Technologies of the self: The role of agency in first person descriptions of psychosis

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nev Jones ◽  
Janis H. Jenkins ◽  
Rebecca Lester
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
First Person ◽  
Technologies Of The Self

Drafted into a Foreign War?

Rhizomata ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 183-217
Author(s):  
Matthew Sharpe
Keyword(s):  
Ancient Philosophy ◽  
The Self ◽  
Spiritual Practices ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Technologies Of The Self ◽  
Analytic Tradition ◽  
Modern Conception ◽  
The Past ◽  
Rational Inquiry

Abstract This paper examines the central criticisms that come, broadly, from the modern, ‘analytic’ tradition, of Pierre Hadot’s idea of ancient philosophy as a way of life.: Firstly, ancient philosophy just did not or could not have involved anything like the ‘spiritual practices’ or ‘technologies of the self’, aiming at curing subjects’ unnecessary desires or bettering their lives, contra Hadot and Foucault et al. Secondly, any such metaphilosophical account of putative ‘philosophy’ must unacceptably downplay the role of ‘serious philosophical reasoning’ or ‘rigorous argument’ in philosophy. Thirdly, claims that ancient philosophy aimed at securing wisdom by a variety of means including but not restricted to rational inquiry are accordingly false also as historical claims about the ancient philosophers. Fourthly, to the extent that we must (despite (3)) admit that some ancient thinkers did engage in or recommend extra-cognitive forms of transformative practice, these thinkers were not true or ‘mainline’ philosophers. I contend that the historical claims (3) and (4) are highly contestable, risking erroneously projecting a later modern conception of philosophy back onto the past. Of the theoretical or metaphilosophical claims (1) and (2), I argue that the second claim, as framed here, points to real, hard questions that surround the conception(s) of philosophy as a way of life.

Self and Self-Representation in the Long Twentieth Century

2021 ◽  
pp. 295-316
Author(s):  
Christopher Peacocke
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
The Self ◽  
First Person ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Person Concept

Six issues are salient in discussions of the first person since 1900: immunity to error through misidentification; the possibility of survival without survival of one’s body; the elusiveness of the self; the role of the first person attitudes in the explanation of action; the first person component in mental concepts; and the role of the first person simulation in explaining the actions of others. Since 1900, there have been accounts both of the nature of the first person concept, and accounts of the nature of subjects of experience. This paper discusses the achievements and limitations of these accounts in addressing the preceding six issues. These issues are also assessed against a wider range of possibilities, both for the first person and for the subject to which it refers, than are considered in this literature.

scholarly journals Feeling Empathically Toward Other People and the Self: The Role of Perspective Shifting in Emotion Sharing and Self-Reassurance

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 169-183 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chui-De Chiu ◽  
Hau Ching Ng ◽  
Wing Ki Kwok ◽  
Marieke S. Tollenaar
Keyword(s):  
Emotional Reactivity ◽  
The Self ◽  
First Person ◽  
Cognitive Characteristic ◽  
Negative Thoughts ◽  
The Moment

Feeling one’s own emotions empathically when negative thoughts about the self arise, a defining element of self-reassurance, promotes resilience to prolonged emotional reactivity. We propose that feeling empathically toward the self is accomplished by first stepping into the shoes of an objectified, undesired self-aspect, after which the process of perspective shifting should be completed by reengaging the self to experience the moment in the first person. We hypothesize that the resumption of the egocentric perspective in perspective shifting, a cognitive characteristic of sharing other people’s emotions, is crucial for self-reassurance as well. The relationships among flexibility in perspective shifting, self-reassurance, and emotion sharing were examined in community participants. Our results show that quickly switching back to a visuospatial egocentric perspective after adopting an opposing perspective relates to self-reassurance and emotion sharing. We conclude that both reassuring the self and empathizing with other people involve flexibility in perspective shifting.

scholarly journals To-Do Is to Be: Foucault, Levinas, and Technologically Mediated Subjectivation

