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.

Expressing the Self

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
The Self ◽  
Epistemic Status ◽  
First Person ◽  
Semantic Categories ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Person Reference ◽  
De Se ◽  
Novel Method ◽  
Cultural Pragmatics

This book addresses different linguistic and philosophical aspects of referring to the self in a wide range of languages from different language families, including Amharic, English, French, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Newari (Sino-Tibetan), Polish, Tariana (Arawak), and Thai. In the domain of speaking about oneself, languages use a myriad of expressions that cut across grammatical and semantic categories, as well as a wide variety of constructions. Languages of Southeast and East Asia famously employ a great number of terms for first-person reference to signal honorification. The number and mixed properties of these terms make them debatable candidates for pronounhood, with many grammar-driven classifications opting to classify them with nouns. Some languages make use of egophors or logophors, and many exhibit an interaction between expressing the self and expressing evidentiality qua the epistemic status of information held from the ego perspective. The volume’s focus on expressing the self, however, is not directly motivated by an interest in the grammar or lexicon, but instead stems from philosophical discussions of the special status of thoughts about oneself, known as de se thoughts. It is this interdisciplinary understanding of expressing the self that underlies this volume, comprising philosophy of mind at one end of the spectrum and cross-cultural pragmatics of self-expression at the other. This unprecedented juxtaposition results in a novel method of approaching de se and de se expressions, in which research methods from linguistics and philosophy inform each other. The importance of this interdisciplinary perspective on expressing the self cannot be overemphasized. Crucially, the volume also demonstrates that linguistic research on first-person reference makes a valuable contribution to research on the self tout court, by exploring the ways in which the self is expressed, and thereby adding to the insights gained through philosophy, psychology, and cognitive science.

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.

Knowledge without Observation

2019 ◽  
pp. 93-116
Author(s):  
John Schwenkler
Keyword(s):  
Intentional Action ◽  
Accurate Description ◽  
First Person ◽  
Blue Book ◽  
Self Knowledge ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Bodily Movements

This chapter discusses the argument of Sections 28–32 of G.E.M. Anscombe’s Intention. It begins by relating Anscombe’s thesis that intentional action is known without observation to Wittgenstein’s discussion in the Blue Book of the knowledge of oneself “as subject” and Anscombe’s discussion in “The First Person” of unmediated self-knowledge. Following this, the chapter explores the difficulties that herself Anscombe raises for her thesis, and considers her reasons for thinking that the scope of an agent’s non-observational self-knowledge is not limited to her interior states or immediate bodily movements. Finally, it considers how the difficulties that Anscombe has raised are supposed to be addressed by her discussion of how descriptions of one’s intentional action can be contradicted, and of the difference between a list that has the role of an order and one whose role is to provide an accurate description of some facts.

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.

Moore's Paradox and First-Person Authority

2006 ◽  
Vol 71 (1) ◽  
pp. 161-174
Author(s):  
Severin Schroeder
Keyword(s):  
Mental State ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Epistemic Authority ◽  
First Person ◽  
Moore’S Paradox ◽  
Substantial Role ◽  
The Third ◽  
Moore's Paradox ◽  
Third Person ◽  
The Third Person

This paper explores Wittgenstein's attempts to explain the peculiarities of the first-person use of 'believe' that manifest themselves in Moore's paradox, discussed in , Part II, section x. An utterance of the form 'p and I do not believe that p' is a kind of contradiction, for the second conjunct is not, as it might appear, just a description of my mental state, but an expression of my belief that not-p, contradicting the preceding expression of my belief that p. Thus, 'I believe that p' is just a stylistic variant of 'p'; the word 'believe' doesn't seem to have a substantial role to play in such an utterance. Following Wittgenstein, I discuss why there could not be a first-person present-tense use of the word that was more akin to its use in the third person: why it is impossible to describe one's own current beliefs in a detached manner without thereby expressing them. In the final section, I try to develop Wittgenstein's suggestion that the non-epistemic authority we have regarding the contents of our beliefs can be clarified by considering its link with intention and action.

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.

scholarly journals Badacz i jego perspektywy interpretacyjne w studiach nad dziejami nauki

2021 ◽  
pp. 11-23
Author(s):  
Jaromir Jeszke
Keyword(s):  
History Of Science ◽  
The Self ◽  
Field Of Study ◽  
Self Reflection ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
Specialist Knowledge ◽  
Self Knowledge

The Researcher and Their Interpretative Perspectives in the Studies on the History of Science A historian (also of medicine) should accept the values and canons of the studied culture, including medical ones, as their own. As Florian Znaniecki pointed out in his works, they should be the researcher’s highest authority. This means that the researcher should deviate from evaluating the ideas and practices of the studied culture from their own perspective. The category of minimal cultural imputation developed by Wojciech Wrzosek shows that it is not an easy process. However, the application of the subjective-rational perspective to the interpretation has already become an obvious approach. An open and much less obvious problem is the role of the historian of science when they venture to make comparisons between past and present scientific cultures. By doing so, do they still remain a historian, or – by undertaking such comparisons and evaluations – do they abandon the role, assuming the position of, for example, methodologist? The author of the article outlines the possibilities of separating these roles, presenting the attitude of a ‘methodologist’ who searches in the past for the roots and theoretical justifications for contemporary paradigms of their discipline, using the latter to evaluate the past. However, the possibility of a non-evaluative dialogue between the cognizing culture and the cognized culture is also shown, where the former also includes the specialist knowledge of a contemporary researcher interested in the past of their discipline. The historiography of a given science appears here as a record of the self-knowledge of a given generation of researchers – as their self-reflection. As Jan Pomorski calls it, a researcher assuming such a role appears as homo metahistoricus in their field of study.

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