Ron Chrisley
Director, Centre for Research in Cognitive Science, Department of Informatics, University of Sussex
In "Memento's Revenge", Andy Clark responds to some of the criticisms of the Extended Mind thesis (that particular kinds of organism/environment coupling count as cognitive processes; cf Clark and Chalmers 1998), and further clarifies this claim. While sympathetic to the general thrust of the thesis of Active Externalism, I nonetheless argue the following:
1) The concessive remarks that Clark makes concerning the essential role that development may play in cognition suggest that we may need to add a further requirement, that of "proper developmental history" to the conditions (reliably available, typically invoked, automatically endorsed, and easily accessible) that must be met for an external process to qualify for equal treatment with respect to cognition.
2) A simple thought experiment, and reflection on the use of the concept of "organism" in stating the thesis, reveal that Active Externalism is not so much about location, but provenance. The thesis then amounts to claiming that items that were not selected to perform a cognitive function can nevertheless do so. Thus, there is a conflict between the Extended Mind view, in which ahistorical functionality is taken to trump all, and teleosemantic-cum-evolutionary theories of mind, in which history of selection is of ultimate importance. Arguments that defend the latter's historicism (against, e.g., Swamp Man objections) can be used to cast doubt on the support offered for the Extended Mind view. This is a special case of a more general conflict between the Extended Mind view (and related positions, such as virtual embodiment; cf "The Twisted Matrix: Dream, Simulation or Hybrid?", Clark forthcoming) on the one hand, and theories that place emphasis on actual embodiment, on the other.
3) Central to the Extended Mind view is The Parity Principle: "If... a part of the world functions as a process which, were it to go on in the head, we would have no hesitation in accepting as part of the cognitive process, then that part of the world is (for that time) part of the cognitive process." As Menary (forthcoming) has argued, this principle stands in need of clarification. I show that when considering the counterfactual in the Principle, one gets different results depending on what one does and does not keep fixed in the hypothetical move into the head. Without a prior motivated basis for selecting what aspects of the relevant part of the world will and will not remain constant, the Principle is of little assistance in supporting the Extended Mind thesis.
4) A principled distinction can be made between two kinds of components of cognitive processes: indirect components, that are part of the cognitive process by virtue of having been available as the object of an agent's awareness; and direct components, in which there is no such dependence on availability in awareness. It seems most compatible with our intuitions that only the direct components of cognitive processes can constitute states of the subject. A thought experiment is offered to support this intuition. It follows that Otto's beliefs cannot be located in his notebook, since the notebook's role in Otto's cognitions is indirect. I consider the Clark-esque response that Inga's ability to recall an address, like Otto's, is (or at least may be) by virtue of something being the object of her awareness (e.g. visual images of MOMA or the address in writing; aural images of someone speaking the address, etc.). Therefore, parity is preserved. I maintain that this reply trades on a disanalogy. The relevant processes in Inga are not mental images (even if present), but the neural processes that enable (or even constitute) her ability to recall the address. Inga is not aware of these processes; and even if she were (by self-examination in an FMRI scanner, say), it would not be by virtue of such awareness that she has the ability to recall the address. Thus, the intuitive view that Inga's memories are located in her head, while Otto's are not located in his notebook, is given a principled defense.
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Exploring the Inner Boundaries
Matthijs Cornelissen
Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education; Indian Psychology Institute
One can distinguish three boundaries to self and experience: physical, social and inner. Though the dialectic between these three poles of our being is extremely complex, it is unlikely that the riddle of human existence can be solved satisfactorily without taking all three dimensions fully into account. Science is exploring the physical and social dimensions, but somehow the explosion of knowledge in these two areas is not doing justice to all that we are. What is missing is a solid, rigorous technology to assess the deep inner states of consciousness that might well constitute the most challenging and promising frontiers of psychological research.
In this presentation I will attempt to show how these inner realms can be explored in an intellectually rigorous and coherent manner, and what the outcome of such an approach might be. For this I’ll base myself on the work of Sri Aurobindo.
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Not Two, Not One: Proprioception and the Mutuality of Self and World
Alan Costall
Department of Psychology, University of Portsmouth
Modern psychology is still largely committed to a dualism of self and world. Consistent with this dualism, the senses have traditiionally been treated as either exteroceptive or proprioceptive. Yet, as Gibson rightly emphasized, vision, for example, is both exteroceptive and proprioceptive. Yet Gibson also attempted to objectify 'information' and treat it as separable from any particular animal. This paper will take specific examples of 'proprioceptive information' (the visible horizon, optic flow, the visible self, and the occluding self) to argue for the mutuality of self and world.
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The independent and the interdependent self concept related to happiness research: A critical comparison of flow and Taoism
Valérie De Prycker
Department of Philosophy, University of Ghent
The conception of the self and the boundaries between the self and others are determined to a significant extend by cultural values. Individualist cultures stimulate the development of an independent self while collectivist cultures stimulate a more relational and contextual self. These self concepts have been related to intercultural research on happiness. We will extend this line of research by critical comparison of the flow concept as it appears in Western theories and the Taoist attitude in East Asian mentality. We will discuss the indirect way (without conscious effort) of controlling behaviour that is associated with flow as well as with Taoism. This comparison will be used to put the Western intuition about the relation between control and happiness into perspective. Finally flow and Taoism will be contrasted in their emphasis on respectively internal and external harmony. This difference will be related to the cultural distinction between the independent and interdependent self concept.
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Externalism and the Neural Correlates of Consciousness
Marius Dumitru
Institut Jean Nicod, Paris
Recent debates on extending externalism to conscious experience via reducing its phenomenal character to its representational, externally individuated, content (inter alia, Lycan 2001, Dretske 1995, Tye 2000) or endorsing the sensorimotor contingency theory of perception (O’Regan & Noë 2001, Noë 2004) prima facie raise an important challenge to the search for NCC methodology, because conscious experience may not be seen as locally supervenient on neural processes in the brain (Noë & Thompson 2004, Hurley & Noë 2003). In this paper, I critically argue that the two strategies fail to jeopardize the search for NCC, because they do not succeed in establishing a sound external localization thesis for the vehicles of conscious experience. I also constructively argue that internalism about both the content and vehicles of consciousness is a satisfactory position, compatible with the search for NCC methodology, and I endorse a form of routine epistemic artifact-recruiting externalism with respect to cognitive architecture as the sole plausible form of externalism.
