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Logical Positivists on the Self

Logical Positivists on the Self Logical Positivists are not known for their work on the Self. However, they had very interesting and elaborated view on the nature of the Self. The negative part of their view was primarily a critique of Descartes' Cogito, a traditional stronghold of the rationalistic philosophy. The positive part of their view was the empiricist reductionist account of the Self: the idea that the Self was a construct. Their view about the Self, as opposed to the Descartes' view, can be summed up in five points: 1. Self is not something simple, it is something composed of elements. 2. Self is not know by a direct insight, but indirectly, inferentially and gradually. 3. Self is not the Archimedian point of the knowledge, it is discovered later in the proces of the rational reconstruction. 4. Self is not known a priori but a posteriori, its existence is an empirical discovery. 5. Self is not something that exists necessarily, its existence is contingent. Positivists' view was that the true nature of the Self was best revealed by its place in the constitution system, that is, by its place and role in the process of the rational reconstruction of knowledge. This is why the most interesting positivists' insights into the nature of the Self are to be found in the Rudolf Carnap's Der logische Aufbau der Welt and Hans Reichenbach's Experience and Prediction. Since they were reductionists about the Self, they had to answer the objection that is nowadays known as the objection from the unowned experience (John Campbell Past, Space, and Self). And their answer was elaborated and systematic: although the basis of our constitution system is our experience, we discover that fact later, through the constitution of the physical, autopsychological, and heterpsychological. Therefore, the reductionist analysis of the self as a construct out of experience can be carried out in a non-circular way.

self, cogito, logical positivism

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