Switch to: References

Citations of:

The Constitution of Selves

Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press (1996)

Add citations

You must login to add citations.
  1. The Two Selves: Their Metaphysical Commitments and Functional Independence.Stan Klein - 2014 - Oxford University Press.
    The Two Selves takes the position that the self is not a "thing" easily reduced to an object of scientific analysis. Rather, the self consists in a multiplicity of aspects, some of which have a neuro-cognitive basis (and thus are amenable to scientific inquiry) while other aspects are best construed as first-person subjectivity, lacking material instantiation. As a consequence of their potential immateriality, the subjective aspect of self cannot be taken as an object and therefore is not easily amenable to (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   23 citations  
  • How Does the Self Adjudicate Narratives?Serife Tekin - 2013 - Philosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology 20 (1):25-28.
    Philosophers and psychologists have advanced a plethora of explanations of the self in relation to narratives, positing varying degrees of connection between them. For some, narratives created by a subject about herself shape her self-constitution (Flanagan 1991; Fivush 1994). For others, they help the subject to participate in social cognition (Hutto 2008). Some represent narratives as merely one basis of personal identity and consider them cognitive tools used by the subject to construct self-concepts (Neisser 1997; Tekin 2011); others render narratives (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   6 citations  
  • The self and its brain.Stan Klein - 2012 - Social Cognition 30 (4):474-518.
    In this paper I argue that much of the confusion and mystery surrounding the concept of "self" can be traced to a failure to appreciate the distinction between the self as a collection of diverse neural components that provide us with our beliefs, memories, desires, personality, emotions, etc (the epistemological self) and the self that is best conceived as subjective, unified awareness, a point of view in the first person (ontological self). While the former can, and indeed has, been extensively (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   19 citations  
  • The sense of diachronic personal identity.Stan Klein - 2013 - Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 12 (4):791-811.
    In this paper, I first consider a famous objection that the standard interpretation of the Lockean account of diachronicity (i.e., one’s sense of personal identity over time) via psychological connectedness falls prey to breaks in one’s personal narrative. I argue that recent case studies show that while this critique may hold with regard to some long-term autobiographical self-knowledge (e.g., episodic memory), it carries less warrant with respect to accounts based on trait-relevant, semantic self-knowledge. The second issue I address concerns the (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   11 citations  
  • Brain, mind and machine: What are the implications of deep brain stimulation for perceptions of personal identity, agency and free will?Nir Lipsman & Walter Glannon - 2012 - Bioethics 27 (9):465-470.
    Brain implants, such as Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS), which are designed to improve motor, mood and behavioural pathology, present unique challenges to our understanding of identity, agency and free will. This is because these devices can have visible effects on persons' physical and psychological properties yet are essentially undetectable when operating correctly. They can supplement and compensate for one's inherent abilities and faculties when they are compromised by neuropsychiatric disorders. Further, unlike talk therapy or pharmacological treatments, patients need not ‘do’ (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   37 citations  
  • Is Narrative Identity Four-Dimensionalist?Patrick Stokes - 2012 - European Journal of Philosophy 20 (S1):e86-e106.
    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 (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   8 citations  
  • Ghosts in the Machine: Do the Dead Live on in Facebook?Patrick Stokes - 2012 - Philosophy and Technology 25 (3):363-379.
    Abstract Of the many ways in which identity is constructed and performed online, few are as strongly ‘anchored’ to existing offline relationships as in online social networks like Facebook and Myspace. These networks utilise profiles that extend our practical, psychological and even corporeal identity in ways that give them considerable phenomenal presence in the lives of spatially distant people. This raises interesting questions about the persistence of identity when these online profiles survive the deaths of the users behind them, via (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   10 citations  
  • Identities of Artefacts.Christoph Baumberger & Georg Brun - 2011 - Theoria 78 (1):47-74.
    In non-philosophical discourse, “identity” is often used when the specific character of artefacts is described or evaluated. We argue that this usage of “identity” can be explicated as referring to the symbol properties of artefacts as they are conceptualized in the symbol theory of Goodman and Elgin. This explication is backed by an analysis of various uses of “identity”. The explicandum clearly differs from the concepts of numerical identity, qualitative identity and essence, but it has a range of similarities with (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • The informational nature of personal identity.Luciano Floridi - 2011 - Minds and Machines 21 (4):549-566.
