Richard Sorabji's "Self"
from the chapter "The Self: is there such a thing?" One reason why the notion of the self comes in is that humans and animals could not cope with the world at all unless they saw things in terms of I . The notion 'I' belongs to te same group of notions as 'now', 'here', 'yonder', 'this', 'that', 'today', 'past', 'present', 'future', 'ago', 'hence'....What I would emphasize is that these words and the corresponding ideas have an irreplaceable importance, because they have a unique ability to guide action and emotion. If Adam Smith knows, 'An arrow gets to be fired through the window of Adam Smith's study on May 1 2004', he will have no idea whether precautions are called for, except insofar as he can also judge, ' I am Adam Smith', and ' Today is May 1 2004'. Otherwise Adam Smith might be anybody, and 2004 thousands of years into the past or future. Th...