{"id":3062,"date":"2013-05-10T17:27:49","date_gmt":"2013-05-11T00:27:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.janhenderson.com\/self\/?p=3062"},"modified":"2013-06-01T11:47:17","modified_gmt":"2013-06-01T18:47:17","slug":"philosophers-ask-what-do-we-mean-by-self","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.janhenderson.com\/self\/philosophers-ask-what-do-we-mean-by-self\/","title":{"rendered":"Philosophers ask: What do we mean by \u201cself\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"problems-of-the-self\"<\/a>Psychology is a relatively recent discipline (late 19th century). With a few notable exceptions (William James, neo-Freudians, humanists), psychologists largely ignored the self until the late 20th century. Only with the decline of behaviorism and psychoanalysis did the self emerge as a topic worthy of consideration.<\/p>\n

Philosophy, on the other hand, has a long history of examining the self. In the East we have the Upanishads<\/em>, the Tao te Ching<\/em>, and the teachings of Gautama Buddha. In the West, we have Plato, followed by pre-Enlightenment religious philosophers who were concerned with the sinful qualities of the self (egotism, pride, selfishness). During the Enlightenment, various philosophers — Descartes, Locke, Hume, Leibnitz, Berkeley, Kant — weighed in on the subject. Ever since that time, philosophers have continually disagreed on the nature of the self.<\/p>\n

Philosophers refer to \u201cthe problem of the self.\u201d This \u201cproblem\u201d includes such questions as: Is there a self? Can we know it? What is the nature of self-awareness? How does the self relate to the mind and the body? What (if anything) does the self have to do with the brain?<\/p>\n

There is no problem of the self<\/h3>\n

In an article called There is No Problem of the Self<\/a> (PDF), Eric T. Olson argues that there are so many disparate uses (and thus meanings) of the term self that philosophy should consider abandoning the word altogether. When a discussion claims to be about the self, he says, it\u2019s really about something else. Since a problem has to be about<\/em> something, and philosophers can\u2019t agree on what that is, there is no problem of the self.<\/p>\n

Olson lists eight answers philosophers might give to the question \u201cWhat is a self?\u201d (and I\u2019m sure he could have given many more).<\/p>\n

Three of Olson\u2019s answers are similar to those offered by psychologists Leary and Tangney, discussed in the last post<\/a>. (quotations in what follows are from Olson<\/em>)<\/p>\n