    In this paper, I present an informational approach to the nature of personal identity. In “Plato and the problem of the chariot”, I use Plato’s famous metaphor of the chariot to introduce a specific problem regarding the nature of the self as an informational multiagent system: what keeps the self together as a whole and coherent unity? In “Egology and its two branches” and “Egology as synchronic individualisation”, I outline two branches of the theory of the self: one concerning the (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   36 citations  
  • Human enhancement and supra-personal moral status.Thomas Douglas - 2013 - Philosophical Studies 162 (3):473-497.
    Several authors have speculated that (1) the pharmaceutical, genetic or other technological enhancement of human mental capacities could result in the creation of beings with greater moral status than persons, and (2) the creation of such beings would harm ordinary, unenhanced humans, perhaps by reducing their immunity to permissible harm. These claims have been taken to ground moral objections to the unrestrained pursuit of human enhancement. In recent work, Allen Buchanan responds to these objections by questioning both (1) and (2). (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   22 citations  
  • Personal Identity Online.Raffaele Rodogno - 2012 - Philosophy and Technology 25 (3):309-328.
    Philosophers concerned with the question of personal identity have typically been asking the so-called re-identification question: what are the conditions under which a person at one point in time is properly re-identified at another point in time? This is a rather technical question. In our everyday interactions, however, we do raise a number of personal identity questions that are quite distinct from it. In order to explore the variety of ways in which the Internet may affect personal identity, I propose (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   6 citations  
  • Deep Brain Stimulation and the Search for Identity.Karsten Witt, Jens Kuhn, Lars Timmermann, Mateusz Zurowski & Christiane Woopen - 2011 - Neuroethics 6 (3):499-511.
    Ethical evaluation of deep brain stimulation as a treatment for Parkinson’s disease is complicated by results that can be described as involving changes in the patient’s identity. The risk of becoming another person following surgery is alarming for patients, caregivers and clinicians alike. It is one of the most urgent conceptual and ethical problems facing deep brain stimulation in Parkinson’s disease at this time. In our paper we take issue with this problem on two accounts. First, we elucidate what is (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   42 citations  
  • Recent Work on Identity Over Time.Theodore Sider - 2000 - Philosophical Books 41 (2):81–89.
    I am now typing on a computer I bought two years ago. The computer I bought is identical to the computer on which I type. My computer persists over time. Let us divide our subject matter in two. There is first the question of criteria of identity, the conditions governing when an object of a certain kind, a computer for instance, persists until some later time. There are secondly very general questions about the nature of persistence itself. Here I include (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   7 citations  
  • Personal Identity and Ethics.David Shoemaker - 2008 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    What justifies our holding a person morally responsible for some past action? Why am I justified in having a special prudential concern for some future persons and not others? Why do many of us think that maximizing the good within a single life is perfectly acceptable, but maximizing the good across lives is wrong? In these and other normative questions, it looks like any answer we come up with will have to make an essential reference to personal identity. So, for (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   44 citations  
  • Memory and identity.Marya Schechtman - 2011 - Philosophical Studies 153 (1):65-79.
    Among the many topics covered in Sven Bernecker’s impressive study of memory is the relation between memory and personal identity. Bernecker uses his grammatical taxonomy of memory and causal account to defend the claim that memory does not logically presuppose personal identity and hence that circularity objections to memory-based accounts of personal identity are misplaced. In my comment I investigate these claims, suggesting that the relation between personal identity and memory is more complicated than Bernecker’s analysis suggests. In particular, I (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   15 citations  
  • Does Memory Modification Threaten Our Authenticity?Alexandre Erler - 2010 - Neuroethics 4 (3):235-249.
    One objection to enhancement technologies is that they might lead us to live inauthentic lives. Memory modification technologies (MMTs) raise this worry in a particularly acute manner. In this paper I describe four scenarios where the use of MMTs might be said to lead to an inauthentic life. I then undertake to justify that judgment. I review the main existing accounts of authenticity, and present my own version of what I call a “true self” account (intended as a complement, rather (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   44 citations  
  • The Subjective Brain, Identity, and Neuroethics.Grant R. Gillett - 2009 - American Journal of Bioethics 9 (9):5-13.
