This article provides an overview and analysis of recent work on the extended self, demonstrating that the boundaries of selves are fluid, shifting across biological, artifactual, and sociocultural structures. First, it distinguishes the notions of minimal self, person, and narrative self. Second, it surveys how philosophers, psychologists, and cognitive scientists argue that embodiment, cognition, emotion, consciousness, and moral character traits can be extended and what that implies for the boundaries of selves. It also reviews and responds to various criticisms and (...) counterarguments against the extended self. The main focus is on the link between the extended mind and extended self, which has received the most attention in recent literature. But accounts of the extended self developed independently of the extended mind are also briefly discussed. This article ends by drawing out some of the conceptual, methodological, and normative implications of the extended self and suggesting some directions for future research. (shrink)

Narrative views of the self argue that we constitute our self in self-narratives. Embodied views hold that our self is shaped through embodied experiences. In that case, what is the relation between embodiment and narrativity in the process of self-constitution? The question demands a clear definition of embodiment, but existing studies remains unclear on this point (section 2). We offer a correction to this situation by drawing on Merleau-Ponty’s analysis of the body that highlights its habituality. On this account, the (...) body has an inherent tendency to cultivate an organization of habits through its history of engagement with the world (section 3). Next, we explore its role in narrative self-constitution by distinguishing between two aspects of the narrative self, the narrated I and the narrating I (section 4). We argue on phenomenological grounds that self-narratives are informed by bodily perspectives in both respects. Furthermore, a focus on the habituality of the body allows for a better explanation of self-constitution than those based on implicit self-narratives (section 5). For these phenomenological and theoretical reasons, we conclude that narrative self-constitution is an embodied and embedded practice (section 6). (shrink)

Memories of our personal past are the building blocks of our narrative identity. So, when we depend on objects and other people to remember and construct our personal past, our narrative identity is distributed across our embodied brains and an ecology of environmental resources. This paper uses a cognitive niche construction approach to conceptualise how we engineer our memory ecology and construct our distributed narrative identities. It does so by identifying three types of niche construction processes that govern how we (...) interact with our memory ecology, namely creating, editing, and using resources in our memory ecology. It also conceptualises how identity-relevant information in objects and (family) stories is transmitted vertically, i.e., across different generations of people. Identifying these processes allows us to better understand the cultural information trajectories that constitute our memory ecologies. Thus, what I’ll argue is that our memory ecology distributes our narrative identity and that engineering our memory ecology is a form of narrative niche construction. (shrink)

One goal of this paper is to argue that autobiographical memories are extended and distributed across embodied brains and environmental resources. This is important because such distributed memories play a constitutive role in our narrative identity. So, some of the building blocks of our narrative identity are not brain-bound but extended and distributed. Recognising the distributed nature of memory and narrative identity, invites us to find treatments and strategies focusing on the environment in which dementia patients are situated. A second (...) goal of this paper is to suggest various of such strategies, including lifelogging technologies such as SenseCams, life story books, multimedia biographies, memory boxes, ambient intelligence systems, and virtual reality applications. Such technologies allow dementia patients to remember their personal past in a way that wouldn’t be possible by merely relying on their biological memory, in that way aiding in preserving their narrative identity and positively contributing to their sense of well-being. (shrink)

Are interpersonal affordances a distinct type of affordance, and if so, what is it that differentiates them from other kinds of affordances? In this paper, I show that a hard distinction between interpersonal affordances and other affordances is warranted and ethically important. The enactivist theory of participatory sense-making demonstrates that there is a difference in coupling between agent-environment and agent-agent interactions, and these differences in coupling provide a basis for distinguishing between the perception of environmental and interpersonal affordances. Building further (...) on this foundation for understanding interpersonal affordances, I argue that in line with some enactivist work on social cognition, interpersonal affordances ought to be considered as those that are afforded by agents and are recognized as such. Given this distinction, I also make the point that because our social conventions establish persons as more than mere agents, the direct perception of interpersonal affordances may also involve seeing others as embodied selves. Distinguishing between types of affordances thus also matters ethically: there can be harms done when an agent is not perceived as an agent, and there can be harms done when an agent is not perceived as a self. (shrink)

