Education fundamentally focuses on 'individuals', whose human value is rooted in the expression of 'self-identity'. This process is influenced by their social rank and linguistic culture, and within varied discourses and ideological communities, different 'self-identity values' emerge. This applies to all individuals, whether they are citizens or women, and encompasses complex social metaphysical questions. For instance, how do we define social identities such as poverty, disability, privilege, or femininity? 'Intuition' and 'common sense' often fail in such definitions, especially in recognizing (...) exceptions like gender identification, which challenges the distinctions between biological sex and gender identity. The paper analyzes 'Social Historical Structuralism' and ' Performative Theory' to see if they address the challenges of 'Essentialism'. It assesses both pluralism and monism and the autonomy of the 'true self' in educational philosophy's core concepts, grounded in the philosophy of self-identity. This study starts from female community perspectives, addressing women's disadvantaged status in social and linguistic structures and the impact of individualism on gender mainstreaming. This paper concludes by re-evaluating monistic approaches and considering the equitable recognition of community members' autonomy, underscoring the importance of self-identity in educational philosophy amidst the growing influence of identity politics in Western education. -/- Keywords: Self-Identity and Educational Philosophy, Social Metaphysics, Class and Identity, Ideology and Autonomy . (shrink)

The key to understanding self-identity is identifying the transcendental structures that make a temporally extended, continuous, and unified experiential life possible. Self-identity is rooted in the formal, temporalizing structure of intentional experience that underlies psychological continuity. Personal identity, by contrast, is rooted in the content of the particular flow of experience, in particular and primarily, in the convictions adopted passively or actively in reflection by a self-identical subject in the light of her social and traditional inheritances. Secondarily, a person’s identity (...) is rooted in others’ characterizations of that person in the light of the social conventions and constructs of the cultures and traditions that have shaped the personal identity of the ones who make the attributions. Personal identity, on this view, is fundamentally rooted in beliefs, traits—especially character traits—sentiments, and moods, that is, in the subject’s convictions about the true, the good, and the right—and in the commitments to the pursuit of (apparently) worthwhile goods and to the practical identities rooted in those convictions. (shrink)

In Self-Identity and Powerlessness , Alice Kouobová proposes a conception of human existence that does not essentially depend on the definition of self-identity. She does this by reinterpreting Heidegger’s fundamental ontology and that of other authors.

A common view is that self-identity is essential to objects if anything is. Itself a substantive metaphysical view, this is a position of some import in wider debates, particularly in connection with such problems as physicalism and personal identity. In this article I challenge the view. I distinguish between two accounts of essence, the modal and the definitional, and argue that self-identity is essential to objects on the former but not on the latter. After laying out my case, I deal (...) with a number of objections. (shrink)

Introduction -- Cultural theories of people -- Identities in standard English -- Language and social institutions -- The cultural self -- The self's identities -- Theories of identities and selves -- Theories of norms and institutions -- Social reality and human subjectivity.

Abstract:Discussions of the ethics of advertising have been based on a general distinction between informative and persuasive advertising without looking at specific techniques of persuasion. Self-identity image ads persuade by presenting an image of an idealized person-type such as a “beautiful” woman (Chanel) or a sexy teen (Calvin Klein). The product becomes a symbol of the ideal, and target consumers are invited to use the product to project the self-image to themselves and others. This paper argues that image ads are (...) not false or misleading, and that whether or not they advocate false values is a matter for subjective reflection. Image ads can undermine a consumer’s self-esteem by collectively omitting images authentic for that sort of person (such as large women), and by combining impossible images with implied gaze. Image ads generally do not undermine autonomy of choice, internal autonomy, or social autonomy. It is concluded that image advertising is a basically ethical technique, but several recommendations are given on how use of image advertising can avoid specific harms. (shrink)