    The human brain is subjective and reflects the life of a being-in-the-world-with-others whose identity reflects that complex engaged reality. Human subjectivity is shaped and in-formed (formed by inner processes) that are adapted to the human life-world and embody meaning and the relatedness of a human being. Questions of identity relate to this complex and dynamic reality to reflect the fact that biology, human ecology, culture, and one's historic-political situation are inscribed in one's neural network and have configured its architecture so (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   16 citations  
  • Body Integrity Identity Disorder (BIID) and the Limits of Autonomy.Alan Jotkowitz & Ari Zivotofsky - 2009 - American Journal of Bioethics 9 (1):55-56.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  • Stimulating brains, altering minds.W. Glannon - 2009 - Journal of Medical Ethics 35 (5):289-292.
    Deep-brain stimulation has been used to treat advanced Parkinson disease and other neurological and psychiatric disorders that have not responded to other treatments. While deep-brain stimulation can modulate overactive or underactive regions of the brain and thereby improve motor function, it can also cause changes in a patient’s thought and personality. This paper discusses the trade-offs between the physiological benefit of this technique and the potential psychological harm.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   57 citations  
  • Choosing for Others as Continuing a Life Story: The Problem of Personal Identity Revisited.Jeffrey Blustein - 1999 - Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics 27 (1):20-31.
    Philosophically, the most interesting objection to the reliance on advance directives to guide treatment decisions for formerly competent patients is the argument from the loss of personal identity. Starting with a psychological continuity theory of personal identity, the argument concludes that the very conditions that bring an advance directive into play may destroy the conditions necessary for personal identity, and so undercut the authority of the directive. In this article, I concede that if the purpose of a theory of personal (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   19 citations  
  • Naked Subjectivity: Minimal vs. Narrative Selves in Kierkegaard.Patrick Stokes - 2010 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 53 (4):356-382.
    In recent years a significant debate has arisen as to whether Kierkegaard offers a version of the “narrative approach” to issues of personal identity and self-constitution. In this paper I do not directly take sides in this debate, but consider instead the applicability of a recent development in the broader literature on narrative identity—the distinction between the temporally-extended “narrative self” and the non-extended “minimal self—to Kierkegaard's work. I argue that such a distinction is both necessary for making sense of Kierkegaard's (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   6 citations  
  • Narrative and fission: A review essay of Marya Schechtman's the constitution of selves.Mark Reid - 1997 - Philosophical Psychology 10 (2):211 – 219.
    This book presents, in method, logical form, and philosophical content, a counterproposal to mainstream personal identity theory. The lotter's purported conflation of logical questions, i.e. reidentification with characterization, leads to an implausible reductionism about selves. A self-constituting narrative is the basis for identity, and contra reductionism, the ontological primitive of a person. As a dynamic valuational and intentional system, the narrative meaningfully constructs the autobiographical past through memory and both causally directs and emotively anticipates the experiences and form of future (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • Practical versus moral identities in identity management.Noëmi Manders-Huits - 2010 - Ethics and Information Technology 12 (1):43-55.
    Over the past decade Identity Management has become a central theme in information technology, policy, and administration in the public and private sectors. In these contexts the term ‘Identity Management’ is used primarily to refer to ways and methods of dealing with registration and authorization issues regarding persons in organizational and service-oriented domains. Especially due to the growing range of choices and options for, and the enhanced autonomy and rights of, employees, citizens, and customers, there is a growing demand for (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   6 citations  
  • Self-exposure and exposure of the self: Informational privacy and the presentation of identity. [REVIEW]David W. Shoemaker - 2010 - Ethics and Information Technology 12 (1):3-15.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   8 citations  
  • Embodied narratives.Richard Menary - 2008 - Journal of Consciousness Studies 15 (6):63-84.
    Is the self narratively constructed? There are many who would answer yes to the question. Dennett (1991) is, perhaps, the most famous proponent of the view that the self is narratively constructed, but there are others, such as Velleman (2006), who have followed his lead and developed the view much further. Indeed, the importance of narrative to understanding the mind and the self is currently being lavished with attention across the cognitive sciences (Dautenhahn, 2001; Hutto, 2007; Nelson, 2003). Emerging from (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   45 citations  
  • Psychopharmacological enhancement.Walter Glannon - 2008 - Neuroethics 1 (1):45-54.
