scholarly journals Narrative Identity and Diachronic Self-Knowledge

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 164-179 ◽  
Author(s):  
KEVIN J. HARRELSON
Keyword(s):  
Narrative Identity ◽  
Skeptical Argument ◽  
Narrative Self ◽  
Self Image ◽  
Self Knowledge

ABSTRACT:Our ability to tell stories about ourselves has captivated many theorists, and some have taken these developments for an opportunity to answer long-standing questions about the nature of personhood. In this essay I employ two skeptical arguments to show that this move was a mistake. The first argument rests on the observation that storytelling is revisionary. The second implies that our stories about ourselves are biased in regard to our existing self-image. These arguments undercut narrative theories of identity, but they leave room for a theory of narrative self-knowledge. The theory accommodates the first skeptical argument because there are event descriptions with retrospective assertibility conditions, and it accommodates the second argument by denying us epistemic privilege in regard to our own past. The result is that we do know our past through storytelling, but that it is a contingent feature of some of our stories that they are about ourselves.

scholarly journals Self-Knowledge and Its Limits

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-95 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Schwenkler
Keyword(s):  
Well Being ◽  
First Person ◽  
Skeptical Argument ◽  
Psychological Well Being ◽  
Person Perspective ◽  
Philosophical Account ◽  
Self Knowledge ◽  
First Person Perspective ◽  
The Many

A philosophical account of self-knowledge should offer more than an epistemological explanation of first-personal privilege. It should also address the many cases where the first-person perspective is not so privileged, and account for the importance of self-knowledge to a person’s social and psychological well-being. Quassim Cassam’s Self-Knowledge for Humans and John Doris’s Talking to Our Selves both emphasize the importance of these latter tasks, but neither author is wholly successful: Cassam’s argument rests on a gross distortion of the “Rationalist” picture he sets up as a foil, and Doris’s on a skeptical argument that stands in some questionable company.

Tacit Knowledge in Rapidly Evolving Organisational Environments

2011 ◽  
pp. 139-158
Author(s):  
Barbara Jones ◽  
Angelo Failla ◽  
Bob Miller
Keyword(s):  
Tacit Knowledge ◽  
Individual Case ◽  
The Self ◽  
Personal Knowledge ◽  
For Profit ◽  
Not For Profit ◽  
Self Image ◽  
Innovative Products ◽  
Personal Use ◽  
Self Knowledge

Constant renewal of the self-image and self-knowledge of the organisation becomes part of the day-to-day knowledge-in-use of front-line practitioners. The Network Enterprise is a model of business conducted by shifting alliances of partners developing innovative products and processes in close collaboration with their clients. Organisations abandon the concept of a central product, redefining themselves as providers of solutions. We draw on the experience of two ‘solution-providers’, one for-profit and one not-for-profit. The concept of a solution or transition requires practitioners to consider each individual case drawing on personal knowledge of the organisation’s accessible competencies and capacities. Choices among the possible solutions to the client’s problems can have unpredictable effects on the dynamics of the wider organisation. The necessarily personal use of heuristics magnifies the inescapable element of ‘drift’ inherent in the network enterprise. The dynamics generated by this will require the wider organisation to develop new standards and solution bundles.

The Search for Identity in the Novels of John Dos Passos

PMLA ◽  
1961 ◽  
Vol 76 (1) ◽  
pp. 133-149
Author(s):  
Blanche H. Gelfant
Keyword(s):  
Virginia Woolf ◽  
Social Supports ◽  
Contemporary Fiction ◽  
John Dos Passos ◽  
Modern World ◽  
The Past ◽  
Self Image ◽  
The Social ◽  
Self Knowledge ◽  
Social Fluidity

Literature reflects a fascination with the enigma of man's identity. Who am I? What am I doing? Where am I going?—these questions recur, are answered, and yet require always re-asking and new illumination. Contemporary fiction projects man's quest for identity against the background of a fragmented and confusing world where the need for self-definition grows urgent because the social supports of the past are weakened and the opportunities for new and strange definitions in the present are enlarged. In a world that exhibits instability as a norm and social fluidity as an ideal, no clearcut self-image can emerge and receive assuring consent. The search for identity in modern literature takes on the form of a pursuit—a curious pursuit, because the object is often undefined and unvisualized. Joyce's Bloom wandering the maze of Dublin streets, Camus' Meursault arrested in the blaze of Algerian sun, Saul Bellow's Henderson invading untrampled African jungle, crying “I want, I want,” but unable to articulate a predicate—these characters are impelled by a sense of inner void to pursue their identity as whole and self-conscious beings. Undefined to themselves they are all “strangers” seeking the touchstone of some objective reality that can validate their existence or of some assertive self-knowledge that can acquaint and unite them with themselves. The image of man as divided and a stranger recurs in the looming novels of the century, in the works of Proust, Kafka, Camus, Joyce, and Virginia Woolf; it is beautifully crystallized in the recognition scene at the end of Proust's Remembrance of Things Past as the hero's revelatory self-encounter. The failure of Proust's narrator to recognize his image in the mirror, his sense of masquerade and strangeness, the jading of his sensibilities as all seems degraded and lost, and then the unexpected swift revelation which unifies and gives meaning to his life—these have become recurrent experiences in contemporary fiction as it tries to illuminate the jagged course of man's search for identity in the modern world.

