On Self Understanding: Methods and Modes of Inquiry

As an armchair philosopher, I am sometimes also an armchair psychologist. Armchairs are great for lots of things, besides, perhaps, actually getting things done out in the “real world”. But who needs the “real world” anyway? (Berkeley, other philosophical idealists, are you with me?) Instead, join me in my latest introspective article, this time further considering self-understanding, or, “seeing yourself”.

If you want to see yourself, the best advice I can give you is to look into a mirror. Or maybe a decent photograph will do. Joking aside, I am here concerned with what I give the deceptively-formal title of “methods and modes of inquiry”. What do I mean by inquiry, and what is my goal in parsing out the details of self-inquiry? For the purpose of this brief piece of writing, I have two simple goals: to point out a distinction, and to comment on its potential usefulness to the individual in search of self-understanding.

First, I think there is a distinction to be made between knowing yourself and seeing yourself. To know yourself could be to have propositional knowledge, e.g., I like ice cream, or even a more complicated conditional statement like the following: If I am stressed, then I will spend copious amounts of money online and later come to regret it. Biconditionals, counterfactuals, and the rest could probably fall under what I’ve called self-knowledge. Similarly, things you could tell someone else about yourself in terms of your personality, your own thought process, and so forth, could probably count. Further, self-knowledge can arise from reflection, but it isn’t reflection itself. And even further, I don’t think self-knowledge is self-understanding per se. So, what about the reflection itself? That’s where another category I’ve created (made up) may be useful.

But first, as an aside, I want to make a few brief remarks about my own methods and use of terminology. First and foremost, I am using terms like ‘self-inquiry’, ‘self-knowledge’, and concepts like ‘seeing yourself’ or ‘understanding yourself. Other people have probably used these same terms in more technical or careful ways, or in totally different ways. My approach here is this: I am simply using (what I take to be) reasonable labels as shorthand for some descriptive conceptual distinctions I’d like to make. The end goal of using terminology and explicating corresponding descriptions is, hopefully, to provide some form of clarity to the reader who is interested in self-inquiry. And by self-inquiry, I just mean a complex personal “project” or method which includes reflecting on (meta-cognitively, second-order-ly, or otherwise), your experiences, your values, who you are and who you want to be, etc., with the goal of clearly understanding yourself—i.e., understanding who you are, why you are the way that you are, and how the ‘who’ and the ‘why’ play out in daily life.

In contrast to knowing yourself (i.e., knowing propositional content about yourself, or being able to describe yourself) there is what seems to be another, different dimension of self-awareness (perhaps we could think of self-awareness as the broadest category, but it doesn’t have to have a technical sense right now). For instance, knowing something about yourself seems different from feeling, actively thinking, or experiencing. I can “know” I was happy on December 21, 2019, without actively feeling happiness. Similarly, I can know I like ice cream without actively liking ice cream at that moment. Some people might say, since knowledge is factive (i.e., true; you can’t have knowledge of something false), then maybe one dimension is just reducible to the other. That is, maybe my knowledge that I like ice cream is just a product of my positive experiences with ice cream. But I think something is missing with that view, so for now let’s just take for granted that I am indeed talking about two different dimensions of self-awareness. One might wonder that saying I “know” I was happy at time x, without feeling happy at time y, seems irrelevant to my distinction, since I’m talking about two different times. And if I say, at one in the same time, that I know I’m happy, but I don’t feel happy, then I just don’t have knowledge, and I’m mistaken in my claim that I’m happy.

But even if this is the case, and even if one dimension is reducible to the other, they are not phenomenologically equivalent: knowing something about myself just isn’t quite the same as experiencing something about myself. Take for instance something about which I could, conceivably, not be mistaken about, and which doesn’t involve two different times (unlike the ice cream example or the happiness example). For instance, I can know I love my mom, even if I’m angry with her and not currently feeling love towards her. It’s not that I loved my mom yesterday but not today, and similarly, it’s not that I am simply mistaken about my love for my mom.

All this could be given much more detailed ‘treatment’ (a word philosophers like to use), but I want to keep things short and make my point: self-knowledge isn’t the same thing as self-understanding, and self-knowledge is more of a product of self-understanding than a way to “achieve it”. That is, you probably have to first understand yourself in order to know certain things about yourself, and not the other way around. But if you try to understand yourself simply by pointing to things you already know about yourself, you might face difficulty. So then, the question is, from where, if not self-knowledge described as such, does self-understanding proceed?

What I can offer is an analogy.

But first, another summary of my thoughts on the matter: self-understanding, or “seeing yourself” comes, in a way, from actively experiencing your particular being (that is, from being yourself, and perhaps later reflecting on that experience). Again, it’s one thing to know, and another to experience. And being a person is a unique thing: you can both experience yourself and have knowledge of yourself. You can know mathematics, but you can’t experience what it is like to “be” mathematics—that doesn’t make much sense. You can also know another person, but never truly know what it’s like to be them (although empathy can bridge that gap to some extent, perhaps). But your own individuality is different, insofar as you can be yourself, experience yourself, and know yourself. This, of course, is because you have direct phenomenological access to your consciousness.

Alright, here is a final distinction that may help you in some sort of self-inquiry: giving your perspective is one thing, while examining your perspective is another. If someone asks you to explain why you feel a certain way about a situation, you may be able to give an explanation (your perspective). But if someone wants you to examine yourself, then you need to not merely give your perspective, but you also need to make your perspective itself an object of reflection.

This is a complex topic. I didn’t clearly or explicitly provide a conceptual map of the different terms I used (how they relate to one another, what other concepts they are connected to, etc.). Usually, I like to explain exactly how things work—how all the pieces fit together, so to speak. But for the sake of brevity, I omitted that, as it would probably be redundant at points and would require a lot of background information which isn’t necessary right now.

In closing, if you find yourself looking to whittle away the hours, make yourself your first and foremost object of inquiry. You won’t be disappointed, but you will be confused.

 

Thank you, and good evening.

Ashley Gasdow