When one thinks, one is doing something. Thinking is conduct resulting from interaction with the rest of the world. It's inapposite to say that we observe ourselves when we're doing something, as if we're watching ourselves when we, e.g., walk. When I walk, I don't observe myself walking, I merely walk.
I'm aware that I'm walking, but that isn't the same as observing myself walking. There is no me apart from the me that is walking, observing the walking me.
We can certainly think about what we do. We may also think about how we think. But in doing so we don't stand apart from ourselves, we're just thinking (something we do). Understanding this, we don't create entities out of metaphors, which is to say needlessly. — Ciceronianus the White
It is this "distance" between the thinking subject and the thought that is thought I wish to look at more closely, for it is in the reflective act, where one stands apart from any and all possible experiential events, that "distance" is made possible. In other words, when I think, I can bring question to the thought (question, the piety of thought, says Heidegger), or when I simply observe the thought as it is being thought, and thereby, I no longer identify with the thought, but stand apart from it. This distance is essential to understanding what a person IS at the level of basic questions and assumptions. — Constance
Are we not committed to affirming the transcendental ego? — Constance
When I place my thinking before my awareness, I am not the thing I am aware of. Just as when I stop hammering and consider what hammering is about, or, while hammering I allow my attention to pull apart from the rote, physical process and "observe" the unfolding of the hand grasping the handle, the muscles squeezing, and so on, I no longer AM simply the act of hammering. I am doing something altogether different. — Constance
when I think, I can bring question to the thought (question, the piety of thought, says Heidegger), or when I simply observe the thought as it is being thought, and thereby, I no longer identify with the thought, but stand apart from it. — Constance
Are we not committed to affirming the transcendental ego? It can be said that this egoic presence IS thought, and that there is no separating thought from identity. One can say this even of the structure of experience itself, so while there may certainly BE a structure to thought, and, as Wittgenstein said, this structure dominates in describing the world and cannot be second guessed, its embodiment, thought, that is, can be made an object of intention (or, attention, if you prefer). Keep in mind that the "true" nature of logic never makes an appearance, so what we say of logic remains only about the way logic "shows" itself. And in the act of reflective thought, thought becomes an object for itself. — Constance
Transcendental ego, the self that is necessary in order for there to be a unified empirical self-consciousness. For Immanuel Kant, it synthesizes sensations according to the categories of the understanding. Nothing can be known of this self, because it is a condition, not an object, of knowledge. For Edmund Husserl, pure consciousness, for which everything that exists is an object, is the ground for the foundation and constitution of all meaning. — Britannica
Transcendental apperception is the uniting and building of coherent consciousness out of different elementary inner experiences (differing in both time and topic, but all belonging to self-consciousness). For example, the experience of "passing of time" relies on this transcendental unity of apperception, according to Kant.
There are six steps to transcendental apperception:
1. All experience is the succession of a variety of contents (an idea taken from David Hume).
2. To be experienced at all, the successive data must be combined or held together in a unity for consciousness.
3. Unity of experience therefore implies a unity of self.
4. The unity of self is as much an object of experience as anything is.
5. Therefore, experience both of the self and its objects rests on acts of synthesis that, because they are the conditions of any experience, are not themselves experienced.
6. These prior syntheses are made possible by the categories. Categories allow us to synthesize the self and the objects.
7. One consequence of Kant's notion of transcendental apperception is that the "self" is only ever encountered as appearance, never as it is in itself. — Wikipedia
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