Abstract
This is an inquiry into the nature of what we, whether in dreams or in waking experience, think as “I” What does one refer to internally, de dicto, when one uses assertively a sentence containing an inflection of the first-person pronoun? What sort of entity that referent is? How does such a referent relate to the person calling himself or herself “I”? Consider for example Freud’s wishful selfassuring statement:
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Sometimes I think what a healthy child I was!
We shall say that a token of a form of the first-person pronoun used to make a thinking singular reference strictly or internally denotes an I [ein Inch]. This is a neutral piece of terminology. It leaves open that an I be nothing at all even in the most liberal conception of referent. We are, thus, inquiring into the constitution of Fs, if there be such, the roles they play in experience, and the ontological structures enveloping them. These ontological structures may, again, be such as to determine the annihilation of all I’s. This topic is of the greatest intrinsic importance. It is, of course, of special value in attempting to understand Freud’s, as well as other philosophers and psychiatrists’, views of the ego or the self. Indeed the above passage from Freud constitutes an excellent initial datum.
“There are also dreams in which MY EGO appears together with other persons, who when the identification is resolved, again, reveal themselves to be my ego…. I may also give my ego multiple representations in my dream, either directly or by means of identification with other people…. That ONE’S EGO should appear in the same dream several times or in different forms is fundamentally no more surprising than that IT should appear; in conscious thoughts, many times and in different places or in different relations: as, for example, in the sentence: ‘When I think what a healthy child I was’.”
Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (1900/1938, p.349)
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Castañeda, HN. (1988). Persons, Egos, and I’s: Their Sameness Relations. In: Spitzer, M., Uehlein, F.A., Oepen, G. (eds) Psychopathology and Philosophy. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-74133-3_16
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