scholarly journals Saying no (to a story): personal identity and negativity

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tereza Matějčková
Keyword(s):  
Personal Identity ◽  
Narrative Identity ◽  
German Idealism ◽  
The Self ◽  
Birth Certificates ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Narrative Self ◽  
Phenomenological Tradition ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Way

AbstractThe concept of narrativity and narrative identity has two birth certificates: it is linked to the phenomenological tradition—beginning with Arendt’s “political phenomenology” —and to the tradition of German Idealism gradually slipping into existentialism. In this article, the author focuses on the latter tradition that helped to pave the way of the concept of narrative self. Key among the thinkers of Classical German Idealism has been Hegel, often considered the philosophical storyteller. Yet the author argues that Hegel’s concept of narrativity is not exclusively applied to the self and has hardly any role in the constitution of consciousness. This is the reason why Hegel (rather than thinkers who place the core of personal identity into narrativity) has the means to formulate a more convincing concept of the self and personal identity. The author does not deny that narrativity is seminal, both for leading a life as a human being and as a concrete person; however, originally consciousness and self-hood are born out of negativity. One enacts one’s selfhood, once one realizes that one has to interrupt narrativity, step in, refuse to live by it, or just ordinarily rephrase it consciously and by this appropriate it.

scholarly journals Cartesian Skepticism, Content Externalism, and Self-Knowledge

2005 ◽  
Vol 50 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony Brueckner
Keyword(s):  
Key Words ◽  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Hilary Putnam ◽  
Skeptical Argument ◽  
Content Externalism ◽  
Cartesian Skepticism ◽  
Meditations On First Philosophy ◽  
The World ◽  
Self Knowledge ◽  
Brains In Vats

Há um argumento cético clássico derivado das Meditações sobre a filosofia primeira. Este artigo oferece uma formulação contemporânea padrão do argumento, pretendendo mostrar que ninguém sabe qualquer coisa sobre o mundo extramental. A obra de Hilary Putnam na filosofia da linguagem e da mente parece fornecer uma resposta a uma versão atualizada do argumento cético cartesiano. Em sua maior parte, este artigo é dedicado a uma análise e crítica das meditações anti-céticas de Putnam. PALAVRAS-CHAVE – Descartes. Putnam. Ceticismo. Cérebros em cubas. Externalismo de conteúdo. ABSTRACT There is a classical skeptical argument that derives from Descartes’s Meditations on first Philosophy. This paper offers a standard contemporary formulation of the argument, which purports to show that no one knows anything about the world that exists outside our minds. The work of Hilary Putnam in the philosophy of language and mind seems to afford an answer to an updated version of the Cartesian skeptical argument. The bulk of this paper is devoted to an analysis and critique of Putnam’s anti-skeptical meditations. KEY WORDS – Descartes, Putnam, Skepticism, Brains in vats, Content externalism.

scholarly journals The (Self)portrait of a Writer: A Hermeneutic Reading of Virginia Woolf’s (Auto)biographical Writings

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 52-66
Author(s):  
Małgorzata Hołda
Keyword(s):  
Narrative Identity ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Traumatic Experiences ◽  
Philosophical Hermeneutics ◽  
The World ◽  
Self Knowledge ◽  
Insight Into

Woolf’s maturing as a writer was deeply influenced by her traumatic experiences in childhood, the (in)capacitating states of mental instability, as well as her proto-feminist convictions. Long before Barthes, she toppled the traditional position of the author, and her literary enshrinement of “the other reality” reached unity with the world rather than individuality. This article ponders Woolf’s creative impulse and investigates her autobiographical writings to show the import of their impact on her fiction, which, as Woolfian scholarship suggests, can be viewed as autobiographical, too. I argue that philosophical hermeneutics sheds light on the self-portrait that emerges from Woolf’s autobiographical writings and offers a rewarding insight into her path of becoming an author. I assert that Paul Ricoeur’s philosophy of subjectivity, and, in particular, his notion of narrative identity provide a route to examine how Woolf discovers her writing voice. In light of his hermeneutics of the self, the dispersed elements of the narrative of life can be seen as a possibility of self-encounter. Woolf’s writings bespeak her gradually evolving self-knowledge and self-understanding, which come from the configuration of those separate “stories” into a meaningful whole. The article also interprets Woolf’s autobiographical writings through the prism of Michel Foucault’s reflection on discourse and subjectivity, indicating that her texts instantiate his assertion of the subject’s constant disappearance.

