When working in one’s study putting together a presentation, doing some accounting, or working on... more When working in one’s study putting together a presentation, doing some accounting, or working on a writing project, it is not solitude. It is just working. Work is recognized as a disciplined routine of privacy to get work done required to complete a task, and, necessarily, to attend to other concurrent responsibilities such as answering the phone, letting the dog out, go to the bathroom, checking a propane fuel truck coming into the yard, while maintaining the focus on the primary intended project. When the private work routine has run its course and terminates, say, to a noon meal, one leaves the work place, sometimes reluctantly and sometimes with relief, and joins one’s spouse or partner in a shared we-relation. Such a range of daily experiences are judged satisfactory, and overall is viewed happily. A routine supports a privacy that, in turn, supports focused reflective thinking cycle in the context of a shared we-relation of a marriage, that if satisfactory, can continue for an extended time. It provides both an experiential base for an outward-directed meaning to one’s life, and subjective inward-directed experiences that is one’s inward unfolding and growth of knowledge and concurrent range of affect, perceptual sensitivities, rationality, imagination, general ability, and ethical openness of one’s subjective breadth and depth being.
There is a gap between the first-person and third-person perspectives resulting in a
tension expe... more There is a gap between the first-person and third-person perspectives resulting in a tension experienced between psychological science, ‘experimental psychology,’ and applied consulting psychological practice, ‘clinical psychology.’ This is an exploration of that ‘gap’ and its resulting tension. First-person perspective is proposed as an important aspect of psychological reality in conjunction with the related perspectival aspects of second- and third-person perspectives. These 3 aspects taken ‘wholistically’ constitute a perspectival diffusion grate through which psychological reality is discerned. The reductionistic naturalism of scientifically apprehended reality is examined for the powerful resistances that impedite utilizing perspective in psychological investigations with consequences for our understanding of psychological reality. The impediments constructed by Quine, Sellars, Dennett, Metzinger, and cognitive psychology are all examined for their robust intractability to first-person perspective or anything that might seem similar. The conclusion suggested is that they all result from a ‘scientific near-sightedness’ of a strict naturalism. The result is that any intentionally dependent objects that are real in the lives of persons are eliminated as not real with no ontological significance. The assertion is that ordinary things such as car keys and employment are real and are ontologically significant.
Keywords: first-person, hard naturalism, liberal naturalism, personhood, third-person
Reviews the book Understanding Emotion in Chinese Culture: Thinking through Psychology by Louise... more Reviews the book Understanding Emotion in Chinese Culture: Thinking through Psychology by Louise Sundararajan, which explores emotional experience in Chinese culture using western psychological literature and by comparing Euro-American experience of emotion. What emerges is a conceptual toolbox for comparing two disparate cultures that are viewed as mirror reversed upside-down universes each to the other. It is argued that rationality is specific to the cultural niche in which it develops and varies from culture to culture. The concept of relational and non-relational thinking as related to Confucian and Daoist traditions is important, and the use of private and public personal space to arrive at social harmony is emphasized. Emotional refinement, it is asserted, emerges from personal creativity potentiated by solitude.
Self Comes to Mind continues a narrative that begins with Descartes Error (1994), continued
with ... more Self Comes to Mind continues a narrative that begins with Descartes Error (1994), continued with The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness (1999), and further developed by Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain (2003). These books are meant to be accessible to the general public, but are also useful to those professionals and researchers, who are not neuroscientists, seeking a review of recent neuroscientific empirical developments and thinking concerning self and consciousness. These books summarizing one person's effort to capture the complex phenomena of self, consciousness and mind totally within the neurological processes of the central nervous system take their place in a large corpus of literature concerning self that is complex and sometimes difficult. “Few ideas are as weighty and as slippery as the notion of self,” to borrow Jerrold Seigel’s apt characterization in the introduction to his account of the western intellectual discussion of its varied and changing ideas of self, The Idea of the Self (Seigel, 2005, p. 3).
Dark Green Religion: Nature Spirituality and the Planetary Future is a passionately written book ... more Dark Green Religion: Nature Spirituality and the Planetary Future is a passionately written book that is ambitious in breadth and intent. The publication of On the Origin of Species in 1859 presented an alternative for understanding the world, human beings, and the place of human beings in that world-indeed, the universe-that contrasted sharply with the
context that the contributions of this book need to be evaluated, requiring the care that matches... more context that the contributions of this book need to be evaluated, requiring the care that matches the cumulative effort and scholarship that were required to construct this book and that reflects the larger program.