The argument of this paper is that we should think of the extension of cognitive abilities and cognitive character in integrationist terms. Cognitive abilities are extended by acquired practices of creating and manipulating information that is stored in a publicly accessible environment. I call these cognitive practices (2007). In contrast to Pritchard (2010) I argue that such processes are integrated into our cognitive characters rather than artefacts; such as notebooks. There are two routes to cognitive extension that I contrast in (...) the paper, the first I call artefact extension which is the now classic position of the causal coupling of an agent with an artefact. This approach needs to overcome the objection from cognitive outsourcing: that we simply get an artefact or tool to do the cognitive processing for us without extending our cognitive abilities. Enculturated cognition, by contrast, does not claim that artefacts themselves extend our cognitive abilities, but rather that the acquired practices for manipulating artefacts and the information stored in them extend our cognitive abilities (by augmenting and transforming them). In the rest of the paper I provide a series of arguments and cases which demonstrate that an enculturated approach works better for both epistemic and cognitive cases of the extension of ability and character. (shrink)

Recent work on diachronic agency has challenged the predominantly structural or synchronic approach to agency that is characteristic of much of the literature in contemporary philosophical moral psychology. However, the embodied dimensions of diachronic agency continue to be neglected in the literature. This article draws on phenomenological perspectives on embodiment and narrative conceptions of the self to argue that diachronic agency and selfhood are anchored in embodiment. In doing so, the article also responds to Diana Meyers' recent work on corporeal (...) selfhood. (shrink)

Recent work on the relation between narrative and selfhood has emphasized embodiment as an indispensable foundation for selfhood. This has occasioned an interesting debate on the relation between embodiment and narrative. In this paper, I attempt to mediate the range of conflicting intuitions within the debate by proposing a scalar approach to narrative and an accompanying concept of a split-self. Drawing on theoretical developments from contemporary narratology, I argue that we need to move away from a binary understanding of narrative (...) as something an entity strictly is or is not; rather, we need to see narrative as an attribute admitting of degrees. I suggest that the relation between narrative and embodiment should be seen along these lines, proposing three levels of the narrativity of embodied experiencing: 1) the unnarratable, 2) the narratable and 3) the narrative. Finally, I discuss the implications this framework has for the general question of the narrative constitution of selfhood. (shrink)

In this paper we focus on what is referred to as the ‘mineness’ of experience, that is, the intimate familiarity we have with our own thoughts, perceptions, and emotions. Most accounts characterize mineness in terms of an experiential dimension, the first-person givenness of experience, that is subsumed under the notion of minimal self-consciousness or a ‘minimal self’. We argue that this account faces problems and develop an alternative account of mineness in terms of the coherence of experiences with what we (...) label an ‘embodied biography’. Building on a near consensus among consciousness researchers over the function of consciousness as integrating infor- mation, we argue that the phenomenology of mineness consists in the absence of any further thought on top of the experience itself. Finally we argue that this non-phenomenological account of mineness fits well with existing data on pathologies of mineness such as delusions of thought insertion. (shrink)

In this article, we investigate how distressing background feelings can be subject to social injustice. We define background feelings as enduring feeling states that condition our perceptions of everyday situations, interpersonal dynamics, and the broader social milieu. While phenomenological psychopathology has long addressed such affective phenomena, including anxiety, guilt, and feelings of not belonging, the intersection with social injustice remains largely unexplored within the framework. To address this gap, we introduce the concept of existential injustice into phenomenological psychopathology. Existential injustice (...) pertains to the unjust formation, perpetuation, and treatment of background feelings. We contend that distressing alterations in these feeling states can stem from, or be perpetuated by, unjust social structures and practices. Existential injustice manifests as a felt inadequacy of one’s background feelings, reflecting broader societal disparities and inequities. Drawing on themes from social psychiatry, we illustrate the utility and explanatory power of the concept through two concrete examples. By shedding light on the ways in which societal dynamics shape distressing affective experiences our analysis underscores the importance of integrating aspects of social injustice into the study of affective phenomena in phenomenological psychopathology. (shrink)

