define owners by their experiences [Ayer]
15815 Sartre says the ego is 'opaque'; I prefer to say that it is 'transparent' [Chisholm]
3468 I cannot observe my own subjectivity [Searle]
3363 We often can't decide what emotion, or even sensation, we are experiencing [Kim]
3412 How do we distinguish our anger from embarrassment? [Kim]
3102 Why don't we experience or remember going to sleep at night? [Magee]
5674 We can't introspect ourselves as objects, because that would involve possible error [Cassam]
6671 It seems impossible to get generally applicable mental concepts from self-observation [Lowe]
3518 I'm not the final authority on my understanding of maths [Maslin]