We are all persons or selves. But what exactly does it mean that we possess an identity and autonomy as persons or selves? This book explores the related problems of self-identity and personal autonomy within the framework of contemporary analytical anthropology, a blend of analytical philosophy of mind and action with moral psychology. Cuypers critically examines the empiricist bundle theory and metaphysical ego theory of self-identity as well as the hierarchical Frankfurt / Dworkin model of personal autonomy. Arguing that all (...) these standard views are found wanting, Cuypers then offers an alternative 'personalist' theory of personal identity, plus an innovative 'moderately heteronomous' theory of autonomy without ever going beyond the analytical frame of reference. In critical discussion with analytical philosophers such as Derek Parfit, John Perry and Harry Frankfurt, this book develops an original perspective on the nature of persons or selves that is orthogonal to the received views in analytical anthropology. (shrink)

The formulation and implementation of policies addressing the need to adapt to climate change can be difficult due to the long-term, uncertain nature of localised climate change impacts and associated vulnerabilities. Difficulties are intensified because policy interventions can involve high costs, foregone opportunity and changes to people's way of life. Factors such as these can spur an uncritical, or reflexive, negativity regarding efforts to address the projected impacts of climate change. Such reflexive negativity is often trivialised in pejorative terms, such (...) as ‘Nimbyism’. However, stakeholder reluctance to accept the need for adaptation planning may be strongly influenced by self-perceptions that are resistant to change. People's sense of self and sense of place may contribute to an ‘imaginative intangibility’ with respect to climate adaptation, blocking thoughtful reflection and deliberation regarding alternative approaches and providing rationales for cheating the system once implemented. If acknowledged and addressed in a sensitive manner, it may be possible to manage these self-perceptions to elevate public discourse about climate change and help create situationally appropriate adaptation policy regimes. (shrink)

Identity disturbances are common in clinical conditions and personality measures need to extend to assessment of coherence in underlying levels of self-coherence. The problem has been difficult to solve because self-organization is a complex unconscious set of mind/brain processes embedded in social roles and values. Theory helps us address this problem and suggests methods and limitations of interpretation that involve self-reports of subjects, observers who rate subjects, and narrative analyses of verbal communications from subjects.

In this introduction to the first installment of the Common Knowledge symposium on xenophilia, the editor explains the rationale of the new project, citing increases in aggressive xenophobia internationally. He comments on the intergroup-relations theorist Todd Pittinsky's argument that, since tolerance is not logically the antithesis of negative feelings toward out-groups, even long-established traditions of toleration are inadequate to prevent intergroup aggression. Pittinsky proposes that tolerance be replaced, as a principle of peacekeeping, by the encouragement of positive feelings toward out-groups, (...) and the author of this essay responds by showing how the Freudian theory of ambivalence and the history of literature on which Freud drew in constructing it support Pittinsky's viewpoint. Enemies regularly fall in love, above all in Shakespearean drama, which Freud explains by arguing that all human relations are love-hate relations. Thus, this essay suggests, it takes as much psychic energy to repress the love in what appear to be relationships of hatred as to repress the hatred in what appear to be relationships of love. There is a metaphysical component as well to this argument: the xenophobe and xenophile equally presuppose that the identity principle is applicable to society as well as to mathematics; both assume that each discrete social group is self-identical and differs from all other groups more or less radically. The main difference between –phile and –phobe is the latter's relative incapacity to live with ambivalence. Given these arguments, one must expect to find negative as well as positive motives in the etiology and conduct of xenophilia—and the first installment of the Common Knowledge symposium is said to focus on cases of xenophilia in which varieties of enmity accompany that singular and underrated variety of love. (shrink)

This paper investigates the impacts of emotion enhancement on self-identity and assesses possible ethical consequences of these changes. It introduces the crucial dimensions related to the self which emotion enhancement may endanger—emotion standards, narrative identity, self-objectification, and freedom of hope and pursuit. I argue that the ethically salient issue with emotion enhancement is its impact on autonomous agency—whether one’s actions and beliefs are one’s own, and how the relational autonomy may be hindered or fostered. The changes arising from emotion enhancement (...) may be considered to belong to the same self as long as such changes do not alter the individual’s internal value system and the individual identifies with such changes. That being said, emotion enhancement remains unjustified in terms of freedom. Even if the emotional enhancement is performed out of free will, it does not bring freedom in the true sense, and thus threatens the subject’s special kind of being as the same rational agent. (shrink)

