The Bodily Self: The Sensori-Motor Roots of Pre-Reflective Self-Consciousness

A bodily self is characterized by pre-reflective bodily self-consciousness that is “immune to error through misidentification.” To this end, the body's double involvement in consciousness is considered: it can experience objects intentionally and itself non-intentionally. Specifically, pre-reflective bodily self-consciousness, by contrast with the consciousness of the body that happens to be one's own, consists in experiencing one's body as the point of convergence of action and perception. Neither proprioception alone nor intention alone is sufficient to underlie this pre-reflective bodily self-consciousness. Rather, it is made possible thanks to a sensori-motor integration, allowing a sensitivity to the sensory consequences of one's action, through action monitoring.     

Self and Self-Consciousness: Aristotelian Ontology and Cartesian Duality

The relationship between self-consciousness, Aristotelian ontology, and Cartesian duality is far closer than it has been thought to be. There is no valid inference either from considerations of Aristotle's hylomorphism or from the phenomenological distinction between body and living body, to the undermining of Cartesian dualism. Descartes' conception of the self as both a reasoning and willing being informs his conception of personhood; a person for Descartes is an unanalysable, integrated, self-conscious and autonomous human being. The claims that Descartes introspectively encounters the self and that the Cartesian extent of inner space is self-contained are profound errors, distortions through the lenses of modern theories.     

Adaptive Flexibility,Cooperation, and Prosocial Motivations: The Emotional Foundations of Becoming Human

ABSTRACT

Humans are highly motivated to cooperate, share, and help others. The evidence for this claim comes from examining prosocial behaviors as they show up very early in development, and by systematic comparisons between young children and mankind’s closest great ape relatives. Highly cooperative and social species that care for kin and nonkin members of their group are rare in nature and call for an evolutionary explanation. Based on the work of Michael Tomasello and others, I offer a possible explanation based on a two-phase model. The first phase of the evolution of cooperation and sociability is induced by climate change taking place during a critical period of human evolution. Climate variability produced shifts from wet, monsoon landscapes to dry and arid landscapes in East Africa, the home of many of humanity’s ancestors. Shifting environmental conditions produced selective pressures favoring adaptive flexibility and forced cooperation and interdependence among our hominin ancestors, who had to search for food (cooperative foraging) and protect each other from predators. Forced interdependence came together with two biosocial adaptations: a cooperative form of raising young children (cooperative breeding) and long-term mating patterns (pair bonding). These biosocial adaptations help explain how the species might have begun to develop emotionally modern intersubjective mind-reading capacities. During a second phase of the evolution of cooperation, the emergence of shared social norms, social reputations, the cumulative effects of cultural knowledge passed on over many generations, and cultural differences produced a new form of evolution: cultural evolution. In turn, cultural evolution produced a new cycle of innovations consisting of symbolic capacities and language. When it comes to psychotherapy, the same conditions that made one human—adaptive flexibility, cooperation, helping others and mutual enjoyment in sharing—are the same conditions that make for a strong therapeutic alliance.     

Technology and Human Becoming

Technology is a mirror that reflects human nature and intentions: (1) we want certain things done and we want tools to do those things; (2) we are finite, frail, and mortal; (3) we create technology in order to bring alternative worlds into being; (4) we do not know why we create or what values should guide us. Imagination is central to technology. Human nature and human freedom are brought into focus when we reflect on the central role of imagination in technology.     

The Art of Becoming Human: Morality in Kant and Confucius

Kant and Confucius maintain that the art of becoming human is synonymous with the unending process of becoming moral. According to Kant, I must imagine a world in which the universality of my maxims were possible, while realizing that if such a world existed, then morality would disappear. Morality is an impossible possibility because it always meets resistance in our encounter with nature. According to Confucius, human beings become moral by integrating themselves into the already meaningful natural order that is tian 天. Like Kant, he upholds the dignity of human beings. For Kant this dignity rests on the autonomy of each human being’s reason, while for Confucius it is dependent upon our interconnection with each other, demanding ongoing self-extension. Despite these differences, the two thinkers would concur that our efforts at humanization are unceasing and that we may never fully live up to our human potential.     

