Gale Strawson argues thiat it is the early realization of the fact that one’s thoughts are unobservable by others, the experience of the profound sense in which one is alone in one’s head — these are among the very deepest facts about the character of human life, and found the sense of the mental self. It is perhaps most often vivid when one is alone and thinking, but it can be equally vivid in a room full of people. It connects with a feeling that nearly everyone has had intensely at some time — the feeling that one’s body is just a vehicle or vessel for the mental thing that is what one really or most essentially is.
There are other views of what the 'self' is:
I know that I exist; the question is, what is this ‘I’ that I know? (Descartes 1641)
The soul, so far as we can conceive it, is nothing but a system or train of different perceptions. (Hume 1739)
What was I before I came to self-consciousness? . . . I did not exist at all, for I was not an I. The I exists only insofar as it is conscious of itself. . . . The self posits itself, and by virtue of this mere self-assertion it exists. (Fichte 1794–5)
The ‘Self’ . . . , when carefully examined, is found to consist mainly of . . . peculiar motions in the head or between the head and throat. (James 1890)
The ego continuously constitutes itself as existing. (Husserl 1929)
Any fixed categorization of the Self is a big goof. (Ginsberg 1963)
The self which is reflexively referred to is synthesized in that very act of reflexive self-reference. (Nozick 1981)
The self . . . is a mythical entity. . . . It is a philosophical muddle to allow the space which differentiates ‘my self’ from ‘myself’ to generate the illusion of a mysterious entity distinct from . . . the human being. (Kenny 1988)
A self . . . is . . . an abstraction . . . , [a] Center of Narrative Gravity. (Dennett 1991)
My body is an object all right, but my self jolly well is not! (Farrell 1996)1
There are other views of what the 'self' is:
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