The narratives we have about ourselves are important for our sense of who we are. However, our narratives are influenced, even manipulated, by the people and environments we interact with, impacting our self-understanding. This can lead to narratives that are limited, even harmful. In this paper, I explore how our narrative agency is constrained, to greater and lesser degrees, through a process I call ‘narrative railroading’. Bringing together work on narratives and 4E cognition, I specifically explore how using features of (...) our socio-material environments to support and construct our narratives does not simply offer up possibilities for creating more reliable and accurate self-narratives (Heersmink 2020 ) but can lead to increasingly tight narrative railroading. To illustrate this idea, I analyse how digital technologies do not neutrally distribute our narratives but dynamically shape and mould narrative agency in ways that can restrict our self-understanding, with potentially harmful consequences. As such, I argue that we need to recognise that digital devices not only support narratives but work as powerful narrative devices, shaping and propagating the kinds of narratives that we self-ascribe and act in accordance with. (shrink)

Recent work on enculturation suggests that our cognitive capacities are significantly transformed in the course of the scaffolded acquisition of cognitive practices such as reading and writing. Phylogenetically, enculturation is the result of the co-evolution of human organisms and their socio-culturally structured cognitive niche. It is rendered possible by evolved cerebral and extra-cerebral bodily learning mechanisms that make human organisms apt to acquire culturally inherited cognitive practices. In addition, cultural learning allows for the intergenerational transmission of relevant knowledge and skills. (...) Ontogenetically, enculturation is associated with neural plasticity and the development of new motor routines and action schemas. It relies on scaffolded learning that structures novice-teacher interactions. The acquisition of reading and writing are paradigm examples of enculturation. Based on an empirically informed analysis of the components of enculturation, I will apply the emerging account of enculturated cognition to narrative practices. To date, research on the impact of narratives on the constitution of the self and our understanding of folk psychology has not paid much attention to the question how narratives are influenced by cumulative cultural evolution and our capacity to acquire reading and writing during ontogeny. I will argue that textual narratives, above and beyond oral narratives, provide genuinely new ways of narration. Therefore, the enculturated interaction with textual narratives has the potential to contribute to a better understanding of ourselves and other cognitive agents. (shrink)

In the past three decades a number of narrative self-concepts have appeared in the philosophical literature. A central question posed in recent literature concerns the embodiment of the narrative self. Though one of the best-known narrative self-concepts is a non-embodied one, namely Dennett’s self as ‘a center of narrative gravity’, others argue that the narrative self should include a role for embodiment. Several arguments have been made in support of the latter claim, but these can be summarized in two main (...) points. Firstly, a logical one: without taking the body into account Dennett’s theory becomes self-refuting. Secondly, a more practical/phenomenological point: a disembodied self-concept overlooks how personal the body is, and as such should be considered part of the self. In this paper I endorse these criticisms of non-embodied narrative self-concepts, but I argue that the relationship between the narrative self and the body is far from sufficiently fleshed out. I claim that the narrative self and the body are much more interwoven than the above criticisms suggest. What I aim to show in this paper is that the relationship between the body and the narrative self is interactive rather than unidirectional: not only does our body shape our narrative self, but our narrative self also shapes our body. The upshot of this is a better conception of the self is as a dynamic interaction between its various aspects. (shrink)

Ever since Freud pioneered the “talking cure,” psychologists of various stripes have explored how autobiographical narrative bears on self-understanding and psychic wellbeing. Recently, there has been a wave of philosophical speculation as to whether autobiographical narrative plays an essential or important role in the constitution of agentic selves. However, embodiment has received little attention from philosophers who defend some version of the narrative self. Catriona Mackenzie is an important exception to this pattern of neglect, and this paper explores Mackenzie’s work (...) on embodiment and self-narrative with the aim of better understanding the adequacy of autobiographical narrative as an account of the agentic self. I argue that Mackenzie’s narrative account of embodied subjectivity and agency is incomplete, for it over-estimates the reach of narrative and underestimates the cognitive and agentic powers of the lived body. (shrink)

It is often emphasised that persons diagnosed with borderline personality disorder show difficulties in understanding their own psychological states. In this article, I argue that from a phenomenological perspective, BPD can be understood as an existential modality in which the embodied self is profoundly saturated by an alienness regarding the person’s own affects and responses. However, the balance of familiarity and alienness is not static, but can be cultivated through, e.g., psychotherapy. Following this line of thought, I present the idea (...) that narrativising experiences can play an important role in processes of appropriating such embodied self-alienness. Importantly, the notion of narrative used is that of a scalar conception of narrativity as a variable quality of experience that comes in degrees. From this perspective, narrative appropriation is a process of gradually attributing the quality of narrativity to experiences, thereby familiarising the moods, affects, and responses that otherwise govern ‘from behind’. Finally, I propose that the idea of a narrative appropriation of embodied self-alienness is also relevant to the much-debated question of personal responsibility in BPD, particularly as this question plays out in psychotherapeutic contexts where a narrative self-appropriation may facilitate an increase in sense of autonomy and reduce emotions of guilt and shame. (shrink)