Antonio Damasio's routine of writing a book every few years addressing the neuroscience of the br... more Antonio Damasio's routine of writing a book every few years addressing the neuroscience of the brain's construction of mind, consciousness, emotions, and self has the fortunate effect of creating some transparency in neuroscientific research. Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain is the latest presentation in the narrative that began with Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain (Damasio, 1994), further developed in The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness , and was followed by Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain .
The constructive approach in psychology describes several maturing efforts to understand human ex... more The constructive approach in psychology describes several maturing efforts to understand human experience and account for the emergence of self in a way that leads to a more viable science of psychology that transcends its apparent biological constraints. The Sociocultural Turn in Psychology: The Contextual Emergence of Mind and Self is a welledited effort to explore some of the more radical perspectives within this increasingly visible and influential movement.
301 pp. ISBN 978-0-470-97496-4 (hardcover); ISBN 978-0-470-97495-7 (paperback). $104.95, hardcove... more 301 pp. ISBN 978-0-470-97496-4 (hardcover); ISBN 978-0-470-97495-7 (paperback). $104.95, hardcover; $49.95, paperback http://dx.The concept and applications of mindfulness have drawn increasing interest and stimulated corresponding research to provide an empirical basis to incorporate mindfulness into mainstream psychological literature. These efforts were illuminated in a special edition of the journal Emotion (see Williams, 2010). In his commentary on that issue, Richard Davidson (2010) acknowledged the growing body of scientific literature regarding mindfulness and that it is not surprising that a primary goal of emotional regulation emerges in this research. Davidson pointed out that there has been a large amount of research done on meditation but also that only recently has it been recognized as a procedure useful in regulating emotion (Davidson, p. 8).
New York, NY: Pantheon Books, 2010. 367 pp. ISBN 978-0-307-37875-0. $28.95 Reviewed by Richard Du... more New York, NY: Pantheon Books, 2010. 367 pp. ISBN 978-0-307-37875-0. $28.95 Reviewed by Richard Duus Antonio Damasio's routine of writing a book every few years addressing the neuroscience of the brain's construction of mind, consciousness, emotions, and self has the fortunate effect of creating some transparency in neuroscientific research. Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain is the latest presentation in the narrative that began with Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain (Damasio, 1994), further developed in The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness , and was followed by Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain (Damasio, 2003).
Justification, Reasoning, and Ethics: An Inquiry of Othering Processes, 2021
Othering processes are attributed to originate in epistemic violence. One of the goals of the ind... more Othering processes are attributed to originate in epistemic violence. One of the goals of the indigenous psychology project is to correct and to avoid forms of epistemic violence. Investigating bounded indigenous cultural enclaves, some of which are local and in the our own countries, raises a pair of problematic issues: objectively true contrasted to the relatively true and the nature of truth contrasted to justification. The surprising complexity of the objectively true as intertwined with the relatively true of an enclave of an encultured group is explored by Held. I describe a general context for how to think about and compare different cultures, following Sundararajan, using a multidimensional concept of harmony and symmetry. Following Wellmer, truth and justification relations are explored in which reasons and the truth that reasons support
Intersubjective space occurs between two or more members of a community. When those
members join... more Intersubjective space occurs between two or more members of a community. When those members jointly engage a shared project second-person engagement is joined. The purpose of this paper is to present an account of intersubjective space as second-person perspective. A joint engagement of a project by members of a community, that could be a simple conversation, gives rise to a unitary we-relation that is a second-person engagement. The structure of second-person encounter is described by four properties of an interdefinable circle that consists of the authority to confront an other person of one’s community with a claim of a transgression which becomes a practical reason for the person confronted to direct their conduct for which she is unconditionally responsible. Direct first-person experience of a we-relation is the empathic connection of a unitary property of a second-person engagement while reactive attitudes are the emotional context of moral conduct. Second-person engagement is inherently moral that derives from the properties of the interdefinable circle and the social infrastructure of the community an engagement is embedded. Moral autonomy derives from the imperative nature of the principles derived from a social infrastructure. Such a principle can be recognized as a categorical imperative. Conduct is moral and responsible only if autonomous.