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Volition, Karma, Free Will and Determinism
Asaf Federman
Department of Psychology, University of Warwick
The Buddhist model of perception has proven inspirational for understanding colour vision and how the world and self emerges interdependently (Varela et al., 1991; Waldron, 2006). My presentation will suggest that a similar work can be done for theorizing intentionality. In short, a Buddhist view undermines the boundaries between the self and the world, and therefore between intention and action. It sees the belief that there are strong and clear boundaries between self and world as erroneous and inhibitory for happiness. It suggests that to overcome this erroneous notion requires seeing reality as a unified field in which, ultimately, there are no independent or separated agents. From a pragmatic point of view this theory has psychological advantages though some social-ethical downsides. I will address both.
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From the Minimal Self to the Narrative Other
Shaun Gallagher
University of Central Florida
Drawing on phenomenology, developmental psychology, neuroscience, and narrative theory, I will map out a route that starts with a minimal sense of self and others in infancy, and leads to our fuller understanding of others based on our competency for self-narrative. Our earliest sense of self and others is tied to embodied proprioceptive, neural resonance, and perceptual processes that help to define what Trevarthan has called 'primary intersubjectivity'. By entering into the interactive pragmatic and social practices of everyday life (in 'secondary intersubjectivity' beginning around 1 year of age) we begin to develop an understanding of social context. This understanding is enhanced through a more objective sense of self, the acquisition of language, and the development of autobiographical memory. Before the age of 4 years, our competency for self-narrative helps to form the framework for our more mature understanding of others and the possibility of empathy. These accounts form a phenomenological alternative to the standard theory of mind approaches ('theory theory' and 'simulation theory'), and provide a more parsimonious approach to understanding self and intersubjectivity.
Biographical Notes
Shaun Gallagher is Professor and Chair of Philosophy and Cognitive Sciences at the University of Central Florida; he has been occasional Visiting Professor at the University of Copenhagen (2004-06) and Visiting Scientist at the Medical Research Council's Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit at Cambridge University (1994). He is co-editor of the interdisciplinary journal Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences. His research interests include phenomenology and philosophy of mind, cognitive sciences, hermeneutics, theories of the self and personal identity. His most recent book, How the Body Shapes the Mind, is published by Oxford University Press (2005). He is co-editor of the forthcoming Does Consciousness Cause Behavior? An Investigation of the Nature of Volition (MIT Press 2006).
He is currently working on several projects, including a co-authored book, The Phenomenological Mind: Contemporary Issues in Philosophy of Mind and the Cognitive Sciences (Routledge 2007). His previous books include: Hermeneutics and Education (1992) and The Inordinance of Time (1998). He has edited or co-edited volumes that include: Ipseity and Alterity: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Intersubjectivity (2004); Models of the Self (1999); Hegel, History, and Interpretation (1997).
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A Moral Principle and the Self-model
Paul Garai
Independent
Honderich’s Principle of Humanity is morally undeniable yet continuously denied. Metzinger’s Self Model Theory (SMT) of Subjectivity is intellectually convincing yet phenomenally impossible to believe in. This paper seeks to evaluate whether SMT can shed light on the moral dilemma.
Memetics makes claims about the ontological nature of self similar to those proposed by Metzinger within a theory that is primarily geared towards cultural description. Memetics however leaves no room for the dilemma. An alternative means to extend Metzinger’s approach into the ethical arena is through self-organisation. The Benard cell an organised structure formed to dissipate energy provides a conceptual platform to consider the dilemma and is reconcilable with Metzinger’s principle theoretical elements.
Within the self-organisational context Honderich’s principle is undeniable since an organisational form is only one potential dissipative structure. It is deniable since the transparent background assumptions that generate the dissipative organisation or self-modelling process can only interpret such potential as a threat to established life.
The Boundaries of Experience and Meaning Between Nature and Culture
Brian Goodwin
Schumacher College
The natural sciences such as physics, chemistry, and biology are generally regarded as providing a window onto nature, while the arts, humanities and psychology present and describe aspects of the realm called culture.These two areas of learning have been sharply separated in modern thought. A major reason for this is the belief that during the course of evolution properties such as consciousness, language and ethics have emerged in humans but not, with possibly minor exceptions, in other species, and certainly not in the objects studied by the physical sciences. Furthermore, meaning is a term that is used in the context of human language, communication and writing, but is considered to make no sense in describing the processes involved in the development and evolution of species of organism belonging to lower taxonomic levels.
However, recent biological studies on molecular and genetic organisation within cells are leading to a new perspective on how organisms make themselves that involves a radical rethinking of the distinction between culture and nature, knowing self and other. It appears that when developing organisms read their genomes and make sense of them by constructing themselves as coherent, functional wholes appropriate to their history and environmental contexts, whether they be sea urchins or willow trees or humans, they are engaged in making meaning through the use of self-referential networks of relationships that have deep affinities with spoken language. The evidence for this, its implications for how we see evolution, and the consequences for our view of nature and culture will be explored.
Biographical Notes
Brian Goodwin was born in 1931 in Canada where he studied biology. He then took a mathematics degree at Oxford and a PhD involving biology and mathematics at Edinburgh University. He has held research and teaching positions at MIT, at the University of Sussex, and the Open University, UK, where he was Professor of Biology. He was connected with the Santa Fe Institute for a number of years in the 80s and 90s. He now teaches Holistic Science at Schumacher College in England.
His interests are in developing a science of qualities that can address issues of health and quality of life in diverse areas, in promoting holistic patterns of living, and in the reunion of the arts and humanities with the sciences.