    Many drugs have therapeutic off-label uses for which they were not originally designed. Some drugs designed to treat neuropsychiatric and other disorders may enhance certain normal cognitive and affective functions. Because the long-term effects of cognitive and affective enhancement are not known and may be harmful, a precautionary principle limiting its use seems warranted. As an expression of autonomy, though, competent individuals should be permitted to take cognition- and mood-enhancing agents. But they need to be aware of the risks in (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   21 citations  
  • Personal identity and practical concerns.David W. Shoemaker - 2007 - Mind 116 (462):317-357.
    Many philosophers have taken there to be an important relation between personal identity and several of our practical concerns (among them moral responsibility, compensation, and self-concern). I articulate four natural methodological assumptions made by those wanting to construct a theory of the relation between identity and practical concerns, and I point out powerful objections to each assumption, objections constituting serious methodological obstacles to the overall project. I then attempt to offer replies to each general objection in a way that leaves (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   45 citations  
  • Human-animal chimeras: Human dignity, moral status, and species prejudice.David Degrazia - 2007 - Metaphilosophy 38 (2-3):309–329.
    The creation of chimeras by introducing human stem cells into nonhu- man animals has provoked intense concerns. Addressing objections that appeal to human dignity, I focus in this essay on stem cell research intended to generate human neurons in Great Apes and rodents. After considering samples of dignity- based objections from the literature, I examine the underlying assumption that nonhuman animals have lower moral status than personsFwith particular attention to what it means to speak of higher and lower moral statusFbefore (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   26 citations  
  • The narrative self.Fred Vollmer - 2005 - Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 35 (2):189–205.
    The aim of the present study is to evaluate the postmodern belief that selves are narrative constructions. Four theories, varying in degree of anti-realism, are presented and discussed. It is concluded that an attractive feature of the narrative approach is that it explains how we achieve a sense of unity. But the main idea, that selves are constituted or created by stories is problematic, like identifying footprints on the beach with the feet that made them.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  • In defence of narrative.Anthony Rudd - 2007 - European Journal of Philosophy 17 (1):60-75.
    Over the last few decades, a number of influential philosophers, psychologists and others have invoked the notion of narrative as having a central role to play in our thinking about ethics and personal identity. More recently, a backlash against these narrative theories has developed, exemplified in work by, for instance, Galen Strawson, Peter Lamarque and John Christman. This paper defends an approach to personal identity and ethics, influenced mainly by Alasdair MacIntyre and Charles Taylor, in which narrative plays a central (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   33 citations  
  • Kierkegaard, Macintyre and narrative unity - reply to Lippitt.Anthony Rudd - 2007 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 50 (5):541 – 549.
    In a recent article in this journal, John Lippitt mounts a forceful argument against narrativist approaches to issues in personal identity and practical deliberation, with specific reference to the application of such approaches in the interpretation of Kierkegaard's writings. The present critical discussion piece addresses two points in Lippitt's argument. First, it seeks to meet Lippitt's challenge to clarify the notion of "a whole life" as this figures in narrativist positions. Second, it clarifies the sense in which narrative unity, and (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   12 citations  
  • True to oneself? Broad and narrow ideas on authenticity in the enhancement debate.L. L. E. Bolt - 2007 - Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 28 (4):285-300.
    Our knowledge of the human brain and the influence of pharmacological substances on human mental functioning is expanding. This creates new possibilities to enhance personality and character traits. Psychopharmacological enhancers, as well as other enhancement technologies, raise moral questions concerning the boundary between clinical therapy and enhancement, risks and safety, coercion and justice. Other moral questions include the meaning and value of identity and authenticity, the role of happiness for a good life, or the perceived threats to humanity. Identity and (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   16 citations  
  • The self and the SESMET.Galen Strawson - 2002 - Journal of Consciousness Studies 6 (4):99-135.
    Response to commentaries on keynote article.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   28 citations  
  • Care for one's own future experiences.Marc Slors - 2004 - Philosophical Explorations 7 (2):183-195.