The analysis of personal identity over time (personal persistence) in terms of properties of the first-person perspective has been neglected for quite a while. However, there seems to be an interesting relation between experiential features on the one hand and the notion of personal persistence on the other hand. This idea is famously spelled out in an argument introduced by Barry Dainton (2000; 2005; 2008), according to which diachronic personal persistence con- sists in experiential continuity (stream of consciousness). This paper (...) challenges one central claim of the argument, whose main target is to ward off the threat of factual interruptions in the stream of consciousness. It will be objected that this problem cannot be properly solved. However, the relevance of experiential features to personal persistence can be shown if one leaves behind the question of criteria of personal identity over time and instead turns to the question of what it means to have a sense of self-identity over time. It will be argued that not only experiential continuity but also experiential features of episodic memory characterise the sense of self-identity over time. (shrink)

First part of a discussion about what kind of guidelines we can find in our group or cultural identity for our place making and architectural planning.

There has been some research conducted regarding nurses’ career success aimed at exploring its influencing factors, but there is no research on the mechanism of self-identity on the career success of infection control nurses. In order to further explore the formation mechanism of career success of nurses, we conducted our study using the Kaleidoscope Career Model to explore the chain-mediating effects of cognitive emotion regulation and social support between self-identity and career success. Five hundred forty-seven infection control nurses from nine (...) different hospitals participated in the study and completed questionnaires on the self-identity, cognitive emotion regulation, social support, and career success scales. The results from structural equation modeling reveal that self-identity has a positive effect on positive emotion regulation and social support and a negative impact on negative emotion regulation. Positive emotion regulation has a positive effect on social support. All antecedents have a positive impact on career success except negative emotion regulation, which has a negative one. Bootstrap analysis shows that the relationship between self-identity and career success is partially mediated by the chain of cognitive emotion regulation and social support. Overall, our research sheds light on the mechanism of self-identity on career success of nurses. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. (shrink)

Provides links to Internet resources in the field of international relations. Includes resources on diplomacy, history, and politics; economics and international management; international law; international organizations; regional studies; research institutes; United States government resources; and more.

Possession is preeminently the form in which the other becomes the same, by becoming mine. (Levinas, TI, 46)If perceptions are distinct existences, they form a whole only by being connected together. But no connexions among distinct existences are ever discoverable by human understanding. We only feel a connexion or determination of the thought to pass from one object to another. It follows, therefore, that the thought alone feels personal identity, when reflecting on the train of past perceptions that compose a (...) mind, the ideas of them are felt to be connected together, and naturally introduce each other. (Burne, T, App., 635)The I think must accompany all my representations, for otherwise something would be represented in me which could not be thought: .... they must conform to the condition under which alone they can exist altogether in a common self-consciousness, because otherwise they would not all without exception belong to me. (Kant, CPR, 76-7). (shrink)

Returning to the much-neglected work of George Herbert Mead, this book defines the self and links it to identity and collective action.

This paper presents a new cognitivist account for the old puzzle of self-consciousness or knowing self-reference. Knowing self-reference does not rely on reflection on some putative pre-existent pre-reflexive self-consciousness, nor is it the result of a process of identification of oneself as the employer of the relevant token of “I” according to the token-reflexive rule of the first-person pronoun. Rather, it relies on the architecture of the cognitive system. By exploiting the acquaintance relation that every brain has to one’s own (...) body, a “mental file” is opened in a subliminal way to house information about oneself gained through the appropriate proprioceptors. Knowing self-reference based on self-files dispenses with self-identification because the opening of the file in the same brain/body is not a deed of the cognitive system but rather something that takes place sub-personally. (shrink)