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Violence, Autonomy, and the Self
Valerie Gray Hardcastle
Department of Science and Technology in Society, Virginia Tech
One of the fundamental assumptions underlying modern Western society is that people are autonomous. We believe that most people can reflect critically upon themselves and then use that critical reflection to change their values, their behavior, their beliefs, or their intellectual commitments, if they want to. The self that our liberal traditions assume to exist is rational, reflective, individualistic, and free. I argue that these essentially political values have infected hypothesis construction in the mind/brain sciences. In particular, the larger theoretical frameworks regarding self into which brain data become integrated assume individual autonomy. I present one example in which theory blithely accepts personal autonomy as foundational. This example exemplifies the trend in the mind/brain sciences to accept first and without argument prevailing popular assumptions regarding how humans work and then to try to force experimental data fit to into these background suppositions.
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Morals, Minds and Consciousness
Edward Hazelton
Visiting Lecturer, Department of Psychiatry, Meharry Medical College
Recent research by Joshua Greene and co-workers have interpreted their results to show that 'morals' and 'ought' are involved by biological factors affected by cultural differences. It follows that beliefs are derived from innate brain systems which are concerned with both the unconscious and conscious neural activities of individual persons and social development. The assumption is that morals are acquired from social tradition. It follows that moral judgments in the decisions in everyday life are facilitated by the brain. The cultural upbringing at the home will be more effective than neighbors, co-workers et cetera. 'he 'ought' and 'moral' tradition on beliefs and attitudes could be very disturbed with possible implications in research development. Strokes and other brain damages and the impact to patients, relatives and friends will be discussed. Genetic factors in differences between people on 'morals' will be explored to help personal problems and social interpersonal relations. Factors such as criminality perversions will be investigated. The material will be reviewed toward goals and current conclusions on consciousness, 'ought' and 'morals'.
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Truth, Narrative and Metaphor
Christopher Holvenstot
Independent
The concept of truth, the construction of narrative and the use of metaphor are tools used in the development and reinforcement of reality concepts. I explore the basic functions of these tools and the imperatives which inform their use. We tend to think of truth as something innate or inherent about our world when in fact even a very brief look at the history of humanity reveals truth as consistently changing to support changing criteria, contexts, needs and uses. As a concept it functions best if we agree to overlook its ever-changing nature. Whatever current ‘truth’ we are entertaining is always to be considered the ultimate and final version. By committing in this way we can fully institute and enjoy the benefits of our beliefs. We only find, by virtue of a full ideological commitment, the wanted psychological, spiritual and emotional comfort in the concept of a permanent, fixed and dependable reality.
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Do Dreams Change When Selves Change?
Caroline Horton, Martin Conway and Chris Moulin
Leeds Memory Group, Institute of Psychological Sciences, University of Leeds
The continuity hypothesis (Schredl and Hoffman, 2003) claims that there is much overlap in terms of dreaming and waking experiences, consciousnesses, and cognitions. The present study investigated whether dream content, as well as an ability to remember those dreams, would change over time, specifically, when a change in "self" occurred. In order to observe such a change, participants were recruited before they had left home and moved to university. Participants completed a dream diary of 5 reports and a short questionnaire on dream recall. They also generated "I am…" statements to examine changes in the self (Kuhn, 1954). The same data was collected 6 weeks later, once the participants had become students, living independently, at the University of Leeds, and again 6 weeks later, presumably once they had established a new "self". Questionnaire data revealed that dream recall did not change significantly over these three time periods, despite the fact that sleep routines did. The extent to which the dream incorporated changes in the self was measured by examining the I ams in the dream reports over the three stages. The findings are discussed in relation to the continuity hypothesis, in terms of the stability of consciousness over the sleep-wake cycle.
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Establishing the Boundaries of Self: The Experience of Conscious Free Will
Gethin Hughes
Goldsmiths College, University of London
The ability to determine whether an action was initiated by oneself forms an integral part of an individual’s self-perception, as well as determining one’s level of responsibility in society. Despite the role of conscious agency in setting the boundaries of self, there are strong reasons to believe that our experience of conscious free will can not be entirely trusted. Libet and colleagues (Libet et al., 1983) famously showed that a decision to act is initiated in the brain one-third of a second before we become conscious of that decision. New evidence using electroencephalography (EEG) also suggests that any decision not to act (i.e. a conscious veto) is also initiated in the brain unconsciously. How can we reconcile the experience we have as agents of our own actions with the neuroscientific evidence in favour of deterministic principles?
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Autobiographical Creative Writing as a Tool for Enhancing Consciousness and Reflexivity of Self
Celia Hunt
University of Sussex
In my research with students attending the MA Creative Writing and Personal Development at Sussex University I have found that creative writing exercises that involve fictionalising the self through metaphor and narrative can increase reflexivity and lead to a stronger sense of self. This paper will discuss these findings, focusing on the narrative technique of free indirect discourse, which provides an opportunity for creating an imaginary dialogue between different parts of the self or between self and other. Drawing on Antonio Damasio’s two-tier model of consciousness (The Feeling of What Happens, 2000) and Mikhail Bakhtin’s view of the dialogic nature of fiction writing (The Dialogic Imagination, 1981), this paper will argue that it is the cognitive process of deictic shift (Peter Stockwell, Cognitive Poetics, 2002) between the first and third persons of consciousness at the heart of this technique that enables the writer of fictional autobiography to practice reflexivity in the text and move from a fixed to a more fluid sense of self.
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But What is The Body?
George Kampis
Eotvos University, Budapest
In the past fifteen years there has been a tremendous interest in embodiment, or how the body helps to constiute the mind. But do we understand the body? Dennett, Blackmore and others have repeatedly warned of temptations for a Cartesian fallback, that is, of the creeping presence of unwanted Cartesian dualism. Perhaps the last such Cartesian foothold is the Cartesian ‘mindization’ of the body.
Embodiment implies the paradox that (despite an opposite rhetoric) the concept supports a strongly Cartesian view of the organism, where experiences of an irreducible subjective self inhabit the center of embodied concepts, like force, direction or action.Consequently, in embodiment there is too much concern with the content (first-person) of the embodied mental states and too little with the coordination (third-person) of the physical interactions with biological meaning. Still differently: the flesh is typically understood just as source of a particular kind of structured experience, or ‘input’. This ‘input’ is selected from the point of view of the experiencer, and boils down to what is accessible for her via the movie of consciousness. How about the rest?
