Imagine a person who is addicted to heroin but who desperately wants to kick the habit. He has a craving for another hit, but when he reflects, he rejects this craving and wishes he could get rid of it. Now ask yourself: Which part of this person constitutes his true self -- his craving for another hit or his desire to quit?
Looking at cases like this one, philosophers have almost universally agreed that it is the desire to quit that constitutes the agent's true self. They have therefore been drawn to a particular picture of the self. On this picture, the true self is constituted in some way by people's more reflective capacities (e.g., their second-order desires) rather than by the urges they are striving to suppress.
But if you stop to think about it, this case isn't exactly a well-controlled experiment. It is not as though the craving for heroin and the desire to quit are exactly the same in all ways except with regard to the question of second-order desire.There is also the conspicuous fact that you yourself -- the person evaluating the story -- are completely on the side of one of these desires and against the other.
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