The standard reply to the critique that narrative theories of the self are either chauvinistic or trivial is to “go implicit”. Implicit narratives, it is argued, are necessary for diachronically structured self-experience, but do not require that such narratives should be wholly articulable life stories. In this paper I argue that the standard approach, which puts forward a phenomenological conception of implicit narratives, is ultimately unable to get out of the clutches of the dilemma. In its place, I offer an (...) alternative approach that does avoid the dilemma, by construing implicit narrativity as an enabling condition for experiences, rather than as something that is itself present in experience. According to this constitutive account, the coherence and intelligibility of our experiences is due to the fact that they are anchored in a larger, diachronic context. This context, I argue, takes a fundamentally embodied and narrative dimension. (shrink)

What is the relationship between the concepts of the predictive processing theory of brain functioning and the everyday concepts with which people conduct and explain their mental lives? To answer this question, we focus on predictive processing explanations of mental disorder that appeal to false inference. After distinguishing two concepts of false inference, we survey four ways of understanding the relationship between explanations of mental phenomena at the personal and sub-personal level. We then argue that if predictive processing accurately accounts (...) for psychological and socio-cultural dynamics, then personal and sub-personal concepts must display a looping relationship that can impact the nature of at least some mental phenomena. In particular, explaining the phenomenon of delusion in terms of the sub-personal concept of false inference should change the nature of delusional experiences themselves. (shrink)

Losing an intimate other to death belongs to the most uprooting experiences in human life. Not only is it accompanied by a range of negative emotions such as sorrow, longing, anger etc., but profound grief is a limit experience that causes a rupture in the sense of self of the bereaved. This experience is often expressed in identity statements such as ‘I no longer feel like myself’ or ‘I am missing part of myself’. Although such experiences are richly reported in (...) empirical studies on grief and implemented in diagnostic criteria for pathological grief, their experiential meaning is largely left unexplored. In this article, I suggest that being bereaved of an intimate other is self-alienating because our sense of self is a distributed phenomenon relying on daily confirmation through interaction with our habitual environment. When our lives are intertwined with intimate others, this habitual identity become a dyadic structure, relying on a heteronomy. Being bereaved of this intimate other leads to a profound impoverishment of the habituated sense of self, leading to self-alienation. Finally, I discuss the process of returning to a non-alienating state and suggest that this is not exclusively a cognitive process, but equally an embodied process of appropriating a habitual identity. (shrink)

Philosophical discussion tends to converge on the view that narratives are at the center of the emotion of grief. In this article, I expand on this kind of view. On the one hand, I argue that key strands of phenomenological and neuroscientific studies suggest that grief consists in a complex emotional process of disconfirmation-and-updating of the narrative self-model. By heuristically drawing on an analogy between binocular rivalry and grief, I show that certain salient aspects of the phenomenology of grief, such (...) as self-alienation and ambiguity, are straightforwardly reflected by this account. On the other hand, I argue that this hierarchical approach has the resources to: (i) show that both narratable and unnarratable experiences of personal loss are both instances of grief; and (ii) differentiate between narratable and unnarratable experiences of grief, without compromising the view that self-constituting narratives are at the center of the phenomenon. (shrink)

Both Marya Schechtman and Galen Strawson appeal to autobiographical memory in developing their accounts of personal identity. Although both scholars share a similar conception of autobiographical memory, they use it to develop theories of personal identity that are radically distinct. Memories that are relevant for personal identity are generally considered to be personal (autobiographical) memories of those events in one’s lifetime to which one can gain first-personal access: memories from-the-inside. Both Schechtman and Strawson base their discussion of personal identity on (...) exactly this type of memory. Empirical evidence shows, however, that personal memory imagery is not only visualised from-the-inside, from a “field” perspective. Personal memories may also involve “observer” perspectives, in which one sees oneself from-the-outside in the remembered scene. Both Schechtman and Strawson appeal to the notion of remembering from-the-inside, but they remain silent on the phenomenon of observer perspectives in personal memory. I suggest that accounts of personal identity that appeal to memory should consider observer perspectives as one aspect of personal memory. I explore the implications that the acknowledgment and inclusion of observer perspectives would have for both Schechtman’s and Strawson’s accounts. Even though autobiographical memory is not their theoretical target, both Schechtman and Strawson base their accounts of personal identity on their understanding of autobiographical memory. Therefore, their depictions of the nature of personal identity are founded upon an incomplete picture of autobiographical memory. (shrink)

