What am I? What kind of entity, what kind of being? To what exactly does the term “I” refer? Since one of the self’s distinctive properties, surely, is its capacity for self-consciousness, you would think that if it knew anything, it would know its own nature. Yet the self is a problem and puzzle to itself. A theory should explain both the self’s special awareness and its continuing mystery, even to itself.
Our desire to know our natures is not solely theoretical. This knowledge by itself will not settle the question of how we ought to live, but in fixing the range and limits of the possibilities open to us, it determines what alternatives we choose among when we choose how to live and be.
Philosophical Explanations
by Robert Nozick
Self