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Sartre’s unacknowledged self in the limit experiences of hallucination and emotion
Heidi Klein
University of Leuven, Belgium
Sartre’s phenomenology discusses instances of bad faith as limit experiences because they push us to our boundaries when it comes to how we encounter ourselves. Emotion and hallucination both introduce a spontaneous dimension of subjectivity that is an expression of our general freedom, but which is a self we are hesitant to recognise as ourselves. In this paper I explore and describe this unacknowledged self. I discuss the limit experiences of emotion and hallucination as examples of bad faith and juxtapose them with anguish which although also a limit experience reveals an enlightening and recognised self. The root of the difference between emotion and hallucination on the one hand and anguish on the other is situatedness, namely while anguish is a return to act on the situation we find ourselves in, emotion and hallucination is a flight away from the situation into bad faith.
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Extended Minds and Disappearing Selves in Buddhism and Cognitive Science
Joel Krueger
Southern Illinois University, Carbondale
This paper is a dialogue between Buddhism and cognitive science. I argue that both classical Zen Buddhism and certain movements within western cognitive science offer reciprocal, mutually illuminating views of mind and self. In short, both develop congruent "extended" views of mind, arguing that mind doesn’t end at the inner limits of the skin and skull. However, despite important points of reciprocity discussed below, Zen Buddhism takes this "extended" conception of mind further by drawing out its ethical consequences.
First, I examine the ontology of the "extended mind" from the standpoint of western cognitive science. Next, I examine the Zen view of mind and (no-)self, and some of the ethical applications of this view. I here focus on the thought of the thirteenth century Japanese thinker Dogen Kigen. I conclude by showing three distinct ways that an "extended" ontology can inform important ethical considerations.
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Thought Insertion, Agency, and the Puzzle of Extraneity
Peter Langland-Hassan
Philosophy & Cognitive Science, CUNY Graduate Center
I raise a question—called "the puzzle of extraneity"—concerning the nature of auditory hallucinations and inserted thoughts in schizophrenia. This is a puzzle concerning how it is that one’s own thoughts and actions can seem to be someone else’s. After rejecting two competing solutions (Kinsbourne, 1990; Graham & Stephens, 2001), I develop a novel approach, drawing on and amending the work of Frith (1992, 2005), Blakemore et al (1998, 2003), and Proust (2006).
I argue that these theorists misapply the concept of a "forward output model" (posited by Miall et al (1993) to account for rapid corrections of limb movements) to the mechanisms underlying audition and inner speech. While I agree that the attenuation of self-generated changes in sensory input is crucial to the phenomenology of thought ownership, I argue that a more parsimonious framework invoking attenuating filters (in lieu of "predictions" and "comparisons") can do the needed explanatory work.
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Historical Reflections on Empathy and the Boundaries of the Self
Susan Lanzoni
Yale University
This paper explores historical contributions to the questions of self, experience and its boundaries through the examination of psychological conceptions of sympathy and empathy at the outset of the twentieth century. I will chart the beginnings of a discourse on empathy (Einfühlung) in German psychological aesthetics in the latter part of the nineteenth century and then discuss the ways empathy became a means for the understanding and identification with others in psychological circles. Finally, I discuss the ways various conceptions of empathy were incorporated into the clinical psychiatric context by a selected group of psychiatrists, most of whom were inclined towards phenomenological approaches to patient experience.
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Two Senses for the "Givenness of Consciousness"
Pessi Lyyra
University of Jyväskylä
A popular view of consciousness is that it is given to itself, i.e. essentially self-conscious. Such self-referentiality of consciousness is seen either as a relation between two separate states in consciousness or as an intrinsic property of each conscious state. Both these views, however, conflict with the developmental view that the appearance-reality distinction, which is a prerequisite for the self-consciousness of consciousness, is a product of long intellectual development.
The aforementioned conflict can be dispelled once an ambiguity in the expression "givenness" is recognised and taken properly into account. There are two possible ways in which "givenness" can be understood: given as carrying information about itself and given as being aware of itself. I argue that the former sense is compatible with the developmental theories, but still conforms to the intuition of self-referential character of consciousness.
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Sharing Space through Three Dimensional Consciousness
Fred McVittie
Department of Contemporary Arts, Manchester Metropolitan University
The conscious experience of being human seems to be partly constructed by the physics of the space in which that being feels itself to be embedded. There is an uncanny match between the formulation of space articulated in the axioms of naïve physics, roughly approximating Cartesian/Newtonian physics, and the feeling of being. This feeling of being might be described as a sense that one’s body is a single object with a clear boundary, existing at a single location in an extended 3 dimensional space, a feeling which is also extended to the mind, and the feeling that one is a singular entity, reasonably whole and separated in space from other entities, exactly here, precisely now. This physical environment, however problematised by post-newtonian physics is nevertheless the one in which human action and interaction takes place.
It seems likely that this match is in part produced through an internalisation of the physics of this space by the operation of the human sensorium, including the visual apparatus. Which begs the question: what would being be like if space were different? The relationship between a space constructed with the aid of alternative visual systems and the experience of ‘being’ in those spaces is discussed with reference to experiments carried out by the author in simulating these alternative visual systems.
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Mediated Self? Experiencing the Sense of Presence in Virtual Situations
Francesca Morganti1-2, Antonella Carassa1, Maurizio Tirassa3
1 Institute for Psychology and Sociology of Communication, University of Lugano - Lugano, SWITZERLAND
2 Applied Technology for Neuro-Psychology Lab, Istituto Auxologico Italiano - Milano, ITALY
3 Department of Psychology, University of Torino - Torino, ITALY
Recently the development and the diffusion of computer-based interactive simulations, like 3-D videogames or virtual environments, has been accompanied by an increasing perception of the importance of the "sense of presence" that users may experience while interacting with them. Presence is commonly defined as the subjective feeling of "being there" and it results from subjective involvement in this kind of highly interactive computer-based environments.