The claim that selves are narratively constituted has attained considerable currency in both analytic and continental philosophy. However, a set of increasingly standard objections to narrative identity are also emerging. In this paper, I focus on metaphysically realist versions of narrative identity theory, showing how they both build on and differ from their neo-Lockean counterparts. But I also argue that narrative realism is implicitly committed to a four-dimensionalist, temporal-parts ontology of persons. That exposes narrative realism to the charge that the (...) narratively constituted self, on the one hand, and the self that is the object of much of our everyday self-reference and self-experience, on the other, can't be the same thing. This conclusion may well force narrativists to abandon metaphysical realism about narrative selves—which, in turn, may leave the invocation of ‘narrativity’ as identity-constituting somewhat under-motivated. (shrink)

Narrative identity theory in some of its influential variants makes three fundamental assumptions. First, it focuses on personal identity primarily in terms of selfhood. Second, it argues that personal identity is to be understood as the unity of one’s life as it develops over time. And finally, it states that the unity of a life is articulated, by the very person itself, in the form of a story, be it explicit or implicit. The article focuses on different contemporary phenomenological appraisals (...) of the narrative account. The survey of this partly critical debate is followed by concluding observations concerning a possible phenomenological theory of personal identity. (shrink)

In this paper we suggest an understanding of the self within the conceptual framework of situated affectivity, proposing the notion of an affectively extended self and arguing that the construction, diachronic re-shaping and maintenance of the self is mediated first by affective interactions. We initially consider the different variations on the conception of the extended self that have been already proposed in the literature. We then propose our alternative, contextualising it within the current debate on situated affectivity. While the idea (...) that we exploit the external environment in order to manage our affective life is now rather widespread among philosophers, its potential consequences for and connections with the debate on the self remain underexplored. Drawing on James’ intuition of the “material self”, which clearly connects the self and the emotions in agency, and broadly envisioning an extension of the self beyond its organismic boundaries, we propose our pragmatist conception of the self: an affectively extended self that relies on affective artifacts and practices to construct its identity extended beyond skin and skull. (shrink)

Narrative theories currently dominate our understanding of how selfhood is constituted and concretely individuated throughout personal history. Despite this success, the narrative perspective has recently been exposed to a range of critiques. Whilst these critiques have been effective in pointing out the shortcomings of narrative theories of selfhood, they have been less willing and able to suggest alternative ways of understanding personal history. In this article, I assess the criticisms and argue that an adequate phenomenology of personal history must also (...) go beyond narrative. Drawing on a distinction between history and narrative, I outline an account of historical becoming through a process of sedimentation and a rich notion of what I call historical selfhood on an embodied level. Five embodied existentials are suggested, sketching a preliminary understanding of how selves are concretely individuated on a pre-narrative level. (shrink)

The paper examines narrative operations involved in the temporal configuration of experience within a general framework of the phenomenological treatment of temporality. Taking as its point of departure a most basic instantiation of temporal experience, namely that of a ticking clock, it argues that the narrative dynamics which give form and charge the interval between tick and tock with significant duration are directly derived from the time-constituting operations of the embodied mind and, as such, are independent of their linguistic articulations. (...) Thus, it critically invokes Husserl’s account of time-consciousness, more specifically his model of retention-primary impression-protention, first in the context of Francisco J. Varela’s account of the neurodynamics of lived time, and then with reference to David Carr’s argument for continuity between narrative and the world of our experiences and actions. Building on these critical trajectories, the paper outlines how proto-narrative elements of lived time form a basis for the properly narrative operation of emplotment and, in its final section, discusses some of the complex relations between lived time and narrative time by contrasting Carr’s account of narrative with Paul Ricoeur’s model of triple mimesis. (shrink)

Various debates on the desirability and rationality of life-extending enhancements have been pursued under the presupposition that a generic psychological theory of personal identity is correct. I here discuss how the narrative approach to personal identity can contribute to these debates. In particular, I argue that two versions of the narrative approach offer good reasons to reject an argument against the rationality of life-extending enhancements.

