Immunity to Error and Subjectivity

2007 ◽  
Vol 37 (4) ◽  
pp. 581-604 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert J. Howell
Keyword(s):  
Personal Identity ◽  
William James ◽  
Self Awareness ◽  
Sydney Shoemaker ◽  
Seminal Article ◽  
Indexical Thought ◽  
Self Reference

Since Sydney Shoemaker published his seminal article ‘Self-Reference and Self-Awareness’ in 1968, the notion of ‘Immunity to Error through Misidentification’ (IEM) has received much attention. It crops up in discussions of personal identity, indexical thought and introspection, and has been used to interpret remarks made by philosophers from Wittgenstein to William James. The precise significance of IEM is often unspecified in these discussions, however. It is unclear, for example, whether it constitutes an important status of judgments, whether it explains an important characteristic of judgments, or whether it merely marks an important characteristic of judgments. Nevertheless, reference to IEM abounds, making this obscure notion seem all the more significant.

Self-reference in early speech of children speaking Slovak

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 14-35
Author(s):  
Jana Kesselová
Keyword(s):  
Individual Case ◽  
Early Age ◽  
Self Awareness ◽  
Upper Limit ◽  
First Occurrence ◽  
Social Deixis ◽  
Self Reference ◽  
Vega 1 ◽  
Slovak Language

Abstract The study focuses on the process of being aware of own I in children acquiring Slovak language at an early age and living in a Slovak family. The aim of the research is to understand the process of acquiring the means by which children refer to themselves in the interaction with an adult person. The research uses the qualitative longitudinal method of individual case study. A child’s speech is researched from the very first occurrence of a self-reference mean in 16th month up to the upper limit of early age (36th month) and all that is based on audio-visual records transcripts. The following are researched: (a) succession of self-reference means acquisition in early childhood, (b) function of self-reference linguistic means, (c) process of child’s self-awareness. The results obtained based on the linguistic data in Slovak language are compared with the results of similarly focused researches in English, French, Polish, Russian and Bulgarian language. The research reveals some constants in the development of self-reference instruments that can be observed throughout various language-cultural environments. The research is a part of solutions within the grant project VEGA 1/0099/16 Personal and Social Deixis in Slovak Language.

Artificial Identity

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
James DiGiovanna
Keyword(s):  
Personal Identity ◽  
Moral Dilemmas ◽  
Self Awareness ◽  
Ethical Theories ◽  
Intentional States ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Persistence Conditions ◽  
Moral Problems ◽  
Extreme Change ◽  
At Will

Enhancement and AI create moral dilemmas not envisaged in standard ethical theories. Some of this stems from the increased malleability of personal identity that this technology affords: an artificial being can instantly alter its memory, preferences, and moral character. If a self can, at will, jettison essential identity-giving characteristics, how are we to rely upon, befriend, or judge it? Moral problems will stem from the fact that such beings are para-persons: they meet all the standard requirements of personhood (self-awareness, agency, intentional states, second-order desires, etc.) but have an additional ability—the capacity for instant change—that disqualifies them from ordinary personal identity. In order to rescue some responsibility assignments for para-persons, a fine-grained analysis of responsibility-bearing parts of selves and the persistence conditions of these parts is proposed and recommended also for standard persons who undergo extreme change.

scholarly journals Mahmoud Darwish and Joy Harjo: Cosmic Consciousness

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adil M. Jamil
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Native Americans ◽  
Indigenous People ◽  
William James ◽  
Self Awareness ◽  
Human Consciousness ◽  
Pursuit Of Happiness ◽  
Joy Harjo

This study examines the phases of human consciousness revealed in the poetry of indigenous people in the light of some prominent psychologists and philosophers mainly Bucke, Schleiermacher, William James, Hegel, and Moores. Bucke and Schleiermacher cited three forms of consciousness: Animal or Brutish Self-awareness, Sensual or Self-Consciousness, and Cosmic Consciousness. While examining the poetry of indigenous people, Palestinians and Native Americans, we find out that the majority moves within the confines of the Sensual or Self-Consciousness in their reaction to the brutish consciousness of the oppressors who deny their unalienable rights for life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. Unlike others, Mahmoud Darwish, the Palestinian, and Joy Harjo, the Native American, attempt to transcend the sensual consciousness and adopt a broader universal vision or cosmic consciousness; however, their peaceful vision is often shattered by bitter realities and frustrated by the inhuman conduct of their oppressors. In their verses, the particular or the sensual is not completely overlooked or concealed. It is always there, yet alleviated by a universal vision held by the two poets