    We care for our own future experiences. Most of us, trivially, would rather have them pleasurable than painful. When we care for our own future experiences we do so in a way that is different from the way we care for those of others (which is not to say that we necessarily care more about our own experience). Prereflectively, one would think this is because these experiences will be ours and no one else's. But then, of course, we need to (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  • Criteria of personal identity and the limits of conceptual analysis.Theodore Sider - 2001 - Philosophical Perspectives 15:189-209.
    When is there no fact of the matter about a metaphysical question? When multiple candidate meanings are equally eligible, in David Lewis's sense, and fit equally well with ordinary usage. Thus given certain ontological schemes, there is no fact of the matter whether the criterion of personal identity over time is physical or psychological. But given other ontological schemes there is a fact of the matter; and there is a fact of the matter about which ontological scheme is correct.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   78 citations  
  • Bare personhood? Velleman on selfhood.Catriona Mackenzie - 2007 - Philosophical Explorations 10 (3):263 – 282.
    In the Introduction to Self to Self, J. David Velleman claims that 'the word "self" does not denote any one entity but rather expresses a reflexive guise under which parts or aspects of a person are presented to his own mind' (Velleman 2006, 1). Velleman distinguishes three different reflexive guises of the self: the self of the person's self-image, or narrative self-conception; the self of self-sameness over time; and the self as autonomous agent. Velleman's account of each of these different (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   7 citations  
  • Rethinking neuroethics in the light of the extended mind thesis.Neil Levy - 2007 - American Journal of Bioethics 7 (9):3-11.
    The extended mind thesis is the claim that mental states extend beyond the skulls of the agents whose states they are. This seemingly obscure and bizarre claim has far-reaching implications for neuroethics, I argue. In the first half of this article, I sketch the extended mind thesis and defend it against criticisms. In the second half, I turn to its neuroethical implications. I argue that the extended mind thesis entails the falsity of the claim that interventions into the brain are (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   43 citations  
  • Narrative, Second-person Experience, and Self-perception: A Reason it is Good to Conceive of One's Life Narratively.Grace Hibshman - 2022 - The Philosophical Quarterly 73 (3):615-627.
    It is widely held that it is good to conceive of one's life narratively, but why this is the case has not been well established. I argue that conceiving of one's life narratively can contribute to one's flourishing by mediating to oneself a second-person experience of oneself, furnishing one with valuable second-personal productive distance from oneself and as a result self-understanding. Drawing on Eleonore Stump's theory that narratives re-present to their audiences the second-person experiences they depict, I argue that conceiving (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • Personal-identity Non-cognitivism.Kristie Miller - forthcoming - Analytic Philosophy.
    In this paper I outline and defend a new approach to personal-identity—personal-identity non-cognitivism—and argue that it has several advantages over its cognitivist rivals. On this view utterances of personal-identity sentences express a non-cognitive attitude towards relevant person-stages. The resulting view offers a pleasingly nuanced picture of what we are doing when we utter such sentences.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Structures of the Sense of Self: Attributes and qualities that are necessary for the ‘self’.Izak Tait - 2024 - Symposion: Theoretical and Applied Inquiries in Philosophy and Social Sciences 11 (1):77-98.
    The “self” does not exist within a vacuum. For an entity to be considered to have a sense of self, it requires certain characteristics and attributes. This paper investigates these “structures” of the sense of self in detail, which range from a unified consciousness to self-awareness to personal identity. The paper details how each attribute and characteristic is strictly necessary for an entity to be classified as having a self, and how the five structures detailed within may be used as (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Narrative self-constitution as embodied practice.Katsunori Miyahara & Shogo Tanaka - forthcoming - Philosophical Psychology.
    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 (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • Holism, Narrative, and Paradox: New Criteria for Settling Disputes in Personal Identity.Jaron Cheung - 2023 - Journal of Cognition and Neuroethics 9 (2):1-20.
    This paper introduces three new criteria that a theory of personal identity ought to satisfy: (1) material holism, (2) narrative unity, and (3) narrative integrity. Material holism guards against the undesirable consequence of positing the person as part and existentially distinct from the organismal whole, of which it is dependent and interconnected. Narrative unity ensures that continuity between the beginning, middle, and end of a human life is sufficiently accounted for. Narrative integrity secures fidelity and congruence between each part and (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Absurd Stories, Ideologies, and Motivated Cognition.Marianna Bergamaschi Ganapini - forthcoming - Philosophical Topics.