Shaun Gallagher and Dan Zahavi have recently argued against a simulationist interpretation of neural resonance. Recognizing intentions and emotions in the facial expressions and gestures of others may be subserved by e.g. mirror neuron activity, but this does not mean that we first experience an intention or emotion and then project it onto the other. Mirror neurons subserve social cognition, according to Gallagher and Zahavi, by being integral parts of processes of enactive social perception. I argue that the notion of (...) enactive social perception does not yet explain why social perception is subserved by mirroring. I also argue that this problem cannot be avoided by means of an appeal to multiple realization. Instead, I propose a holistic model of neural resonance-based social cognition that does give an explanatory role to mirroring by allowing for a partial experiential overlap between experiencing and recognizing emotions and intentions. This account avoids the simulationist step-wise conception of social cognition and recognizes the qualitative difference between first- and third-person emotion and intention attribution. It does capture too much of the simulationist intuitions, however, to warrant the label ‘social perception’. (shrink)

Contemporary theological anthropology is now almost united in its opposition toward concepts of the abstract individual. Instead there is a strong preference for concrete concepts, which locate individual human being in historically and socioculturally contingent contexts. In this paper I identify, and discuss in detail, three key themes that structure recent theological opposition to abstract concepts of the individual: (1) the idea that individual human beings are constituted in part by their relations with their environments, with other human beings, and (...) with God; (2) the idea that individual human beings are unique entities; (3) the idea that individual human beings cannot be conceptualized in atemporal terms. Subsequently, I seek to demonstrate that theories of embodied cognition offer broad, if not unconditional, support for the concept of the concrete individual. As such, I suggest, theories of embodied cognition provide a valuable resource for dialogue between contemporary science and theological anthropology. (shrink)

This paper argues that potential cases of oppression, such as sex trafficking, can sometimes comprise autonomous choices by the trafficked individuals. This issue still divides radical from liberal feminists, with the former wanting to ‘rescue’ the ‘victims’ and the latter insisting that there might be good reasons for ‘hiding from the rescuers.’ This article presents new arguments for the liberal approach and raises two demands: first, help organizations should be run by affected women and be open-minded about whether or not (...) the trafficked individuals should remain in the sex industry. Second, the career choices of trafficked individuals should be expanded by the introduction of an opportunity-extending right to asylum. (shrink)

Narrative theories of personal identity have traditionally taken literary characters as models to better understand how our identities are constituted through the narratives of our lives. However, there have been several recent criticisms of these comparisons, showing that philosophers of personal identity paid no attention to the nature of literary characters, and consequently, these philosopher’s comparisons were under-motivated. In the present article, I rely on a cognitive framework to define literary characters. From that point of view, I assert that it (...) is fruitful to compare ourselves with literary characters to understand the role that the narratives told by others about ourselves play in the constitution of our own personal identities. (shrink)

Psychologists and philosophers agree that personal narratives are a central component of one’s identity. The concept of narrative self has been proposed to capture this aspect of selfhood. In recent times, it has been a matter of debate how the narrative self relates to the embodied and experiential dimension of the self. In this debate, the role attributed to inner speech is that of constructing and maintaining personal narratives. Indeed, evidence suggests that inner speech episodes are involved in self-reflection and (...) autobiographical reasoning. That is, previous works have focused mostly, if not solely, on the role of inner speech for narrative self-understanding. However, inner speech is also involved in enacting personal narratives. In such cases, the content of the inner speech episodes is not in the service of the construction of narratives, rather it implies the identification with the character of the personal narratives. I introduce two instances of the use of inner speech for narrative self-enactment: positive self-talk and stereotype threat. I conclude by considering the implications of the examples introduced for the debate regarding the relation between the narrative and the embodied dimensions of selfhood. (shrink)

