On Sameness and Identity: A Psychological Study: Being a Contribution to the Foundations of a Theory of KnowledgeFullerton, George Stuart
Philosophy
On Sameness and Identity: A Psychological Study: Being a Contribution to the Foundations of a Theory of Knowledge
Fullerton, George Stuart
Knowledge, Theory of
5. That we may speak of the self and its representative as the same.
The memory image of a later time may stand for the self as experienced
at an earlier. Unless it be claimed that yesterday's consciousness
of self is actually to-day's consciousness, one must admit that the
self remembered is the self known through its proxy. And one may in
his reasonings about the self use as a symbol the pronoun "I," paying
little attention as he goes along to what it stands for, and yet
knowing it may serve in place of the obscure something it represents.
These are instances of sameness in sense V.
6. That we never use the word same in sense VI in speaking of the self
as we do in speaking of the not-self. We do not say two men perceive
the same self as we say they perceive the same tree or house. The
familiar distinction between the subjective and the objective marks out
the latter as in a sense, peculiar to itself, common and impersonal.
I have already shown what we have in mind when we say two men see the
same material thing. We have a picture of the thing, and of the bodies
of the two men in a certain relation to it; and we imagine a copy of
the thing as in some way connected with each of these bodies, and due
to its relation to the thing. When relations to a material object are
in question all the bodies in a consciousness are on a par. We may
directly perceive the one thing and two or more bodies holding similar
relations to it. But it is not so in the case of selves. The one self
that we find in each consciousness seems to be peculiarly related to
one body to the exclusion of others. And as we have not, in the case of
this self, the conditions which led us to mark the similar relations
of two human bodies (our representatives of the men) to one material
object, by saying two men see the same thing, we, of course, do not
say that two men see the same self. The word same, in sense VI, we may
regard, then, as inapplicable to the self as immediately known.[28]
This appears to be due, however, not to the nature of this self in
itself considered, but to its peculiar relation to the other things in
a consciousness.
[28] Owing to the ambiguity already pointed out as existing in terms
which stand for our objects of knowledge and our knowledge of these
objects, it would seem almost impossible to avoid misconception
without unendurable reiteration. In the above paragraph, by the words
"body," "object," "self," etc., I always refer to things immediately
known.
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