Self Awareness?

What would you say the relevance is to a philosophical thought process? Is a sense of self imperative?

Plato said “Know thyself.”
Socrates said “The only think I know is that I know nothing.”
Do you think that these are contradictory, or is it possible to truely know thyself?

I think it is not possible to know yourself completely but the process of knowing yourself will nevertheless be an enlightening process, albeit the knowledge thus attained is relatively nothing when compared to what is yet unknown.

Is self imperative? That may be irrelevant. For who am I talking to now, and who is the “I” writing this? Call it self or call it whatever, it is all of reality itself as far as “you” are concerned.

i think more value is to be found in the journey than the destination (which we may never arrive at). imagining knowing myself perfectly creates a nightmare!

whenever i am thinking about myself, i wonder how much i can know about the thoughts i am having. i think this has been called the ‘perfect transparency of the mind’ problem. can we scrutinise every level of mental activity, all our thoughts, feelings and processes?

i’m not sure, and because of this, i think the answer is no. but i’m still not sure…

“Know thyself” is a self-referential imperative. Hofstadter, in his classic, Gödel and Escher and Bach suggested the analogy of a mirror looking into a mirror. Gödel’s theorem was based on just this sort of self-reflexive paradox.

Self-referential entities might be analogous to the walls of Plato’s allegorical cave. Or they might be a portal through which we could learn to peer through those walls. Of course, it’s also possible that they’re only a mud-puddle along the road that we’ve stopped to play in. Deep feature or silly plaything, they’re incredibly fascinating.

“All I know is that I know nothing,” on the other hand, is useful despite being wrong. It’s self-defeating as it stands; it says that I know something and I know nothing. It’s not even right enough to count as a paradox (along the lines of the “Liar’s Paradox”). Less formally, it’s true that I know quite a few things. I know that the derivative of x squared is two times x. I know that I don’t have a headache at this moment. I know that I exist. Again, I know lots of things. The statement is useful inasmuch as it can be used as an opening into a discussion about what criteria are required in order that we know something. I contend that we can have inductive knowledge. For example, we’ve no certainty that the sun will exist tomorrow, nevertheless, to say that it probably will exist represents a form of knowledge. Almost everything we know comes in the form of guestimates and approximations.

Michael

One of those old books by some dead guy said something along the lines of “Greater is he who conquers himself than he who conquers an army.”

Another one (maybe Socrates or Aristotle?) said something along the lines of “Only gods and monsters can live alone.”

Now, killing people is nothing. A rock falling off a cliff can do it. A baby accidentally crawling into the wrong room can trigger a shotgun and kill someone. Any idiot can have a shag and create life. In short, power over life and death is nothing. Either way, it shows absolutely nothing about the quality or value of an individual. (Someone please explain this to those idiots who think “I got a gun, I get respect!”)

So, what many call “ultimate power” is basically meaningless. So what is left, to consider powerful or valuable? Material wealth? Well, if you don’t need or want a billion dollars, then you’re as wealthy as the man who has a billion and needs it. If you have what you require, the rest is just bragging rights and entertainment.

Why would someone need bragging rights? Well, some people require emotional input, some feedback form others which validates their beliefs or positions on things. For example, an idiot with a gun who craves what he believes is respect - in fact anyone who requires approval from others - is in fact lacking something. If you need or want something, it means you don’t have it. That means you have a lack. That means you are incomplete.

Those who don’t require such things, those who do not want or need anything, are complete, at least in that they do not require anything else to be complete. Such a person does not require social feedback, does not require approval or consent or any such thing. Such a person might be a monster, some creature who simply has no concern for others, perhaps a complete psychopath. Or perhaps a “god”, one who is fully aware of himself and his requirements, and does not desire or require the approval of others to be as he wishes to be.

I believe this is what that ancient Greek dude was talking about. It also just happens to be a major part of Buddhism, and can be found in other words among the writings of Musashi. I have this idea that some ideas must be reached as conclusions when one thinks about certain things enough. Logical conclusions exist, and will be reached if a person follows certain paths of thought, regardless of personal influences. Thus these same ideas can be found from various parts of tyhe world at different times. Thus the development in various cultures and times of people we might call ascetics. Or, here, people we might call “weirdos”.

I tend to ramble and wander around in circles when I go for long responses. I hope my ideas are somewhat comprehensible.

I don’t know if Destrukt is still around or, for that matter, anybody who responded to his post here, but I came across this while doing a search on here for “Know thyself.” It seems to me as if it’s worth resurrecting. I think it’s significant and it surprises me that it died on the vine after only four replies.

I did the search because I have been thinking much lately about Plato’s advice. Frankly I’m not seeing it as possible. Even if I knew myself today, I’m a different person tomorrow, albeit imperceptibly perhaps, by virtue of the fact that I now have another day’s life experience. “Thyself” is a moving target, isn’t it? In the long term, my interests and motivations are much different now than they were, say, ten years ago and I can imagine they’ll be different still ten years from now. A person is dynamic. Too, the knowledge of oneself itself produces change in a person. And then that person gains self-knowledge, thus changing him or herself again, and so it goes and we find ourselves with the mirror-looking-into-the-mirror situation somebody mentioned above.

