We have a 'sense of self', but what sort of thing is the self? Some philosophers suggest that the elusive 'I' to which we seem to refer is a piece of philosopher’s nonsense: a delusion, a fiction. Others try to reduce all facts about first-person experiences to empirically researchable data about bodies and brains. Yet that seems to leave something out. It goes against how we experience ourselves – namely, as a single persisting thing not exhausted by its physicality, and as a moral subject with its own thoughts and responsible for its own actions. It feels like something to take on the first-person point of view of a self.
A sense of self is amongst the most immediate and basic conceptions of who we are, and it sits below the level of plausible cultural variation.
On this course we set out together to explore a number of influential philosophical and psychological theories which attempt to explain what’s behind this most fundamental aspect of human experience.