Searching for the Self: Early Phenomenological Accounts of Self-Consciousness from Lotze to Scheler

Abstract

Phenomenological accounts of self-consciousness are often said to combine two elements by means of a necessary connection: the primitive and irreducible subjective character of experiences and the idealist transcendental constitution of consciousness. In what follows I argue that this connection is not necessary in order for an account of self-consciousness to be phenomenological, as shown by early phenomenological accounts of self-consciousness – particularly in Munich phenomenology. First of all, I show that the account of self-consciousness defended by these phenomenologists was not influenced as much by Husserl as by two important figures in the prehistory of phenomenology: their teacher Theodor Lipps, and – indirectly, through Lipps’ influence – Hermann Lotze. Second, I show that their account of self-consciousness takes the metaphysical realism underlying Lotze’s and Lipps’ views on the distinction between feeling and sensations seriously. I argue that this distinction played a central role in the development of many early phenomenological accounts of self-consciousness.     

The Language of Becoming: Helping Children Change How They Think about Themselves

In this article, I describe the language of becoming, which is a way of speaking to children that enables them to see themselves as continually evolving and changing. By noticing and reflecting back the specific ways the child is becoming, the parent gives a meta-message that one's personality is not set in stone but, rather, evolves and changes over time. In order for parents to use the language of becoming, the child must actually act differently. I will describe a three-pronged approach to helping children try new behaviors. The language of becoming helps parents and children see the child's personality, not just his or her behavior, as fluid rather then static. This helps parents and children break the vicious circles and self-fulfilling prophesies of rigid definitions of self. An understanding of stages of cognitive development in the construction of beliefs about the self and the implications of these stages for using the language of becoming is also discussed.     

Confucian Ritual as Body Language of Self, Society, and Spirit

This article explains how li ?Y or ??ritual propriety?? is the ??body language?? of ren ?? or the authentic expression of our humanity. Li and ren are interdependent aspects of a larger creative human way (rendao ???) that can be conceptually distinguished as follows: li refers to the ritualized social form of appropriate conduct and ren to the more general, authentically human spirit this expresses. Li is the social instrument for self-cultivation and the vehicle of harmonious human interaction. More, li must mean something that is effectively communicated to others for an authentic, human (ren) interaction to occur. Li is the body language of ren in being the ritual vehicle for its?? expression; however, li is underdetermined by ren and so must be distinguished from it in on further grounds: authentic human activity must not just be equivocated with social convention because conclusively establishing whether a particular action is li (or is a truly ren action) is impossible. As a result, li is often confused with social power and privilege that is easier to empirically identify than ren conduct is, but this is a mistake since li has to express ren or it is not li at all. The inescapable ambiguity of li ?C an ambiguity that attaches to any language ?C can be critiqued by the Western view that sees something ??essential?? to the ??self,?? and that makes one a ??self?? in and of oneself and not in a way that depends on others. I show that such Western individualism ?C while resting on a fundamentally different way of thinking of being a person and living a good life ?C does not reduce Confucian ritual to being an instrument for social discrimination and subordination. My argument is indebted to twentieth-century philosophy of language in the West that offered the idea that some words are actions.     

Becoming Paladin: The Bodily Ground of World Becoming

In this article I will suggest that futures are made as embodied enactments of individuals and collectives. Values and identities are shaped as postures, gestures, movements, and expressions that are in themselves sites of personal and communal meaning. Bodily organizations are ground for senses of self, and the recognition, and reaction to, the otherness of others. Bodily organizations are shaped in encounters in families and social and cultural institutions that they in turn shape. Kinds of bodies and kinds of bodily enactments are cultivated in different communities. They can be sources of conflict or sources of transindividual and transcultural becoming. In this article I look at some ways bodily meanings are developed in both families and communities. I use the image of Paladin, a fictional television gunslinger character in the 1950s, among others, to describe processes of embodied self-formation that are derived from the media and other extra-familial sources. I look at the polycultural organization of individual psyches in our era, as well as somatically based community conflict and collaboration. I briefly describe how practiced experiences of somatic organization can be used as tools for personal and communal exploration of new possibility.     

人学的自觉与哲学研究范式的转换——读《马克思主义人学与当代中国》丛书

<正>如何评价改革开放以来中国哲学的发展,特别是马克思主义哲学研究的创新,一直是学术界争论的问题。至今还有人认为,在市场经济的大潮中,中国的哲学研究更加"边缘化",没有取得太多的进展。我个人则一直倾向于认为,改革开放以来,中国的哲学研究取得了很大的进展,并且这一发展