We propose that the issue of presence bridges the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of technology on the issue of mediated embodiment, that is, on the fuzzy boundaries between the body and its technological extensions. It also opens the door to related problems in the science of human consciousness, notably the mind-body problem. We agree that a proper treatment of the issue of presence in virtual reality should begin with the acknowledgment that presence is a major feature of human consciousness, and the hub of any interaction with natural as well as artificial environments.
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Insoluble Dualism in Buddhism
Katalin Mund
Eotvos University, Budapest
There is a growing interest in Cognitive Science in Buddhism as an anti-Cartesian approach. However, I argue that Buddhism cannot solve the problem of dualism. Neither its method of introspection, nor its theories result in a realisation of the non-existence of separate soul. In meditation the meditator attains higher and higher meditational levels, but the subjective self remains there, in the back. The ethymology of "vijñana" (consciousness) also suggests that its main characteristic is discrimination between subject and object, that is, the very concept of consciousness automatically implies dualism. The strongest monist endeavors e.g. Jogacara ("mind only") School have failed: by observing consciousness, meta-levels appear that create a new dualism. Partly because of the influence of Hindu tantra, and of other archaic traditions (e.g. in Tibet) the notion of the soul reappears in its most ancestral form. According to the Sutras already the early Buddhist scholars were aware of this problem.
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Varieties of Self-Consciousness and the Boundaries of the Self
Albert Newen
Universität Tübingen
We have to distinguish biological and representation-dependent selves while dealing with human beings. The biological self is the human being as an animal with skin which marks a biological border to the environment. The representation-dependent self is nothing but a human being with special forms of information processing including self-representations. The boundaries of the self are essentially dependent on the kind of representation that is available for a subject: After critizing different models of self-consciousness as proposed by Neisser and Bermúdez, a new positive account inspired by developmental psychology will be presented which systematically distinguishes five different levels of self-consciousness, that comprise nonconceptual representations of bodily states, conceptual representation of objects, sentential representation of events, meta-representation of propositional attitudes (like beliefs, desires etc.), and, as the most complex form, iterative meta-representations of propositional attitudes. Then the central claim is developed that the boundaries of the self are essentially dependent on the kind of representation that constitutes the self. This allows us to account for phenomena like alien limb syndrome as well as for thought insertion.
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The Fugue Project: An Interactive Exploration of Personal Reality in a Hyperreal World
Gordana Novakovic
AHRC/ACE Art & Science Fellow and Leverhulme Trust Artist in Residence,
Department of Computer Science,
University College London
One of the most powerful ways in which the boundaries of experience and the self can be explored is through interactive art. Fugue is a scientifically informed art project based on the functioning of the human immune system. It symbolises the inseparable interconnectedness between all particles and functions of a living body, which is shaped by its inner processes as much as by its interaction with the world. Inspired by the musical form of fugue, the piece operates within the framework of an artificial immune system algorithm, expressed through vision and sound. The complexity of the fugal structure modeled on deep biological functions brings about a congruency between the rhythm of the piece and the biological rhythms of the participant, opening a channel for liberating the body to a full awareness of the broad spectrum of stimuli and meditative forces emitted by the artwork, and their unfolding in the body of the participant.
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On Freedom
Chris Nunn
Journal of Consciousness Studies
I aim to show that ‘free will’, defined as a capacity of consciousness to influence its own future evolution, follows from two intuitively acceptable ‘axioms’ of neuroscience:-
(a) any unique conscious state is associated with an unique neural state.
(b) consciousness is entangled with the memory process.
These circumstances, I suggest, by-pass Daniel Wegner’s argument for the illusoriness of free choice. For he relates the feeling of choosing to the output of a brain ‘I did it’ module; in fact conscious choice is mediated by the ability of consciousness to influence what gets stored in memory.
This mechanism, allowing freedom from (unconscious) neural determinism, entails considerable subjection to social determinism. I briefly discuss the relevant issues and suggest that individual consciousness still retains some autonomy.
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The Fragile Self
Aislinn O’Donnell
University College Dublin, Ireland
In his Ethics Spinoza suggests that expanding one’s powers of existing involves both the ability to multiply one’s powers of acting and affecting - to compose relations with other bodies and minds - and the ability to be affected in diverse ways. The first element has garnered considerable attention in Western philosophical thought and social imaginings, however the second element remains somewhat neglected. This paper explores philosophical perspectives on thes idea of ‘active-passivity’. I argue that by developing more nuanced reflections on the ways in which life cannot be mastered, such as when we experience vulnerability, fragility, and contingency, we can begin to develop a positive appraisal of the experience of passivity that can itself lead to a different understanding of the self in relation to others. The aim of this paper is to develop a theoretically coherent and practically relevant concept of active-passivity and in so doing to offer another way of thinking about the question of autonomy.
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The Varieties of Bounded Experience
John Pickering
Warwick University
In the West, normal development involves individuation. We aim to become individuals who can feel at ease with their own identity and who can take responsibility for our actions.
Individuation depends on the development and maintenance of boundaries. These may separate us from others, from what’s around us and from parts of our own experience. A realistic sense of the boundaries of our experience, is necessary part of being a psychologically healthy person.
Disturbances to boundaries may be pathological. If they become too rigid or too impermeable we feel isolated and cannot have proper emotional contacts. If they become too porous or if we become uncertain about where they are, or even if they’re there at all, we can feel invaded and fragmented.
If may be, though, that development may require boundaries to be challenged or re-negotiated in some way. This could an uncomfortable and dangerous process or, with the right conditions, an uplifting and fulfilling one.
This paper will review some the varieties of experience of boundaries, with a view to drawing out some practical recommendations for the way we live now.
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Non-Experience of Free Will
Bryony Pierce
Bristol University
This paper considers practices, brain states and theoretical approaches that may cause non-experience of free will, i.e. phenomenal experience of oneself as acting, for reasons or for no apparent reason, without freely choosing one’s actions.
The main criterion for non-experience of free will, regardless of how this state of mind is attained, is the capacity for subjective experience of action as part of a causal process extending spatially and temporally beyond the boundaries of the self.
The self qua free agent must be understood intellectually and simultaneously experienced subjectively as an abstract representation, a locus of control constructed erroneously in response to repeated observation of apparent causal links between thought and action.