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Peter Bergen ◽  
Peter-Paul Verbeek
Keyword(s):  
Self Care ◽  
The Self ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
Care Of The Self ◽  
Technological Mediation ◽  
Technologies Of The Self ◽  
Technological Artifacts ◽  
Ethical Subjectivity ◽  
The World

AbstractThe theory of technological mediation aims to take technological artifacts seriously, recognizing the constitutive role they play in how we experience the world, act in it, and how we are constituted as (moral) subjects. Its quest for a compatible ethics has led it to Foucault’s “care of the self,” i.e., a transformation of the self by oneself through self-discipline. In this regard, technologies have been interpreted as power structures to which one can relate through Foucaultian “technologies of the self” or ascetic practices. However, this leaves unexplored how concrete technologies can actually support the process of self-care. This paper explores this possibility by examining one such technology: a gamified To-Do list app. Doing so, it first shows that despite the apparent straightforwardness of gamification, confrontation and shame play an important role in how the app motivates me to do better. Second, inspired by Ihde’s schema of human-technology relations, it presents different ways in which the app may confront me with myself. Subsequently, it accounts for the motivation and shame that this technologically mediated confrontation with myself invokes through a Levinasian account of ethical subjectivity. In so doing, it also shows how Levinas’ phenomenology implies a responsibility for self-care and how nonhuman, technological others may still call me to responsibility. It concludes with a reflection on the role of gamification in technologically mediated subjectivation and some implications for design.

scholarly journals Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience in Organizational Research: Functional and Nonfunctional Approaches

2017 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 299-331 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard P. Bagozzi ◽  
Nick Lee
Keyword(s):  
Human Behavior ◽  
The Self ◽  
First Person ◽  
Organizational Research ◽  
Philosophical Foundations ◽  
Viable Approach ◽  
Conceptual Foundations ◽  
Development Methods

Neuroscience offers a unique opportunity to elucidate the role of mental phenomena, including consciousness. However the place of such phenomena in explanations of human behavior is controversial. For example, consciousness has been construed in varied and conflicting forms, making it difficult to represent it in meaningful ways without committing researchers to one species of consciousness or another, with vastly different implications for hypothesis development, methods of study, and interpretation of findings. We explore the conceptual foundations of different explications of consciousness and consider alternative ways for studying its role in research. In the end, although no approach is flawless or dominates all others in every way, we are convinced that any viable approach must take into account, if not privilege, the self in the sense of representing the subjective, first-person process of self as observer and knower of one’s own actions and history, and the feelings and meanings attached to these. The most promising frameworks in this regard are likely to be some variant of nonreductive monism, or perhaps a kind of naturalistic dualism that remains yet to be developed coherently.

Foucaulte o Poder

2006 ◽  
Vol 14 (28) ◽  
pp. 221-226
Author(s):  
José de Almeida Pereira Arêdes ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Michel Foucault ◽  
Population Policy ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Self ◽  
Productive Force ◽  
Scientific Methods ◽  
Technologies Of The Self ◽  
Control Power ◽  
Mind Control

The purpose of this paper is to present some thoughts upon the ever pressing question of the role of justice in our societies, according to Michel Foucault. Centered upon Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison, the paper draws the guidelines which Foucault developed about the aggiornamento of the exercise of power and its changing methods, from torture to the scientific methods which he named technologies of the self. Going from the exercise of violence centered upon the body to its submission by means of idea and mind control, power has associated itself to the scientific (psychiatric) approach of identity, leading to a controllable abnormality (present in prisons). All of this in the name of a population policy, a bio power which ensures the docility of individuals while optimizing their productive force. Hence the remaining epigraph quoted challenge where Plato provocatively States: justice is the same everywhere, it is the rule of the strongest.