This paper seeks to carve out a distinctive category of conspiracy theorist, and to explore the process of becoming a conspiracy theorist of this sort. Those on whom I focus claim their beliefs trace back to simply trusting their senses and experiences in a commonsensical way, citing what they take to be authoritative firsthand evidence or observations. Certain flat Earthers, anti-vaxxers, and UFO conspiracy theorists, for example, describe their beliefs and evidence this way. I first distinguish these conspiracy theorists by (...) contrasting them with another group that has recently received a lot of attention from the media, philosophers, and academics more broadly. I then dig more deeply into the nature of these conspiracy theorists’ epistemic self-understanding, in order to give an account of the process by which one becomes such a conspiracy theorist. I conclude with some takeaways and implications: first, I explore the implications of my account for whether these conspiracy theorists’ beliefs are rational; then, I argue that my account has practical takeaways about counteracting beliefs in misinformation, since strategies appropriate to this kind of conspiracy theorist may not be the same ones that are appropriate for other kinds. (shrink)

B a c k g r o u n d. This article presents the results of the study of the main essential features and problems of self-identification of philosophy in the context of modern intellectual culture in Ukraine. The purpose of the research is to analyze the discourse of self-identification, its features, specific features and structure. In conditions where the history of Ukrainian philosophy is thoroughly researched, the current state of intellectual culture and the place and role of philosophy in (...) it remain relevant. Among the Ukrainian philosophers who developed new narratives in Ukrainian philosophy, it is worth mentioning famous figures: M.V. Popovych, S.B. Krymskyi and V.S. Gorskyi, V.G. Tabachkovskyi, and others. M e t h o d s. The article uses a combination of historical-philosophical and general scientific methods, including content analysis of philosophical texts, critical discourse analysis, historical-comparative and descriptive methods. This methodology contributes to a comprehensive study of the role and self-identification in modern Ukrainian intellectual culture. R e s u l t s. The results demonstrate the dynamic interaction between the philosophical discourse and the intellectual culture of modern Ukraine. The article identifies the key themes and trends of self-identification in philosophy, focuses attention on the discourse of self-identification, its features, structure, and specific features. C o n c l u s i o n s. It was found that the discourse of self-identification of philosophy in Ukraine, in its modern intellectual culture, is a multifaceted and constant process, deeply connected with the intellectual and cultural development of the country. The peculiarities of the discourse, which are related to the iteration of the national philosophy, the influence of Ukrainian studies and the reinterpretation of the heritage, specific features are identified, the specific features of the discourse are analyzed, such as, for example, the three main worldview foundations of the discourse: neoarchaizing-postmodern Byzantine-"Kiev Russian" Christianity (S. Krymsky and V. Horskyi), analytical-philosophical (M. Popovych), philosophicalanthropological (V. Tabachkovsky), and three main levels of manifestation of the main features of the discourse are demonstrated: intergenerational, inter-institutional and international levels. The structure of the self-identification discourse of philosophy in modern Ukrainian culture is analyzed, three conditional levels of the structure are defined: 1. intergenerational, 2. inter-institutional, 3. international. The article notes that continued interaction with both Western and domestic philosophical traditions will be crucial for the future development of Ukrainian philosophy. (shrink)

This study aimed to understand the preserved elements of self-identity in persons with moderate to severe dementia attributable to Alzheimer’s disease. A semi-structured interview was developed to explore the narrative self among residents with dementia in a residential care facility and residents without dementia in an independent living setting. The interviews were transcribed verbatim from audio recordings and analyzed for common themes, while being sensitive to possible differences between the groups. The participants with dementia showed evidence of self-reference even though (...) losses in explicit memory were evident. The most noticeable difference between the two groups was time frame reference. Nonetheless, all participants showed understanding of their role in relationships and exhibited concrete preferences. Our findings suggest that memory loss and other cognitive deficits associated with moderate to severe dementia do not necessarily lead to a loss of “self.”. (shrink)