And so my question is, is there a possible “true self” within that remains unchanging over time? Are the changes over time in interests and motivations simply outward manifestations of the same self underneath? And if that’s the case, then how could one possibly even recognize such a “true” self?

I think I’ll let it rest here for the moment, but the implications of the questions are significant, I think, especially if we contemplate God (this, for those like myself who are interested in such an activity) and how we can know Him. I am wondering if there is a connection…

I read years ago that psychologists feel a person’s fundament personality is basically “set in stone” by age 25. That’s not to say that a person can’t ever change, but that the basic personality traits are developed by that age that he or she will carry with them for life. I’m not sure if it’s true or still considered valid- I certainly think I’ve changed in many ways since I was 25 (I’m now 35).

Certainly ones self is “a moving target” in many senses. I imagine that for one to achieve Malsow’s top rung of the hierarchy of needs, self actualization, would require copious self knowledge. In that sense, endeavoring to know oneself is a lofty goal. And I myself have spent a goodly amount of time in study trying to understand my “inner self.”

But I must also admit that I have a touch of nihilism in me- part of me thinks that all such attemps at wisdom are doomed to failure at the least, and at worst are irrelevant. If our essense doesn’t endure past our physical deaths, then what point is anything personal leading up to it? My life may in one sense continue (ie my genetic code) by surviving in the form of offspring and the continuation of my species, but I can’t see how any specific self knowledge I attain could have much relevance to anyone else. Empiracal knowledge of the universe will benefit the species as a whole, thus helfping to ensure my immortality via the survival of my species, but self knowledge in that context seems trivial.

Just late night ramblings from a closet nihilist- I don’t always think that way. I guess it’s the effect of the hour and climatic conditions on my internal reality (it’s late and about -15 outside :wink: ).

“Know thyself” I suspect that the intent behind this statement is more of a “know who and what you aren’t” notion.

We can never in any complete or precise way know ourselves, but we can know enough to get by. The smart-assed answer is, who and what I am depend’s on what I had for lunch. Unfortunately, that may be true.

Over time, I decided that who I am is what I think, what I say, and what I do. Knowing myself is dependent on the consistency of think, say and do. The closer the three legs together, the greater the ‘knowing’. Of course the process of that is just a little device with no more credibility than I am willing to give it. Ultimately, it is ‘through the looking glass darkly’.

JT

“Nihilists? Say what you want about the tenets of national socialism but at least it’s an ethos.” (Anybody ever see “The Big Lebowski”?). Actually, Phaedrus, you seem more like a skeptic than a nihilist but at -15 degrees, who’s going to quibble?

Maybe it’s impossible to truly know oneself. Maybe it’s impossible to truly know God. Maybe it’s impossible to truly know love or beauty. I’m wondering if it’s worth it all to at least get glimpses of those things. I guess that’s why I posted here, because I think I’ve come to the conclusion that that’s the best we can hope for.

The entrance of the Temple of Delphi stated:

“Oh man, know thyself and you will know the Gods and the Universe”

It is possible to know oursleves, in fact it is indespensible that we do so.

If we want to know oursleves then the first thing we must do is to start “observing” oursleves. We need to take a look at what’s going on in our Three Brains. Our Intellectual brain, our Emotional brain and our Motor/Sexual/Instinctive brain.

We need to divide ourselves into two parts: The observer and the observed.

We need to take an inventory of what we have within. Good and Bad, then we will know what to work on and what to eliminate.

Well that certainly sounds like good advice, student. But how do you know when you know yourself? And to my question of earlier, doesn’t the knowing itself change a person? So now there’s a new person to know. And so it goes. Nobody’s static. I’ve decided it’s worth the trouble but you’re way more optimistic than I am that it can ever truly be accomplished.

To know abosutely everything going on in your mind, that information would have to be stored somewhere in your brain. Since that part of your memory must be usable / recallable for you to actually “know” it, there must be extra mental circuitry to handle that information. The more you know about your brain, the larger your brain must be to contain that information, and thus the larger the volume of information you need to know everything about it. The increase in size of the total information in the system vs. the increase in memory capacity makes all the difference here. I suspect like you that you cannot ever know everything, that the total information increases faster than the meory capacity.

I just read a review of Hofstadters new book “I Am A Strange Loop” and thought that it would be better to resurrect this thread than start a new one since it seems the conversation could now continue.

The review in Scientific American describes an experiment. Take your web cam and aim it at your computer screen. The feedback will generate a spiralling tunnel image. Tilt the camera. The image will shift in color and dimension but maintain the spiral tunnel. Move the camera but keep it aimed at the screen. The spiral tunnel will reconstitute in an new configuration.

A myriad of impressions caught in a continuous feedback loop.
The things in your life are abstracted into symbols and continually rearranged and your interaction generates the feedback loop which rearranges the symbols and tilts the camera.
This is the self, this is the soul.

I need to get this book.

The myth of “self” or some unchanging “form” of soul is one myth I’m wholly prepared to exhibit some radical scepticism about.