The Two Selves

The Two Selves
Author: Stanley B. Klein
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 176
Release: 2014
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 0199349967

Our experience of a unified sense of the self is underwritten by a multiplicity of self-aspects having very different metaphysical commitments. Our experience of unity is provided by a process-which, under certain clinical conditions, is rendered inoperative-that enables a person to experience mental states as personally owned.

Kierkegaard’s Mirrors

Kierkegaard’s Mirrors
Author: P. Stokes
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 232
Release: 2009-11-18
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0230251269

What is it to see the world, other people, and imagined situations as making personal moral demands of us? What is it to experience stories as speaking to us personally and directly? Kierkegaard's Mirrors explores Kierkegaard's answers to these questions, with a new phenomenological interpretation of Kierkegaardian 'interest'.

The Oxford Handbook of the Self

The Oxford Handbook of the Self
Author: Shaun Gallagher
Publisher: OUP UK
Total Pages: 759
Release: 2011-02-10
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 0199548013

The Oxford Handbook of the Self explores a fascinating diversity of questions about our understanding of self from a variety of interdisciplinary perspectives, including philosophy, ethics, psychology, neuroscience, psychopathology, narrative, and postmodern theories.

Ontological Security in International Relations

Ontological Security in International Relations
Author: Brent J. Steele
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2008-03-10
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 113598008X

The central assertion of this book is that states pursue social actions to serve self-identity needs, even when these actions compromise their physical existence. Three forms of social action, sometimes referred to as ‘motives’ of state behaviour (moral, humanitarian, and honour-driven) are analyzed here through an ontological security approach. Brent J. Steele develops an account of social action which interprets these behaviours as fulfilling a nation-state's drive to secure self-identity through time. The anxiety which consumes all social agents motivates them to secure their sense of being, and thus he posits that transformational possibilities exist in the ‘Self’ of a nation-state. The volume consequently both challenges and complements realist, liberal, constructivist and post-structural accounts to international politics. Using ontological security to interpret three cases - British neutrality during the American Civil War (1861-1865), Belgium’s decision to fight Germany in 1914, and NATO’s (1999) Kosovo intervention - the book concludes by discussing the importance for self-interrogation in both the study and practice of international relations. Ontological Security in International Relations will be of particular interest to students and researchers of international politics, international ethics, international relations and security studies.

The Ontological Self

The Ontological Self
Author: Dr. Cody Newman
Publisher: Magus Books
Total Pages: 224
Release:
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN:

Everyone has a different answer for what the Self is. But do they have any idea what it really is? Is the Self actually the fundamental unit of existence? Many people are happy to believe that the universe is made of matter. What would it mean to say that the universe is made of mind? If material atoms are made of subatomic particles, what would immaterial minds be made of? The only thing a mind can be made of is thoughts. After all, that's what a mind does. It thinks. What does thinking mean? It means using thoughts. It means combining "atomic" thoughts into "molecular" thoughts. In physics, string theory claims that reality is made up of infinitesimally small, one-dimensional vibrating strings. As the strings vibrate, twist, fold, come together and split apart, they produce all the effects that traditional physics addresses, all the stuff to do with atoms and their interactions, and including large-scale material phenomena like gravity. But what if the real "strings" were actually zero-dimensional rather than one-dimensional, and immaterial rather than material? What if they were actually what thoughts are, and so to say that physics arises out of material strings could be replaced by the statement that physics is made out of immaterial thoughts? Where strings are one-dimensional, extended and material, thoughts are zero-dimensional, unextended and immaterial, but their combinations produce dimensional, material, extended things (thanks to the incredible properties of phase in ontological Fourier mathematics). All you have to do to replace materialism (reality is made of matter) with idealism (reality is made of mind) is to reduce scientific "strings" to their analytic mental equivalents, which turn out to be sinusoidal waves, which exist in the mathematical precursor domain that serves as the origin, the cause, of the domain of physics. Mathematics, in itself, is a dimensionless Singularity system. Ontological mathematics is the subject that deals with the mathematical Singularity that precedes the Big Bang. This Singularity, when properly understood, comprises autonomous selves – called monads – made of basis thoughts, which are none other than sinusoidal waves. The self is an eternal and necessary entity. It has existed forever, and it, with its fellow selves, is the author of everything. We inhabit a universe of mental selves, not of physical matter. Selves create matter. Matter does not create selves.

The Essence of the Self

The Essence of the Self
Author: Geoffrey Madell
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 269
Release: 2014-11-20
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1317584139

In this volume, Geoffrey Madell develops a revised account of the self, making a compelling case for why the "simple" or "anti-criterial" view of personal identity warrants a robust defense. Madell critiques recent discussions of the self for focusing on features which are common to all selves, and which therefore fail to capture the uniqueness of each self. In establishing his own view of personal identity, Madell proposes (a) that there is always a gap between ‘A is f and g’ and ‘I am f and g’; (b), that a complete description of the world offered without recourse to indexicals will fail to account for the contingent truth that I am one of the persons described; and (c), that an account of conscious perspectives on the world must take into account what it means for an apparently arbitrary one of these perspectives to be mine. Engaging with contemporary positions on the first person, embodiment, psychological continuity, and other ongoing arguments, Madell contends that there can be no such thing as a criterion of personal identity through time, that no bodily or psychological continuity approach to the issue can succeed, and that personal identity through time must be absolute, not a matter of degree. Madell’s view that the nature of the self is substantively different from that of objects in the world will generate significant discussion and debate among philosophers of mind.

