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    Carmelics

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    A person may have direct access to their own essence thro... — Carmelics
    Home/Personal Identity
    HistoryEditSee Inverse

    A person may have direct access to their own essence through self-awareness, even though the essence of external substances like Hesperus cannot be directly accessed.

    Personal IdentityTruth & Knowledge
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    1 reason for
    2 reasons against

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • 1.What makes Hesperus Hesperus is not the observable stereotype but what underlies it, making Hesperus's essence inaccessible through mere thought experiment.
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    • 2.It does not follow from the inaccessibility of external substance essences that no one can ever have access to any essence.
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    • 3.For a person, what makes that person that person does not underlie what is experienceable by that person themselves, but is given directly in their own self-awareness.
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Wittgenstein's private language argument shows that inner ostension cannot fix meaning or reference without public criteria, undermining purely introspective self-knowledge.
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    • 2.Kripkean essence requires more than phenomenal acquaintance—it requires causal-historical grounding that introspection alone cannot provide.
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    • 3.Therefore, self-awareness faces the same referential underdetermination as external substance terms, collapsing the asymmetry the claim depends upon.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Hume's bundle theory demonstrates that introspection reveals only a flux of perceptions, never a persisting self that could constitute an essence.
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    • 2.If no unified self is discoverable through self-awareness, then self-awareness cannot deliver privileged access to a personal essence that grounds identity.
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    Topics

    Personal IdentityTruth & Knowledge

    Connections

    2 topics

    Consciousness & Mind1 linkedPhilosophy of Language1 linked

    Related

    For a person, what makes that person that person does not underlie what is exper...Hume's bundle theory demonstrates that introspection reveals only a flux of perc...If no unified self is discoverable through self-awareness, then self-awareness c...It does not follow from the inaccessibility of external substance essences that ...
    +4 moreShow less
    Kripkean essence requires more than phenomenal acquaintance—it requires causal-h...Therefore, self-awareness faces the same referential underdetermination as exter...What makes Hesperus Hesperus is not the observable stereotype but what underlies...

    Similar

    It does not follow from the inaccessibility of external substance esse...85%It is possible to understand what something is (its essence) without k...82%No essence or independent self can be found in any phenomenon or its c...81%Knowledge of necessary truths and of the essences of created beings is...81%

    Source

    AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid
    SEP: dualism
    View source passageHide passage
    Now it is true that the essence of Hesperus cannot be discovered by a mere thought experiment. That is because what makes Hesperus Hesperus is not the stereotype, but what underlies it. But it does not follow that no one can ever have access to the essence of a substance, but must always rely for identification on a fallible stereotype. One might think that for the person him or herself, while what makes that person that person underlies what is observable to others, it does not underlie what is
    Extraction notes

    Validity: Extracted via Max plan + API grounding/validity checks

    Details

    Wittgenstein's private language argument shows that inner ostension cannot fix m...
    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (1 for, 2 against)
    Edits
    1 edit