    PENULTIMATE DRAFT. At times, weird stories such as the Pizzagate spread surprisingly quickly and widely. In this paper I analyze the mental attitudes of those who seem to take those absurdities seriously: I argue that those stories are often imagined rather than genuinely believed. Then I make room for the claim that often these imaginings are used to support group ideologies. My main contribution is to explain how that support actually happens by showing that motivated cognition can employ imagination as (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Grief, Smell and the Olfactory Air of a Person.Becky Millar & Louise Richardson - 2023 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 104 (4):769-790.
    Philosophical research into olfaction often focuses on its limitations. We explore instead an underappreciated capacity of the sense of smell, namely, its role in interpersonal experience. To illustrate this, we examine how smell can enable continuing connections to deceased loved ones. Understanding this phenomenon requires an appreciation of, first, how olfaction's limitations can facilitate experiences of the deceased person and, second, how olfaction enables experiences of what we refer to as the ‘olfactory air’ of a person. This way of experiencing (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Me, my (moral) self, and I.Jim A. C. Everett, Joshua August Skorburg & Jordan Livingston - 2022 - In Felipe De Brigard & Walter Sinnott-Armstrong (eds.), Neuroscience and philosophy. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press. pp. 111-138.
    In this chapter, we outline the interdisciplinary contributions that philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience have provided in the understanding of the self and identity, focusing on one specific line of burgeoning research: the importance of morality to perceptions of self and identity. Of course, this rather limited focus will exclude much of what psychologists and neuroscientists take to be important to the study of self and identity (that plethora of self-hyphenated terms seen in psychology and neuroscience: self-regulation, self-esteem, self-knowledge, self-concept, self-perception, (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Is it Good to Conceive of One’s Life Narratively?Sally Latham & Mark Pinder - 2023 - Philosophia 51 (4):2005-2014.
    Grace Hibshman has developed a new explanation for why narrative self-conceptions might contribute to one’s flourishing: conceiving of one’s life narratively, she argues, can facilitate an improved self-understanding. In this short paper, we argue that, pace Hibshman, life narratives tend to misrepresent and mislead. So while they may give the impression of an improved self-understanding, that impression is typically mistaken. In this respect, conceiving of one’s life narratively hinders flourishing.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • What is an Identity Crisis?Nada Gligorov - 2023 - Journal of Consciousness Studies 30 (3-4):34-58.
    The use of brain technology that contributes to psychological changes has spurred a debate about personal identity. Some argue that neurotechnology does not undermine personal continuity (Levy, 2011) while others argue that it does (Kreitmair, 2019; Schechtman, 2010). To make these assessments, commentators fail to identify psychological changes that cause personal discontinuity. In this paper, I present a view that identifies personal continuity with the maintenance of a self-concept. I argue that a concept of self requires the ability to self-ascribe (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Identity and Food Choice: You Are What You Eat?J. M. Dieterle & Z. Tobias - 2023 - Food Ethics 8 (1):1-17.
    We use Marya Schechtman’s Narrative Self-Constitution View to support the widespread idea that food can contribute to the construction and expression of our identities and be used to understand others. What foods we consume can be one such way to construct our identities as food itself can have different values: ethically sourced, healthy, culturally significant, etc. However, the ability to constitute one’s own identity in this way depends on the ability to autonomously choose what we consume. We argue that most (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Does Cognitive Psychology Imply Pluralism About the Self?Christopher Register - 2023 - Review of Philosophy and Psychology (1):1-18.
    Psychologists and philosophers have recently argued that our concepts of ‘person’ or ‘self’ are plural. Some have argued that we should also adopt a corresponding pluralism about the metaphysics of the self. The aim of this paper is twofold. First, I sketch and motivate an approach to personal identity that supports the inference from facts about how we think about the self to facts about the nature of the self. On the proposed view, the self-concept partly determines the nature of (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • The View from everywhere: temporal self-experience and the Good Life.Marya Schechtman - forthcoming - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice:1-14.
    It is a common thought that our experience of self in time plays a crucial role in living a good human life. This idea is seen both in views that say we must think of our lives as temporally extended wholes to live well and those that say living well requires living in the moment. These opposing views share the assumption that a person’s interests must be identified with either a temporally extended or temporally local perspective. David Velleman has argued (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations