The Experiencing Self and the Remembering Self: Implications for Leisure Science (original) (raw)
Related papers
Selfhood and the Flow of Experience
Analytic philosophy in the 20th century was largely hostile territory to the self as traditionally conceived, and this tradition has been continued in two recent works: Mark Johnston's Surviving Death, and Galen Strawson's Selves. I have argued previously that it is perfectly possible to combine a naturalistic world-view with a conception of the self as a subject of experience, a thing whose only essential attribute is a capacity for unified and continuous experience. I argue here that this conception of the self is unthreatened by the otherwise valuable considerations advanced by Johnston and Strawson. Both are inclined to identify selves-at-times with momentary episodes of experience (or centres or 'arenas' of consciousness). Both go on to argue, albeit in di erent ways, that individual selves cannot extend beyond the confines of these brief episodes. However, in so doing they give insufficient weight to an important phenomenological datum: the continuity of our ordinary experience. When the latter is recognized, and appropriately understood, it provides us with a secure basis upon which a more recognizable conception of the self can be constructed.
A Contemporary and Interdisciplinary Definition of the Self
This article addresses contemporary definitions of the self in both philosophical and cognitive neuroscience literature. In this article, I attempt to operationally define the self by amalgamating Gallagher’s model of the narrative and minimal self with evidence from both psychological and cognitive neuroscience. Gallagher defines the narrative self as reflecting on past experiences and future endeavors. The narrative self shapes our expectations, beliefs, thoughts, feelings and actions and is susceptible to these beliefs, thoughts, feelings and actions when making decisions. Using this definition, Gallagher describes the narrative self as an ensemble of selves, a forever changing entity, contingent on mood, state and motivation. On the other hand, the minimal self is simply the self in the present objective state, irrespective of a person’s memories or future decisions. As Gallagher had described it, the minimal self is composed of the sense of ownership and the sense of agency. The sense of ownership is the acknowledgment of one’s own sense of self, which can be understood as a separate entity from non self objects. The sense of agency, however, is the understanding that the individual is the source of an action. In the next section, I discuss the operational definition of the self within the cognitive neuroscience literature. Using these philosophical definitions, I offer a bridge between these perspectives by comparing Gallagher’s narrative self with the default mode network.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2012
indicates that experiences, such as vacations and concerts, are more likely to do so than material possessions, such as clothes and electronic gadgets. The present research was designed to explore 1 potential explanation for this result, namely, that experiences tend to be more closely associated with the self than possessions. The authors first show that people tend to think of their experiential purchases as more connected to the self than their possessions. Compared with their material purchases, participants drew their experiential purchases physically closer to the self (Study 1), were more likely to mention them when telling their life story (Study 2), and felt that a purchase described in terms of its experiential, rather than its material, qualities would overlap more with their sense of who they are (Study 4). Participants also felt that knowing a person's experiential purchases, compared with their material purchases, would yield greater insight into that person's true self (Studies 3A-3C). The authors then show that the tendency to cling more closely to cherished experiential memories is connected to the greater satisfaction people derive from experiences than possessions (Study 5).
2009
I wish to acknowledge that all of this work was done in collaboration with Thomas Gilovich. Although I will sometimes use the first-person singular "I," it should be read as "we." The ideas are his as much as they are mine, and I can only hope his influences have an enduring impact on my career. Without the reassurances and steady guidance of David Dunning, my graduate career would quite likely have been a terrifying experience, instead of the intellectually stimulating and personally satisfying experience that it was. He is the very model of a modern major advisor. Melissa Ferguson contributed her agile mind, impressive perspective, and sunny demeanor to my education, exposing me to an entirely new level of analysis. I hope to count her, and really, everyone on my committee, as collaborators, colleagues, and friends for years to come. I can't imagine having a better collection of minds responsible for shaping my own, and I am deeply grateful for each of them. Considerable credit also goes to my many dedicated research assistants, who actually
The self: as a construct in psychology and neuropsychological evidence for its multiplicity
Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science, 2010
What is the self? Philosophers and psychologists pursuing an answer to this question immediately find themselves immersed in a host of questions about mind and body, subject and object, object and process, the homunculus, free will, self-awareness, and a variety of other puzzling matters that largely have eluded satisfying theoretical explication. In this paper I argue that some of this difficulty is attributable to our implicit, phenomenologically-based belief that the self is unitary entity-i.e., a singular ''I" that remembers, chooses, thinks, plans, and feels. In this article I address the question of what the self is by reviewing research, conducted primarily with neuropsychological participants, that converges on the idea that the self may be more complex and differentiated than many previous treatments of the topic have assumed. Although some aspects of self-knowledge such as episodic recollection may be compromised by cognitive and neurological disorders, other aspects-for instance, semantic trait summaries-appear largely intact. Taken together, these findings support the idea that there is no single, unified ''I" to be found. Rather, I argue ''the" self may best be construed as a set of interrelated, functionally independent systems. 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. WIREs Cogn Sci 2010 1 172-183 WHAT IS THE SELF? T he phenomenology is universal. Each of us has the experience of a unitary self, an 'I' that remembers, chooses, thinks, plans, and feels. Yet it has been notoriously difficult to provide an account of just what this thinking, feeling, remembering, and planning entity is. Gordon Allport expressed this concern in the following famous quote: 'Who is the I that knows the bodily me, who has an image of myself and a sense of identity over time, who knows that I have propriate strivings? I know all these things, and what is more, I know that I know them. But who is it who has this perspectival grasp?.. . It is much easier to feel the self than to define the self.' (see Ref 1; p. 128