The Received View of particles in quantum mechanics is that they are indistinguishable entities within their kinds and that, as a consequence, they are not individuals in the metaphysical sense and self-identity does not meaningfully apply to them. Nevertheless cardinality does apply, in that one can have n> 1 such particles. A number of authors have recently argued that this cluster of claims is internally contradictory: roughly, that having more than one such particle requires that the concepts of distinctness and (...) identity must apply after all. A common thread here is that the notion of identity is too fundamental to forego in any metaphysical account. I argue that this argument fails. I then argue that the failure of individuality and identity applies also to macroscopic physical objects, that the problems cannot be constrained to apply only within the microscopic realm. (shrink)

The title of this paper proclaims its central interest—the relationship which holds between the concept of integrity and the concept of the identity of the self, or, for short, self-identity. Unreflective speech often suggests a close relationship between the two, but in the latter half of this century, notwithstanding one or two notable exceptions, they have been discussed with minimum cross-reference as if they belonged to two rather different philosophical menus which tended not to be available at the same restaurant (...) on the same night. My intention is to argue that our account of the one carried implications for the other and that this relationship is reflexive. My argument will proceed by stating and criticizing a common account of the relationship between each of these concepts which tends to offer mutual support for the implied account of each. Thereafter an alternative account will be outlined. (shrink)

The article’s aim is to explore human hand allograft recipients’ postoperative experience of disownership and their gradual experience of their new hand as theirs, with the aid of the work of the French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Many have used a Merleau-Pontinian perspective in the analysis of embodiment. Far fewer have used it in medico-ethical analysis. Drew Leder’s phenomenologically based ethics of organ donation and organ sale is an exception to this tendency. The article’s second aim is to examine Leder’s phenomenologically (...) based ethics of organ donation and organ sale. Though I find parts of Leder’s approach promising, I also elaborate a line of reasoning that draws on Merleau-Ponty, that does allow us to argue for certain kinds of organ donation and against organ sale—and that avoids some of the problems with Leder’s approach. This alternative route builds on the concept of the integrity of the body-subject. (shrink)

Professor Weiss thinks that nothing less than a complete explanation of all there is will do for a philosophy. This desire to be all-encompassing defines the kind of multiplication of entities he believes to be necessary. For him the method of philosophy is dialectical, and dialectic is the recognition and provision of that which would complete the given. The technique is similar to what some psychologists have called "eduction of the correlate"; it is similar also to Kant's transcendental method of (...) proof, which proceeds from our actual experience to the conditions under which alone such experience is possible. (shrink)

Agri-environmental policies programmes mainly focus on economic incentives for the agri-environmental transition in grassland use. However, barriers rooted in farmers’ self-identities, which determine their behavioural intentions toward environmentally friendly practices, are often unaddressed in policy design. We conceptualise two self-identity gradients, productivist–multifunctionalist–conservationist and traditionalist–innovationist, to analyse drivers and barriers of agri-environmental transition processes among farmers. In order to grasp the complex multidimensional and hierarchical concept of self-identity as initially proposed by Stryker (_Journal of Marriage and Family_ 30: 558–564, 1968 ), (...) our analysis comprises a triangulation of qualitative and quantitative methods on a comprehensive dataset of 75 interviews with Swiss alpine grassland farmers. Through the semi-deductive coding of responses to open questions (revealing hierarchical aspects) and a factor analysis of closed, Likert-scale questions (revealing multidimensional aspects), we positioned each farmer along the conceptualised self-identity gradients. Our framework allows to explain contradictory behaviours exhibited by farmers: Our results revealed a mismatch between the farmers’ prevailing conservationist-innovationist self-identity and their actual intensification behaviour. This mismatch can be explained by the discrepancy between the individual self-identity and the prevailing productivist–innovationist idea of a good farmer, on which farmers continue to base their decisions. Within this discrepancy, however, lies the potential for a shift in the idea of what constitutes a good farmer and a consequential agri-environmental transition. (shrink)

Reviews : Anthony Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity ; Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity ; Agnes Heller, Can Modernity Survive?