Year: 2009
Type: article
Abstract: We propose to define a psychological hypothesis for the word “me” that designates, for each \nhuman being, his or her personal interior Ego. Every human being is naturally an Ego – it \nis a question of learning the particular linguistic sound (or the particular sign gesture in a \nsign language) in which it is named in one’s mother tongue. In fact, it is not important, for \nour analysis, that the Ego be innate or developed gradually through experience. The \nimportant point in the psychological hypothesis is that the Ego is an entity (psychological \nand internal, to be exact) of one kind, while the word “me” is an entity of a different kind. \nThe second hypothesis, which we will call the externalist hypothesis, responds affirmatively \nto question a), and maintains that “me” indicates a certain individual body, that of the \nperson who is using the word “me”. A possible advantage of this last hypothesis is that in it \none is not obliged to admit the existence of presumed and invisible psychological states. In \nthis case also, however, the word “me” is separated from that which is referred to.
Author: Felice Cimatti
Language: English
Subfield: Philosophy
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1568475240