scholarly journals Experiencing the multiculturalism of people of Jewish origin in the perspective of intergenerational transmission

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
pp. 87-106
Author(s):  
Magda Karkowska ◽  
Agnieszka Krawczyk
Keyword(s):  
Young Adults ◽  
Intergenerational Transmission ◽  
Narrative Identity ◽  
Life Experiences ◽  
Young Person ◽  
Jewish Origin ◽  
Sources Of Knowledge ◽  
Cultural Pattern ◽  
Self Knowledge ◽  
Different Cultures

In this paper we present the ways in which young adults of Jewish origin experience multiculturalism. Gaining such experiences helps to shape self-knowledge and to build narrative identity. We also analyze the role that different cultures play for the socialization of a young person. The following concepts constitute the theoretical axis of our article: cultural pattern, habitus, intergenerational transmission, communicative knowledge, conjunctive knowledge and multiculturalism. We supplement our consideration of them with data from interviews that were conducted in a community of young adults of Jewish origin. We refer primarily to such life experiences as: sources of knowledge about oneself and Jewish culture, intergenerational transmission, the sense of one’s own difference, giving meaning to one’s origin, the need for community, intellectualism and mysticism, and constructing one’s own identity. The research referred to falls within a qualitative orientation.

scholarly journals Individual Features of the Convict’s Personality (Results of a Psychological Research)

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 428-433
Author(s):  
YOANNA M. NEDYALKOVA
Keyword(s):  
Legal Status ◽  
Negative Impact ◽  
Psychological Research ◽  
Self Image ◽  
Personal Qualities ◽  
Self Knowledge ◽  
Individual Features ◽  
Moral Attitudes ◽  
Negative Feelings ◽  
The Impact

Introduction: the article presents a study conducted by means of a questionnaire survey among convicts in the Varna prison. The legal status of convicts affects their psychological and behavioral features. When studying the process of forming certain personal qualities in a criminal, we find it necessary to trace the interaction between society and personality. In particular, it is necessary to identify the negative impact of isolation on the convict’s personality in order to work on their reformation. When working with a convicted person, it is necessary to take into account such features of their personality as orientation, abilities, and age characteristics. Such people are alienated from society and its values and have a negative self-image. The present paper focuses on the moral attitudes and knowledge of convicts and on the use of their potential and desire for personal change. In this process, a comprehensive set of intellectual and volitional qualities is formed, in which self-esteem is an important factor that determines behavior and individual features. The aim of our research is to study the level of aggression in convicts and its manifestations under the conditions of isolation; we also try to work out measures to minimize the impact of places of deprivation of liberty on an individual and their relations with others. Methods: we use the Buss-Durkee Hostility Inventory that measures aggression, and a questionnaire that helps to interview people whose behavior is of interest to researchers. Such questionnaires are designed to assess an individual’s features in specific situations and allow us to ask questions directly. They are relatively straight and do not require complex electronic equipment. The studies confirm the thesis that the closeness of the convicts’ stay in isolation conditions generates negative feelings, which, under specific conditions, can transform into aggressive behavior. Results: summarizing the results for aggressive manifestations of convicts’ personality traits and the corresponding methods of working with convicts allow the researcher to obtain information for solving the target task. We believe that these methods can serve as a basis for building a program for psychological correction of the behavior of an individual kept in isolation. Keywords: Personality; isolation; aggression; communication; self-knowledge

scholarly journals Narrative Self-Reference and the Assessment of Knowledge

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 38-51
Author(s):  
Maximilian Roßmann
Keyword(s):  
Literary Theory ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
Social Systems ◽  
Narrative Approach ◽  
Narrative Self ◽  
Scientific Authority ◽  
Self Image ◽  
The Stability ◽  
Self Reference ◽  
Insight Into

The concept of narrative self-reference incorporates selected aspects of literary theory into the theory of self-referential systems. Since cybernetics and systems theory focus mainly on computer-aided metaphors and information, the narrative approach provides a better insight into meaning. Narrative self-reference is the simplified narrative self-image that reflects the system-environment relationship and thereby stabilizes the system. Because the narrative is continuously re-written, continued and entangled in different practices, it provides the flexibility against new and disappointed expectations, and the stability for accountability and planning. Theoretical examples of further institutional, technical, authoritarian and pragmatic dependencies for the constitution of psychic and social systems with means of narrative self-reference are discussed. In summary, this article reflects the negotiating power of narratives by creating system boundaries for collaboration and a common ground for the assessment of knowledge. From this perspective, “post-truth” is not a lack of scientific authority, but more a lack of the virtue of an adequate dealing with narratives.

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