The Technologies of the Self: Sport, Feminism, and Foucault

2003 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 87-107 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pirkko Markula
Keyword(s):  
Physical Activity ◽  
Feminist Theory ◽  
Michel Foucault ◽  
The Self ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Technologies Of The Self ◽  
Gender Specific

Following Michel Foucault, feminist sport scholars have demonstrated how women’s physical activity can act as a technology of domination that anchors women into a discoursive web of normalizing practices. There has been less emphasis on Foucault’s later work that focuses on the individual’s role of changing the practices of domination. Foucault argues that human beings turn themselves into subjects through what he labels “the technologies of the self.” While his work is not gender specific, some feminists have seen the technologies of the self as a possibility to reconceptualize the self, agency and resistance in feminist theory and politics. In this paper, I aim to examine what Foucault’s technologies of self can offer feminists in sport studies. I begin by reviewing applications of Foucault’s technology of the self to analyses of women’s physical activity. I will next locate the technologies of the self within Foucault’s theory of power, self and ethics to further reflect how valuable this concept can be for feminist sport studies.

Integrating Unconscious Belief

2018 ◽  
pp. 304-330
Author(s):  
Adam Leite
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
The Self ◽  
First Person ◽  
Moore’S Paradox ◽  
Moore's Paradox ◽  
Self Knowledge

The very idea of psychic integration presents puzzles in the case of unconscious belief, both for the analysand and for the theorist. In many cases, the unconsciously believed proposition is one that the analysand knows perfectly well to be false. What could it be to bring such a belief to consciousness? What could psychic integration come to in this sort of case? Put bluntly, the task facing the analysand is to consciously hold the belief even while placing it within a broader perspective in which it is recognized to be false. Implications are drawn concerning a number of large issues in epistemology and philosophy of mind: Moore’s Paradox, the role of rationality in psychic unity and self-consciousness, the nature of the first-person standpoint in relation to one’s own attitudes, transparency accounts of self-knowledge, and the role of endorsement in the constitution of the self.

Active Contemporary Citizenship as a Research Mode

2021 ◽  
pp. 002216782110505
Author(s):  
Ulrich Weger ◽  
Klaus Herbig
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
First Person ◽  
Active Citizenship ◽  
Direct Involvement ◽  
Global Form ◽  
The World ◽  
Civil Participation

Active citizenship is a form of civil participation in which direct involvement is emphasized over distanced reflection. As such it seems to be in juxtaposition to the role of the researcher who is typically an external spectator and observes, documents, and analyzes phenomena from outside. This quality of remaining in a state of professional distance and scholarly reflection can pose a dilemma when the multitude of problems in the world is obvious and the need for direct intervention becomes undeniable. Are active citizenship and scientific enquiry opposing modes of participation or can they be complementary? For the duration of 11 months, we pursued a first-person study, seeking to deepen a sense of engagement with the challenges of the time while simultaneously maintaining our role as researchers. We aggregate our findings into four categories—“feelings,” “insights,” “changes in perspective” and the “wrestling to find a balance between inertia and conscience.” The results are contextualized within the broader literature of the self, pointing to facets of identity that encompass both a local and a global form of “active” or “contemporary” citizenship.

scholarly journals Religious Governmentality

2020 ◽  
Vol 56 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-118
Author(s):  
Dietrich Jung ◽  
Kirstine Sinclair
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Theoretical Perspective ◽  
Physical Appearance ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
The Self ◽  
Technologies Of The Self ◽  
Islamic Reform ◽  
Major Interest ◽  
Role Of Religion

In this article on the role of religion in the formation of modern subjectivities we use a contemporary transnational Islamist organization, Hizb ut-Tahrir, as our example. We examine how technologies of domination are combined with norm-setting technologies of the self in shaping new modern Muslim subjectivities among its members. First, we present our theoretical perspective and analytical framework. Then we describe the ideological roots of Hizb ut-Tahrir in the intellectual universe of nineteenth-century thinking about Islamic reform. Third, we analyse the practice of tooling or processing minds, souls, convictions, physical appearance, and behaviour among members of the organization. As our major interest lies not in Hizb ut-Tahrir as such but in the role of religion in the formation of modern social subjectivities, we conclude with some general reflections on this question.

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