I discuss meditation, hypnosis, pathological disorders, drug-induced altered states of consciousness, electrical stimulation of the brain and theoretical methods. The ‘paradigm shift route’ is presented as the most effective single method of attaining sustained non-experience of free will.
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Self-Other Feelings and Experiencing Others
Vasudevi Reddy
Department of Psychology, University of Portsmouth
Psychology often assumes that the ‘other’ is a single kind of entity, whom the ‘self’ is challenged with understanding. But an ‘other’ whom one experiences in engagement with the self is quite different from any old ‘other’ who can be observed in the world. Selves and others can only be experienced through feelings, simultaneously, of each for the other. In engagement, such feelings are profoundly more complex and creative than in observation. Such experience of the other is not only vital for dialogue, but also for ‘typical’ development. Using examples from human infancy this paper will argue for a second-person approach to self-other-awareness and asks what implications this might have for the study of mind-knowledge and for individual-brain approaches to neuro-imaging.
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Is Embodied Self-Experience Fundamentally Enacted? Applying Nielsen’s Alien Hand Experiment in New Ways
Patrick Renault1,2; Peter Kristian Jacobsen1,2; & Sidse Arnfred1
(1) Cognitive Research Unit,
Department of Psychiatry, Universityhospital of Copenhagen, Hvidovre,
Bröndbyöstervej 160, DK- 2605 Bröndby, Denmark.
(2) Center for Theoretical & Empirical Consciousness Studies,
Department of Psychology, University of Copenhagen,
CSS, Öster Farimagsgade 5, 1353 Copenhagen C, Denmark.
Does agency play a fundamental constitutive role for bodily self-experience? If so, could this help to an understanding of a variety of pathologies involving distorted self-experience? These are complex questions, since a preemptive experiential account of my limbs and actions as being me and mine involve not only a complexity of fundamental pre-reflective and reflective moments of self-awareness but also composite discursive narratives embodied across contextual practices. We are currently pursuing these questions through mulitple approaches: theoretically by means of phenomenological analyses in the continental tradition of, in particular, Husserl and Merleau-Ponty; empirically by applying and developing new variations of Nielsen’s alien feedback experiments; and by integrating neural measures using EEG. Moreover, we plan to apply our ‘instruments’ to a variety of highly relevant neuro- and psychopathologies as a supplement to clinical phenomenological interviews and observations. Here, we focus on new results, developments and potentials of Nielsen’s experimental phenomenological alien feedback approach.
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Dreams and a New Model of Psyche
Sheri Ritchlin
Independent Writer and Lecturer
Jung’s description of the psyche as a self-adjusting system is tantamount to saying — in contemporary scientific language — that the psyche is autopoietic or self-organizing. In this paper I will use examples from decades of dream work to demonstrate that this activity begins — not in the rational cognitive process of consciousness — but at the core of chaos in the so-called unconscious. This shift, however, requires a new model of psyche that is not split between conscious and unconscious parts but is rather a process which begins in a transpersonal consciousness which funds an individual unit (a personal "one" into which it canalizes). The locus of the self-organizing process moves from an utterly independent, isolated center in the consciousness of each person, to a self-organizing center which operates across the whole, expressing itself within each unit through novel, creative activity (Whitehead) but never solely and finally embedded there.
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Personification, Animism, and Synaesthesia:
Some Clues to the Origin of Second Person Perspectives
Noam Sagiv
Centre for Cognition and Neuroimaging, Brunel University
Synaesthesia offers a unique point of view on the problem of conscious perception. However, much of synaesthesia research focused on colour only. I argue that frameworks for understanding synaesthesia can be extended into other domains (e.g., social cognition) and yield new insights into understanding the human mind and brain function, particularly, pre-linguistic intersubjectivity.
To illustrate this, I will first show that synaesthetic experiences and their inducing stimuli are not always strictly sensory (Sagiv, 2005). Some synaesthetes, for example, anthropomorphize certain concepts (e.g., letters of the alphabet) in additional to visualising them in colour. First described by Calkins (1895), the phenomenon has been largely ignored by scientists since. We collected detailed descriptions made by 30 individuals reporting such peculiar experiences (as well as behavioural data consistent with the subjective report). Many of them also reported some form of animism, i.e., they attributed feelings to inanimate objects. While normative in some cultures and among young children (Piaget, 1929), animism is rarely reported by adults in modern society. Nevertheless, it appeals to many of us and heavily utilised, e.g., in poetry or advertising (indeed, certain patterns of cross-modal correspondences seen in synaesthetes, are also found in non-synaesthetes; e.g., Sagiv and Ward, in press). How is this possible and what does it tell us about the origins of second person perspectives?
One widely accepted model of synaesthesia involves the cross activation of mechanisms involved in the perception of synaesthetic experiences and their inducers (Ramachandran and Hubbard, 2001). The principle can be extended to mechanisms implicated in processing affective properties and social meaning. Indeed, neuroimaging and electrophysiological data in humans and primates suggests that such cross-domain interactions could underlie both empathy and communication skills (Gallese, 2001). Still, it may be surprising that empathic responses or personality attributes would ever be directed towards inanimate objects or abstract concepts. I will attempt to make sense of these findings and combine phenomenological, behavioural and neurophysiological approaches. I hope to demonstrate that synaesthesia provides a window not only into the problem of visual perception but rather consciousness in a wider sense.
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Consciousness, Bodily Consciousness and the Imagination
Susan Stuart
Department of Philosophy, University of Glasgow
Imagination is commonly thought to amount to nothing more than a creative faculty. But imagination as bodily expectation can be revealed through examination of the imaginations productive, bodily, character, that aspect of the mind that extrapolates through bodily consciousness or experience an anticipation or, let us say, an expectation of how our world will continue to be from moment to moment, from sensation to sensation. It is a notion of imagination that is fundamental to any conscious experiencing system, for it is through the smooth-functioning of this imagination that we are able: (i) to have unconscious expectations about how our world will be with regard to each of our senses and (ii) to recognise change when our sensory expectations are not realised. Perhaps most importantly it is from this power of the imagination, to build up unconscious sensory expectations and recognise when they are not realised, that we are able to develop our sense of the passage of time. Thus, our sense of the passage of time is, at base, physiological and unconscious, and derived from our plenisentient and dynamic coupling with our environment.