Time, Memory, Institution

Time, Memory, Institution
Author: David Morris
Publisher: Ohio University Press
Total Pages: 264
Release: 2015-04-15
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0821444964

This collection is the first extended investigation of the relation between time and memory in Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s thought as a whole and the first to explore in depth the significance of his concept of institution. It brings the French phenomenologist’s views on the self and ontology into contemporary focus. Time, Memory, Institution argues that the self is not a self-contained or self-determining identity, as such; it is gathered out of a radical openness to what is not self, and that it gathers itself in a time that is not merely a given dimension, but folds back upon, gathers, and institutes itself. Access to previously unavailable texts, in particular Merleau-Ponty’s lectures on institution and expression, has presented scholars with new resources for thinking about time, memory, and history. These essays represent the best of this new direction in scholarship; they deepen our understanding of self and world in relation to time and memory; and they give occasion to reexamine Merleau-Ponty’s contribution and relevance to contemporary Continental philosophy. This volume is essential reading for scholars of phenomenology and French philosophy, as well as for the many readers across the arts, humanities, and social sciences who continue to draw insight and inspiration from Merleau-Ponty. Contributors: Elizabeth Behnke, Edward Casey, Véronique Fóti, Donald Landes, Kirsten Jacobson, Galen Johnson, Michael Kelly, Scott Marratto, Glen Mazis, Caterina Rea, John Russon, Robert Vallier, and Bernhard Waldenfels

Self-Understanding and Lifeworld

Self-Understanding and Lifeworld
Author: Hans-Helmuth Gander
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 442
Release: 2017-08-28
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0253026075

What are the foundations of human self-understanding and the value of responsible philosophical questioning? Focusing on Heidegger's early work on facticity, historicity, and the phenomenological hermeneutics of factical-historical life, Hans-Helmuth Gander develops an idea of understanding that reflects our connection with the world and other, and thus invites deep consideration of phenomenology, hermeneutics, and deconstruction. He draws usefully on Husserl's phenomenology and provides grounds for exchange with Descartes, Dilthey, Nietzsche, Gadamer, Ricoeur, and Foucault. On the way to developing a contemporary hermeneutical philosophy, Gander clarifies the human relation to self in and through conversation with Heidegger's early hermeneutics. Questions about reading and writing then follow as these are the very actions that structure human self-understanding and world understanding.

Being No One

Being No One
Author: Thomas Metzinger
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 896
Release: 2004-08-20
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 0262263807

According to Thomas Metzinger, no such things as selves exist in the world: nobody ever had or was a self. All that exists are phenomenal selves, as they appear in conscious experience. The phenomenal self, however, is not a thing but an ongoing process; it is the content of a "transparent self-model." In Being No One, Metzinger, a German philosopher, draws strongly on neuroscientific research to present a representationalist and functional analysis of what a consciously experienced first-person perspective actually is. Building a bridge between the humanities and the empirical sciences of the mind, he develops new conceptual toolkits and metaphors; uses case studies of unusual states of mind such as agnosia, neglect, blindsight, and hallucinations; and offers new sets of multilevel constraints for the concept of consciousness. Metzinger's central question is: How exactly does strong, consciously experienced subjectivity emerge out of objective events in the natural world? His epistemic goal is to determine whether conscious experience, in particular the experience of being someone that results from the emergence of a phenomenal self, can be analyzed on subpersonal levels of description. He also asks if and how our Cartesian intuitions that subjective experiences as such can never be reductively explained are themselves ultimately rooted in the deeper representational structure of our conscious minds.

The Divided Self

The Divided Self
Author: R. D. Laing
Publisher: Penguin UK
Total Pages: 292
Release: 2010-01-28
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0141962089

The Divided Self, R.D. Laing's groundbreaking exploration of the nature of madness, illuminated the nature of mental illness and made the mysteries of the mind comprehensible to a wide audience. First published in 1960, this watershed work aimed to make madness comprehensible, and in doing so revolutionized the way we perceive mental illness. Using case studies of patients he had worked with, psychiatrist R. D. Laing argued that psychosis is not a medical condition, but an outcome of the 'divided self', or the tension between the two personas within us: one our authentic, private identity, and the other the false, 'sane' self that we present to the world. Laing's radical approach to insanity offered a rich existential analysis of personal alienation and made him a cult figure in the 1960s, yet his work was most significant for its humane attitude, which put the patient back at the centre of treatment. Includes an introduction by Professor Anthony S. David. 'One of the twentieth century's most influential psychotherapists' Guardian 'Laing challenged the psychiatric orthodoxy of his time ... an icon of the 1960s counter-culture' The Times