Are We Intimately Conscious of What We Call Our Self?

Abstract

One answer to the Unity Question is that the unity of experiences consists in their all being related to one and the same self-conscious self. To this answer Hume would object that ‘self or person is not any one impression, but that to which our several impressions are suppos’d to have a reference’ (42, p. 251). One philosopher who supposed this was George Berkeley. In this respect Berkeley can be seen as a precursor of Immanuel Kant. Before considering an argument that has been advanced for the self being conscious of itself let us, very briefly, review what Berkeley and Kant said on this question. It is always easier to understand a view on some issue in philosophy if one has first understood other views on the same issue.