The Self

Immanuel Kant states that there a number of things that a human has a priori. That is to say, there are basic self-evident aspects of being human that simply must be true. He also wanted to explain that there are ways of human understanding that pave the way for us to understand the world we live in. Firstly, he, being the genius that he is, agrees with me in knowing that humans experience and perceive causality (Prolegomena to perhaps Any Future Metaphysics). Also, he explains human perception into Categories of Understanding: quantity (unity, plurality, totality), quality (reality, negation, limitation), relation (substance, cause, community) and modality (possibility, existence, necessity).

So this is how we think, so what? I am trying to explain myself and how my mind works, but I still don’t even know what ‘I’ or the ‘self’ really means. Dictionaries see it as "the ego" and as a unification of thoughts, emotions, and body. I can agree with that. But we must still define the ego relative to something else. And the only thing that I can relate it to so far is causality. Fortunatetly so, because the two go hand in hand.

Okay, so here is how it works:

First, we need to go back to Hume again, now that we understand Cause and Effect, (which he didn’t, he didn’t have Kant like I do). Remember when I was talking about Ideas and Impressions? Lets review.

Human understanding depends on mathematical logic, logical categories of understanding, and cause and effect. Our thoughts and ideas only come after experience and impressions. Therefore, our mind’s existence and thought is caused by the world that it perceives from outside the mind. For it to understand the notion of cause and effect, it has to perceive time, even though it can only ever exist in the present moment, it seems to be forced into having a notion that there is a before and after. The fact that time exist or does not exist, is irrelevant. The fact is, human understanding requires time to exist, and can only exist in a universe where it does. By defining myself, I have to define time, the one thing cannot go without the other.

Conclusion # 3: I am a logical entity that has a perception entirely dependant on the existence of time. Furthermore, my ideas are dependant on my perceptual, impressionable experience. By necessary need of causality, I must be dependant on the universe presented before me.

Causality is intimately bonded to us. I feel more connected to causality than my own body. And so, if I am anything, I am causality. And causality works through a progression of time. And so I necessarily work through a progression of time. I am a perceiver of time. There is a blend of our mutual need for each other: time exists in the human realm for me to perceive it, and I am able to exist because I perceive time.

Let me explain a little about perception. What I perceive IS myself. Especially since what occurs in my thoughts always follows what is perceived.

This is the next thing I can do to explain who I am, after causality. I am intimately connected to time to the point of us being indistinguishable from each other.

Conclusion # 4: Not only do I perceive time, I am time.


Next is the body.

I seem to be connected to stuff that extends into space. I perceive a three dimensional world that I extend and be in. This connection that I have to the world is in the same logical thought process as the one with time. I may be able to cause my body to move in space, but at the same end, my thoughts that seem to cause are caused by what I perceive in space. Through the connection and flow of causation, I am the world, and the world is me. To distinguish the two is to disregard the first human principle of a causal self.

Conclusion # 5: I am the world, located from a particular vantage point of time and space.

But how do I know that there is any other vantage point other than the one I am currently perceiving?

Well, I can make a relation between earlier points of time relative to the present. I perceive time, and I owe my thoughts and ideas to ones that I have already experienced. As I ‘remember’ myself as an entity that existed earlier in the past, I understand that I had less perceptions, which means my world is smaller. If I trace back far enough, I can see that my world was very, very small. Now it is very big. As I learn and perceive time, my world gets larger. The more I do this, the bigger my world gets. The world will continue to do this, as long as time continues. Therefore, I want you to understand the self as a small multi-dimensional figure that grows in all directions in a very large multi-dimensional box as it progresses through time. (Kind of like mold, growing on bread). I am not able to move my vantage point to another location, I merely grow until I reach that location.

And yet, as much as I grow, I cannot seem to enter your mind, and so I do not know if it exist. But that is saying that I am individual and that so are you. In fact, I am not, we are merely perceivers. Often, we can perceive nearly the exact same thing. Perceptions are merely concepts, (matter hasn’t been proved yet and is actually mostly irrelevant, it is just a convention that has to exist for human understanding). Do you think love as something that can only be perceived by you? No, when we both perceive love, it is like perceiving the sun or a tree, and we both ARE that sun, that tree, that love, there is no distinguishing feature that we are able to use because we are causal souls, that are bonded to the world (making Kant‘s categories of human understanding complete Bull S**t, mwa hah) . In fact, the world is just one blend of indistinguishability , it is One. We are merely small parts of it. In fact, the notions of ‘I’ and ‘We’ don’t even really have a significance beyond human convention. We are all a small part within the One, this universe bonded by time, space, and causation. I was thinking of a good name when referring to myself/ourself/worldself. Worldself is a pretty good describing word and I may use it from time to time. Another word I could use for this concept is none other than God.
 

 

Reviews

[J. Marc]

I agree totally!! Kant is still by any standard a modern genius. No one has asked so many pertinent questions about the human being than him. He has a great place in the book I am writing right now, as much as a philosopher, as the clever man supposedly behind the elaboration of the preussian system. So, you can tell I read your writing with avidity. Surprised!?