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Demarcating the Self in Action: The Multifactorial Account of Agency
Matthis Synofzik1, Gottfried Vosgerau2
1. Dept. Cognitive Neurology, Hertie Institute of Clinical Brain Research, University of Tübingen, Germany
2. Dept. of Philosophy, University of Tübingen, Germany
The sense of agency (SOA) is central to self-consciousness. The differentiation between self-caused events and externally caused events constitutes an essential boundary of the self in action. It is particularly interesting because it is often vague, not only in pathological cases (e.g. schizophrenia) but also in every-day situations. Yet, there is little agreement in philosophy or neuroscience on how the SOA arises. On the basis of a naturalistic background we develop a multifactorial account of agency that brings together different sense modalities and different levels of cognitive processing. Drawing on conceptual analysis and empirical studies, we argue that the SOA is the product of a cognitive weighing process of different factors such as proprioception and exteroception, feed-forward processes, intentional stances, thoughts, and environmental cues. We provide evidence for the relevance of each factor. The resulting naturalistic theory provides a framework for recent and future research of the SOA. Moreover, it captures the vagueness and flexibility of the boundaries of the self.
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Enactivism as an Approach to the Brain-Consciousness and Fact-Value Gaps
Steve Torrance1 and Erik Myin2
1. University of Sussex and Goldsmiths College, London
2. University of Antwerp and Free University, Brussels
The gulf between properties of brains and bodies and properties of consciousness has many features which are mirrored by the gulf between non-ethical aspects of reality and ethical commitments. One is an explanatory gap - how can ‘subjective’ properties of mind be explained in terms of ‘objective’ features of our physical embodiment? The other is a gap of justification - how can the ‘objective’ features of the world generate conclusive reasons for particular ethical commitments (e.g. altruism over selfishness)? However in each case there is a key dilemma - how can one provide a theory of the phenomenon in question (consciousness/ethics) which links it in the required way to ‘objective’ features of the world without emasculating the special features of those phenomena (the qualitative, felt nature of conscious awareness; the internal connection to preferences and commitments to act in the case of ethics)? There is much insight to be gained by exploring the commonalities and differences between these problem areas - for instance the way different kinds of responses to one dilemma match up with kinds of responses to the other.
Enactivism suggests a distinctive approach to the brain-consciousness gap which can also be usefully applied to the fact-value gap. Some apparently innocent ontological and epistemological assumptions play an important role in the way explanatory gap between the phenomenal and the physical takes on its puzzling aspect - in particular the assumption that conscious states are special kinds of facts which exist alongside other facts in the universe, and that the consciousness facts need to be tied in with the other kinds of facts through logical links of explanation. We propose a contrasting way of viewing how consciousness fits in with our ‘objective’ nature.
We suggest that the Enactive approach to consciousness allows us to rethink how the phenomenal relates to the objective or physical aspects of our nature. We will, in very broad strokes, compose a picture of perceptual awareness in which the difference between the phenomenal and the objective is rendered in terms of a difference in perspectives rather than a difference between kinds of facts . We suggest that problems about phenomenal awareness and the explanatory gap, arise from an incompatibility between two perspectives, rather than as a result of an ontological incompatibility of two subcategories of one generic ontological category of ‘fact’. We indicate that this approach can lay to rest worries about the explanatory gap: first, it allows one to diagnose the source of the tension that sustains worries about the explanatory gap; second, it shows how the ability to compare perspectives can lead to some understanding of how the objective can be imbued with phenomenal qualities.
We will also sketch how a similar approach can be adopted in the case of the gap between understanding the world objectively and the adoption of ethical commitments. Finally we outline some ways in which the areas of consciousness and of ethics are deeply interrelated - for example, to recognize a being as conscious is, we suggest, to be committed to adopting an ethical stance to that being.
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Differences and similarities between the bundle theories of the self in the East and the West, and their implications
Philip Van Loocke
Dept of Philosophy, University of Ghent
We compare Western and Eastern bundle theories of the self, and their consequences for the concept of freedom. On the Western side, Ainslie’s model is taken as a prototypical example. Among its properties are two core features: strife between agents is unavoidable, and vivid imagination in daydreaming is required so that long term goals can prevail over short term benefits. Both features are contrasted with Eastern bundle theories. It is conjectured that this contrast relates with the difference between independent and relational self concepts. Different bundle theories also correlate with different perspectives on human freedom. From this point of view, it is discussed to which extent the philosophical problem of free will is to be solved in cultural terms.
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Redrawing the Boundaries of Consciousness and Self
Max Velmans
Goldsmiths, University of London
The boundaries of consciousness and self can be defined both experientially and conceptually. Experientially they are defined by past and potential experience in normal and altered states, both human and non-human. Conceptually they are defined by one's "map" of consciousness—and here one has to choose from the many Eastern and Western ways of defining the relation of consciousness to the mind, brain and material world. In the present paper I touch briefly on the effects of drawing the boundaries of consciousness in different ways, and argue that the most defensible "map" follows the natural contours of consciousness defined by each individual's experiential horizons. I also argue that, intersubjectively, these natural contours do not correspond well to conventional dualist or reductionist "maps" and touch briefly on the consequences of extending ones map of consciousness to one's experiential horizons for a) the subjective versus objective distinction, b) the relationship between self and other, c) the relation between consciousness and what is not consciousness (e.g. the unconscious mind) and d) a possible rapprochement between Western and Eastern modes of thought.
