Theo Todman's Web Page - Paper Abstracts

Write-up₁ (as at 06/07/2023 00:43:12): Self

Plug Note²

• Thesis Text:
  1. The Self is important, as it’s the root of Baker’s FPP³, and the motivator for all psychological⁴ theories of PI, so understanding just what it is supposed to be is central to my concerns.
  2. The self is what the reflexive pronouns refer to, but this doesn’t get us far, though it does mean that we are⁵ Selves, though not fundamentally so. We human animals⁶ might persist even if we ceased to be selves.
  3. So, just what is a self?
  4. There’s a temptation to equate the Self with the Person⁷, but this is to waste a term, and it is likely that the two terms can come apart₈.
  5. Nor is it just the personality⁹, though the reification of the personality is probably at the root of the (misguided) intuition¹⁰ that personal identity is broken if the individual suffers a too-radical change of personality.
  6. It’s not clear to me that SELF is a natural kind¹¹ concept, so there may not be just one correct definition.
  7. But my use will equate a self to an individual with a perspective on the world which – if that individual were a person (as many selves are) – would equal a FPP.
  8. In "Seth (Anil Kumar) - The real problem", Anil Seth distinguishes five selves (or aspects of the self, considered as “a complex construction generated by the brain”):-
     1. The bodily self₁₂, which is the experience of being a body and of having a particular body.
     2. The perspectival self₁₃, which is the experience of perceiving the world from a particular first-person point of view.
     3. The volitional self₁₄ involves experiences of intention and of agency – of urges to do this or that, and of being the causes of things that happen.
     4. The narrative self¹⁵ is where the ‘I’ comes in, as the experience of being a continuous and distinctive person over time, built from a rich set of autobiographical memories.
     5. And the social self₁₆ is that aspect of self-experience that is refracted through the perceived minds of others, shaped by our unique social milieu.
  9. Not all individuals towards which we might adopt Daniel Dennett’s Intentional Stance are selves.
  10. While thermometers are excluded, I’m not sure whether having “a sense of self” is essential for being a self. So, creatures that pass the Mirror Test₁₇ will be Selves, though might not all be persons, but others – human infants, gorillas, elephants, dogs – might be selves even where they fail the test.

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  Further Remarks:
  1. See also my note on Self-consciousness¹⁸. The division of labour between these two Notes may not be correct and awaits tidying up.