I respond to Ned Block’s claim that it is ridiculous to suppose that consciousness is a cultural construction based on language and learned in childhood. Block is wrong to dismiss social constructivist theories of consciousness on account of it being ludicrous that conscious experience is anything but a biological feature of our animal heritage, characterized by sensory experience, evolved over millions of years. By defending social constructivism in terms of both Julian Jaynes’ behaviorism and J.J. Gibson’s ecological psychology, I draw (...) a distinction between the experience or what-it-is-like of nonhuman animals engaging with the environment and the secret theater of speechless monologue that is familiar to a linguistically competent human adult. This distinction grounds the argument that consciousness proper should be seen as learned rather than innate and shared with nonhuman animals. Upon establishing this claim, I defend the Jaynesian definition of consciousness as a social–linguistic construct learned in childhood, structured in terms of lexical metaphors and narrative practice. Finally, I employ the Jaynesian distinction between cognition and consciousness to bridge the explanatory gap and deflate the supposed hard problem of consciousness. (shrink)

Over the last several years, predictive processing approaches to computational neuropsychiatry have been gaining explanatory traction. According to these accounts, some of the positive symptoms of schizophrenia arise from aberrant precision-weighting during hierarchical Bayesian inference. In contrast to computational approaches, the phenomenological tradition in psychiatry holds that disruptions or alterations of the self (Ichstörungen) lie at the core of schizophrenia. In this article, we aim to integrate these approaches. We align ourselves with the phenomenological insight that self-disturbances lie at the (...) core of schizophrenia and with the hierarchical conception of the self-model that emerges from the predictive processing architecture. We suggest that disruptions of the “hard core” of the narrative self-model might be partially involved in the generation of aberrant experiences and hyperreflexivity, and in some aspects of the sense of self-alienation and ambiguity that is characteristic of the phenomenology of schizophrenia. (shrink)

This paper examines the claim that mirror neuron activity is the mechanism by which we come to know about the action-related intentions of others (e.g. Gallese et al 1996, Rizzolatti et al 2009), i.e. that they are a mechanism for ‘mindreading’. I agree with recent authors (e.g. Hickok 2008, Jacob 2008) who reject this view but nevertheless I argue that mirror neurons may still have a role to play in the ways in which we understand one another (social cognition). If (...) we adopt a certain kind of pluralism about social cognition then the mirror neuron system could play a role in social cognition even if it provides no access to the minds of others at all. I argue for this view and consider what the approach might entail for the ontology of the mirror neuron system. (shrink)

In this commentary, we engage with Almaas’s contribution from the perspective of phenomenology and its idea of a ‘minimal self’. We attempt to clarify Almaas’s claims about ‘phenomenological givens’ and ‘non-dual’, ‘pure consciousness’, and then show how they might be reconciled with phenomenological approaches to consciousness and self. We conclude by briefly indicating some of the ways a comparative analysis of this sort is mutually beneficial.

This paper proposes a cognitive-semiotic approach to aesthetics to understand aesthetic emotion and its relation to the process of producing and valorizing art. The core argument presented is that the emotional aspects of aesthetic experience are integral to the processes of evaluation and meaning-making and that this interplay significantly influences individuals’ engagement with art, highlighting the importance of these dimensions in the overall experience. Therefore, the initial step in my approach is to illustrate that the process of meaning-making is significantly (...) influenced by our active participation, as well as our interpretation and understanding of our own emotions and those of others. I intend to demonstrate that throughout this process, empathy is a vital component of the reciprocal interaction between the viewer and the artwork. In this regard, I will explore various concepts related to empathy, focusing on aesthetic empathy. Additionally, I will emphasize the correlation between aesthetic experiences and everyday life, explaining how a work of art can effectively mirror the core of daily life through a semiotic narrative practice. I believe that by exploring these narratives more thoroughly, we can achieve a deeper, empathetic understanding of both the artist and the artwork and that this understanding can lead to explicit and implicit responses to the artwork, ultimately shaping our overall attitude toward it. Hence, I will conclude that our aesthetic experiences provide us with opportunities to actively explore aspects of our narrative selves, which might help us understand how these experiences significantly change our relationship with ourselves and the social context we are a part of. Keywords: cognitive semiotics, meaning-making, simulation theory, empathy, narratives. (shrink)

In this article, I assess (1) whether some cyborgs and AI robots can theoretically be considered persons; and (2) how we will know if/when they have attained personhood. Since our discourses of personhood are inherently pluralistic and our concepts of both humanness and personhood are inherently nebulous, both some cyborgs, and some AI robots, I conclude, could theoretically be considered persons depending on what, exactly, one means by “person.” The practical problem of how we distinguish them from nonpersonal AI entities (...) is, however, both more important, and much more difficult to solve. In conversation with various secular and theological accounts of relational personhood, I argue that only by treating AI entities as persons by default might we avoid the potentially catastrophic consequences of mistakenly denying personhood to an entire group of eligible entities. (shrink)

In a successful series of papers, Schroer and Schroer presented a reductionist narrative account of personal identity. They claimed that their reductionist account had advantages over traditional narrative theories. In this paper I intend to show that they were wrong. Although it is possible to defend a reductionist narrative account, the Schroers’ theory has a problem of circularity. And solving that problem will cause their theory to have much more problems than non-reductionist narrative theories. Consequently, they should either present a (...) new and improved reductionist narrative account, or accept that non-reductionist narrative theories are better suited to account for the problem of personal identity. (shrink)

In a successful series of papers, Schroer and Schroer presented a reductionist narrative account of personal identity (R. Schroer, 2013; J. W. Schroer & Schroer, 2014). They claimed that their reductionist account had advantages over traditional narrative theories. In this paper I intend to show that they were wrong. Although it is possible to defend a reductionist narrative account, the Schroers’ theory has a problem of circularity. And solving that problem will cause their theory to have much more problems than (...) non-reductionist narrative theories. Consequently, they should either present a new and improved reductionist narrative account, or accept that non-reductionist narrative theories are better suited to account for the problem of personal identity. (shrink)

I develop a framework for a narrative approach to personal identity as a practical notion that focuses on the role of narratives employed in common, ordinary contexts and everyday interactions (henceforth ‘ordinary everyday narratives’). However, such narratives can be erroneous and contain factual errors and distortions, including delusions about one’s identity. I review three narrative approaches arguing that they do not account convincingly for the role of erroneous narratives for one’s practical identity. I argue that a practical identity is negotiated (...) in ordinary everyday verbal and embodied narratives. According to my narrative approach, firstly, ordinary everyday narratives often suffice to convey one’s experiences, beliefs and aims within everyday interactions with others. Secondly, embodiment allows one to develop embodied narratives, i.e. temporally organised and goal-directed sequences of actions, habits and skills. Thirdly, one negotiates her practical identity through narratives and embodied interactions that structure first-personal and second-personal practical relations. I argue that a negotiated practical identity allows for the ‘repair’ of minor errors and the recognition of the practical significance of major errors, like delusional narratives, in shaping one’s practical identity. Finally, identity negotiation offers some scope for resistance against oppressive narratives. (shrink)

This article presents a critical assesment of Dennett’s narrative self theory as a personal identity theory. First it is contextualized in regard to the debate on personal identity in the decade of 1980, then Dennett’s theory is presented in the light of Strawson’s analysis of Narrativity, the criticisms received by Dennett’s theory and by narrative theories in general are put in relationship, and finally it is shown how Dennett’s theory could help the actual supporters of narrative identity theories to reformulate (...) their arguments in defense to the received criticisms. Thus I hope to contribute to a better understanding of Dennett’s theory and to claim for its relevance in the actual debate about personal identity in analytic philosophy. (shrink)

One of major branches of philosophical research is the self, which, in particular, tries to find out how a subject creates her identity. In this work, I will just focus on two kinds of identity approaches: the narrative self-concept and the dramatic self-concept. I will argue that, although the Narrative identity approach especially helpful for the subject being able to give continuity to her actions, the Dramatic identity is which achieves to give meaning to the subject’s actions as soon as (...) they are happened, and also to herself. Hence, although both approaches might be useful for the self-concept of a subject because maintain a bidirectional relationship, it is the Dramatic identity theory which manages to resolve certain problems facing Narrative identity theory. To explain this, I will claim that agent is dramatized herself by acting in different situations. Following Erving Goffman and J. David Velleman, what it is posed in this essay is that the subject develops a Dramatic identity, in a similar way to the performer who represents her character, when she enacts herself in concrete contexts. That is, the agent dramatizes herself in a situation in a manner similar as an actor represents a character on stage. Consequently, my main goal is to answer to how an agent makes her identity by acting in social contexts. (shrink)