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Observing the Mind: A Buddhist Approach to Exploring Consciousness
B. Alan Wallace
President, Santa Barbara Institute for Consciousness Studies
While the modern cognitive sciences approach the study of consciousness primarily by way of examining the neural and behavioral correlates of states of consciousness, Buddhist contemplatives have introspectively focused their attention primarily on subjective mental states themselves. But introspection, as William James pointed out more than a century ago, is a fallible mode of observation, and it has been largely marginalized in the modern study of the mind. Buddhists have recognized how unreliable introspection can be, but they have sought to overcome its shortcomings bydeveloping highly sophisticated modes of attention, with enhanced stability and vividness. By exploring the mind primarily from a first-person perspective with refined attention, they claim to bring to the light of consciousness many mental processes that are otherwise unconscious. In this way, they assert that the nature of conscious phenomena themselves, and not just their physical correlates, can be investigated in depth. The Buddhist study of the mind is not only epistemic--concerned with the nature, origins, and causal efficacy of mental events--but also pragmatic, for it is primarily concerned with bringing about greater mental balance and genuine happiness through understanding the nature of the mind and its relation to the world at large.
Biographical Notes
B. Alan Wallace, Ph.D. has been a scholar and practitioner of Buddhism since 1970, and he has taught Buddhist theory and meditation worldwide since 1976. Having devoted fourteen years to training as a Tibetan Buddhist monk, ordained by H. H. the Dalai Lama, he went on to earn an undergraduate degree in physics and the philosophy of science at Amherst College and a doctorate in religious studies at Stanford University.
His published works include Choosing Reality: A Buddhist View of Physics and the Mind (Snow Lion, 1996), The Taboo of Subjectivity: Toward a New Science of Consciousness (Oxford, 2000), Buddhism and Science: Breaking New Ground (New York: Columbia, 2003), Genuine Happiness: Meditation as the Path to Fulfillment (John Wiley & Sons. 2005), Balancing the Mind: A Tibetan Buddhist Approach to Refining Attention (Snow Lion, 2005), and The Attention Revolution: Unlocking the Power of the Focused Mind (Wisdom, 2006).
After teaching for four years in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara, he founded the Santa Barbara Institute for Consciousness Studies (http://sbinstitute.com ), of which he is president.
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Have the past you always wanted! Transcending the self by imagery experience
Diana Wernisch
Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration
NLP(t)1 uses techniques working with imagination as a central mechanism to change the self and a person´s behaviour (behaviour as all sensory representation and action observable to the subject and/or an observer). It is assumed that experiences made are changeable in retrospect by imagination, that is, the self is changed by altering originally perceived experiences through imagery experiences. One such technique - Change Personal History (CPH) - is described and evaluated in terms of research available that might offer support. Such evidence has not been provided so far. Assumptions that the CPH-technique implicitly makes are spelled out ("plasticity" of memory; relevance of memory for the self and behaviour; similarity of perception and imagination; influence of imagination on past memory). Research supporting such assumptions is reviewed with an emphasis on the central mechanism of imagination inflation. The basic conclusion is that there is evidence available for the assumptions the technique implicitly makes and that CPH effectively fosters many ways in which imagination does affect memory. The author calls for more explicitness in the incorporation of empirical findings and theoretical foundations in NLP(t)-models.
1. NLP: Neurolinguistic Programming; NLPt: Neurolinguistic Psychotherapy
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Co-operation and Cultural Dislocation of Self-Boundaries
Charles Whitehead
Department of Anthropology, University College London
Wellcome Department of Imaging Neuroscience, University College London
Harrow School of Computer Science, University of Westminster
According to current Darwinism, only two kinds of within-species cooperation can evolve genetically: kin-based and reciprocal altruism. Human cooperation transcends these limitations, probably because all human societies are structured by formal systems of ‘exploded’ kinship (lineage clans, nation states, ethnicity, etc.) and out-group reciprocity (gift exchange, marriage, sporting contests, warfare, etc.). These systems presuppose collectivized selfhood and disembodied self-perceptions, as can be illustrated by animistic beliefs.
Western science, in reacting against vitalism, created new disembodied perceptions of its own: physicalism, cognitivism, logocentrism, individualism, and genocentrism. But, over and above all this, it is the collectivization of selfhood that causes greatest dislocation of self-boundaries. Such inflated personhood was presumably necessary to coerce our social but selfish ancestors into collaborating in a non-selfish system, but it is also at the root of many political evils that beset the world today - warfare, terrorism, ethnic cleansing, military rape camps, and so on.
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The Time of the Self
Dan Zahavi
Center for Subjectivity Research, University of Copenhagen
What is the relation between temporality and selfhood? Much depends on the notions of time and self employed. In my talk, I will compare and contrast two different philosophical conceptions of self, namely a hermeneutical (Ricoeur, MacIntyre, Brunner) and a phenomenological (Husserl, Sartre, Henry). Both conceptions stress the close relationship between selfhood and temporality, but they address rather different aspects, partly because they investigate two quite different dimensions of time. In the first case, the focus is on narrated time and on the link between selfhood and narration, in the second case, it is on the temporal structure of the stream of consciousness, and on the question of whether the unity of the experiential flow requires a formal subject of experience. I will argue that the two conceptions are complementary rather than conflicting and that the phenomenological conception of time and self must be ascribed a certain priority.
Biographical Notes
Dan Zahavi is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Danish National Research Foundation's Center for Subjectivity Research at the University of Copenhagen. He obtained his Ph.D. (summa cum laude) from Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in 1994, and his Dr.phil. (Danish Habilitation) from University of Copenhagen in 1999.
Zahavi has been the recipient of the Ballard Prize in Phenomenology, and was awarded a prize by the Royal Danish Society of Sciences and Letters in 2000 for his research in phenomenology. He was elected member of Institut International de Philosophie in 2001, and is currently serving as president of the Nordic Society for Phenomenology. Zahavi has published more than 100 articles on topics in philosophy of mind, phenomenology, and history of philosophy.
He has authored 7 books including Husserl und die transzendentale Intersubjektivität (Kluwer 1996), Self-awareness and Alterity (Northwestern University Press 1999), Husserl's Phenomenology (Stanford University Press 2003), and Subjectivity and Selfhood (MIT Press 2005). He is the editor and/or co-editor of 10 volumes, including Exploring the Self (John Benjamins 2000), One Hundred Years of Phenomenology (Kluwer 2002), and The Structure and Development of Self-Consciousness (John Benjamins 2004).
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