The Stream of Consciousness: XIV. Two Contrasting Accounts of Pervasive Bodily Self-Awareness

1997 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-64 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Natsoulas
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
Personal Identity ◽  
Self Awareness ◽  
Stream Of Consciousness ◽  
Bodily Feelings

The present installment in this series of articles continues in consideration of the role that bodily self-awareness plays in the very structure of the basic durational components constituting William James's stream of consciousness. The focus here is dual, on both the prominent phenomenologist Aron Gurwitsch's account of this role and on James's account. Critically addressed is Gurwitsch's claim concerning the awareness of the behaviors involved in the process of perceiving. Such awareness is proposed to be typically marginal, in the sense of having a distinct and separate content within each component of the stream. Addressed too is James's account of pervasive bodily self-awareness as integrated within each state, or pulse, of consciousness although varying in attentiveness. Such awareness is always part of, at least, the fringe of every pulse of consciousness, which is not to be confused with Gurwitsch's margin. The present article explains how the awareness of bodily feelings is crucial to James's account of personal identity.

Screaming in a Vacuum: Some Adolescents' Search for Meaning

1973 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 263-267 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Eisen
Keyword(s):  
Personal Identity ◽  
The Self ◽  
Clinical Material ◽  
Self Awareness ◽  
Late Adolescents ◽  
Search For Meaning ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Therapeutic Task ◽  
Special Risk

Late adolescents, often in conflict over establishing an adequate personal identity in a discordant world, are at special risk. Some feel an ideational and affective emptiness and an absence of meaningful “external” experience, which can be likened to screaming in a vacuum. Clinical material from three adolescents is described. Theoretical formulations incorporating the long-term impoverishment of object relationships and lack of definition of “the self” are seen as central issues. The therapeutic task, aimed at establishing an acceptable and reliable self-awareness, is discussed.

Remembering the Past of Another

1973 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 523-532
Author(s):  
Roland Puccetti
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Personal Identity ◽  
Possible Worlds ◽  
Recent Literature ◽  
Heart Transplants ◽  
The Past ◽  
Physical Universe ◽  
Sydney Shoemaker ◽  
Universal Truth ◽  
Basic Features

There has been a tendency in recent literature on personal identity to treat puzzle cases as unfair intrusions upon the discussion, like proposing to play chess without the Queen. Thus Terence Penelhum speaks of ‘imaginary worlds’ where our normal criteria do not hold and Sydney Shoemaker refers approvingly to G. C. Nerlich's dictum that it is a universal truth of our world, and not of ‘all possible worlds', that only by being identical with a witness to past events can one have the knowledge of them we have in memory.I would agree that where puzzle cases involve changing basic features of our physical universe, e.g. in having people's bodies go out of existence in one place and reappear in another, as recently envisaged by J. M. Shorter, there is some point in talking of ‘imaginary’ or ‘possible’ worlds. But where puzzle cases propose no such basic changes but ground the discussion in physiological possibilities, however unfeasible technologically, this seems an arbitrarily harsh description. It would be like Nineteenth Century philosophers saying talk of flying machines and heart transplants belongs, not to another age merely, but to other worlds.

Varieties of Self-Awareness

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thor Grünbaum ◽  
Dan Zahavi
Keyword(s):  
Phenomenal Consciousness ◽  
First Person ◽  
Self Awareness ◽  
Proper Understanding ◽  
Minimal Self ◽  
Self Knowledge ◽  
Conscious Thinking ◽  
Self Reference

This chapter argues that explicit (reflective) self-conscious thinking is founded on an implicit (pre-reflective) form of self-awareness built into the very structure of phenomenal consciousness. In broad strokes, the argument is that a theory denying the existence of pre-reflective or minimal self-awareness has difficulties explaining a number of essential features of explicit first-person self-reference, and that this will impede a proper understanding of certain types of psychopathology. The chapter proceeds by discussion of a number of prominent theories of self-knowledge and self-reference relating them to forms of self-consciousness. It is then argued that getting these various relations right is important to a proper understanding of a number of psychopathological phenomena.

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