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Single Idea 5661

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

Full Idea

Normally we identify experiences in terms of the persons whose experiences they are; but this will lead to a vicious circle if persons themselves are to be analysed in terms of their experiences.

Gist of Idea

We identify experiences by their owners, so we can't define owners by their experiences

Source

A.J. Ayer (The Concept of a Person [1963], §I)

Book Ref

Ayer,A.J.: 'The Concept of a Person etc' [Macmillan 1973], p.84

A Reaction

This (from a leading empiricist) is a nice basic challenge to all empiricist accounts of personal identity. One might respond my saying that the circle is not vicious. There are two interlinked concepts (experience and persons), like day and night.

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]