| 5266 | It would seem that the thinking part is the individual self [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: It would seem that the thinking part is, or most nearly is, the individual self. | |
| From: Aristotle (Nicomachean Ethics [c.334 BCE], 1166a25) | |
| A reaction: It seems that where Socrates identifies the self with the whole of the psuché (and hence is interested in its immortality, in 'Phaedo'), Aristotle considers the self to be merely the thinking and rational part of the psuché. |
| 1401 | Since I only observe myself to be thinking, I conclude that that is my essence [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: Since I do not observe that any other thing belongs necessarily to my nature or essence except that I am a thinking thing, I rightly conclude that my essence consists in this alone, that I am a thinking thing, or substance whose essence is thinking. | |
| From: René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §6.78) | |
| A reaction: This actually appears to be my favourite confusion - of episemology with ontology. Compare 'whenever I see him he is smiling, so he must be happy'. Personally I am happy to say that my essence is thinking, as long as it needn't be conscious. |
| 2299 | I can exist without imagination and sensing, but they can't exist without me [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: I can understand myself without the faculties of imagining and sensing, but not vice versa; I cannot understand them without me - a substance endowed with understanding. | |
| From: René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §6.78) | |
| A reaction: I think this is a fundamental and important error on Descartes' part. The idea that understanding is possible without imagination (and even sensation) is wrong, and it leads to the misleading concept of 'pure' reason. |
| 6907 | For Descartes a person's essence is the mind because objects are perceived by mind, not senses [Descartes, by Feuerbach] |
| Full Idea: For Descartes the essence of corporeal things is not an object of the senses, but only of the mind; and hence it is not the senses but the mind that is the essence of the perceiving subject, that is, of man. | |
| From: report of René Descartes (Meditations [1641], 2) by Ludwig Feuerbach - Principles of Philosophy of the Future §17 | |
| A reaction: This, of course, is why Descartes' approach can lead to idealism and solipsism, whereas the other approach leads to empiricism and animalism (Idea 6669). |
| 5017 | In thinking we shut ourselves off from other substances, showing our identity and separateness [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: Because each one of us understands what he thinks, and that in thinking he can shut himself off from every other substance, we may conclude that each of us is really distinct from every other thinking substance and from corporeal substance. | |
| From: René Descartes (Principles of Philosophy [1646], I.60) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be a novel argument which requires elucidation. I can 'shut myself off from every other substance'? If I shut myself off from thinking about food, does that mean hunger is not part of me? Or convince yourself that you don't have a brother? |
| 6721 | Ideas are perceived by the mind, soul or self [Berkeley] |
| Full Idea: The thing which knows or perceives ideas is what I call mind, spirit, soul or myself. | |
| From: George Berkeley (The Principles of Human Knowledge [1710], §2) | |
| A reaction: The interest here is in making no distinction between 'mind' and 'self', which seems to ally Berkeley with Locke's view of personal identity, as continuity of consciousness. The addition of 'soul' tries to connect Locke to Christian thought. |
| 1352 | Thoughts change continually, but the self doesn't [Reid] |
| Full Idea: My thoughts, and actions, and feelings, change every moment: they have no continued, but a successive, existence: but that self, or I, to which they belong, is permanent. | |
| From: Thomas Reid (Essays on Intellectual Powers 3: Memory [1785], III.Ch 4) | |
| A reaction: The word 'permanent' may be excessive, but one could hardly say there is nothing more to personal identity than the contents of consciousnes, given how much and how quickly those continually fluctuate. |
| 5549 | Mental representations would not be mine if they did not belong to a unified self-consciousness [Kant] |
| Full Idea: The manifold representations that are given in a certain intuition would not all together be my representations if they did not all together belong to a self-consciousness. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B132) | |
| A reaction: Kant's 'transcendental ego' may only be a posh way of restating the Cartesian Cogito. Descartes was keen to assert not only that there must be a thinker, but also that its essence was to be unified in a manner beyond the physical (Ideas 2303 and 1400). |