Subjectivity is a slippery entity for psychology for which a conceptual framework is,
subsequentl... more Subjectivity is a slippery entity for psychology for which a conceptual framework is, subsequently, undeveloped. Subjectivity processes include evolving experience episodes and its unifying thinking core. This inquiry presented in this paper targeted the structure of experience, its relation to an I, its relation to thinking, and its intersubjective nature. A proposed outline of the processes of subjectivity are presented derived from William James, Hector Neri Castañeda, and Lynne Rudder Baker. The resulting subjectivity structure is empirically developed from linguistic indexical references which are used to map processes with which a person receives experience and intersubjectively shares it. Experience and thinking are shown to be entwined in a stream of experience by an internal reflexivity of first-person perspective which constitutes a person and a corresponding system of I-strands. Experience is tied to a doxastic matrix, mind in an other vocabulary, in a relation that integrates an experience-thinking episode to the accretions of past experiences and beliefs which prepares for continuing thinking and action. It is proposed that a noumenal I outside the world constructs the world from internal experience to counter Cartesian radical doubt which makes the sensory world uncertain and in which only one’s experience is reliably one’s own. Keywords: subjectivity, first-person perspective, indexical referents, doxastic pedestal, I-strands, reflexivity, self-consciousness
Subjectivity is a slippery entity for psychology for which a conceptual framework is, subsequentl... more Subjectivity is a slippery entity for psychology for which a conceptual framework is, subsequently, undeveloped. Subjectivity processes include evolving experience episodes and its unifying thinking core. This inquiry presented in this paper targeted the structure of experience, its relation to an I, its relation to thinking, and its intersubjective nature. A proposed outline of the processes of subjectivity are presented derived from William James, Hector Neri Castañeda, and Lynne Rudder Baker. The resulting subjectivity structure is empirically developed from linguistic indexical references which are used to map processes with which a person receives experience and intersubjectively shares it. Experience and thinking are shown to be entwined in a stream of experience by an internal reflexivity of first-person perspective which constitutes a person and a corresponding system of I-strands. Experience is tied to a doxastic matrix, mind in an other vocabulary, in a relation that integrates an experience-thinking episode to the accretions of past experiences and beliefs which prepares for continuing thinking and action. It is proposed that a noumenal I outside the world constructs the world from internal experience to counter Cartesian radical doubt which makes the sensory world uncertain and in which only one’s experience is reliably one’s own.
This paper pursues the general intention of working toward integrating the disparate literature a... more This paper pursues the general intention of working toward integrating the disparate literature about self and fitting them into psychological thinking so as to clarify what a self is in clinical, applied and scientific practice. The question is whether there is anything that can be called a self that has an ontological status, or whether what we refer to as self is simply a linguistic way of indexing one's location in the various kinds of spaces one can be said to virtually inhabit: the political space that identifies whether we are liberal or conservative; the economic space concerning how we are engaged; the social space specific to any one or a group of people as a friend or enemy; and on. The term self occurs ubiquitously in our thinking and communications as a reference, but also there is more. Beyond linguistic and cognitive referencing there is an adherence of individual identity, the reflective individual act, and there is the self-other relationship. An examination of Donald Winnicott, the reflections of Charles Larmore, and other investigations may offer ways of thinking about and conceptualizing the self that fits with psychological practice and science. It may, then, give a glimpse of a beginning platform in which the variety of ways we use the term self in psychology can be made transparent and evolve a coherent way of thinking about and using self concepts that will sharpen the way we engage in psychological discourse and influence practice. In any event, this is a beginning of an investigation of a way of handling the complexities of self and self-concepts that psychologists may find interesting if not useful.
Abstract
There is a gap between the first-person and third-person perspectives resulting i... more Abstract There is a gap between the first-person and third-person perspectives resulting in a tension experienced between psychological science, ‘experimental psychology’, and applied consulting psychological practice, ‘clinical psychology’. This is an exploration of that ‘gap’ and its resulting tension. First-person perspective is proposed as an important aspect of psychological reality in conjunction with the related perspectival aspects of second- and third-person perspectives. These three aspects taken ‘wholistically’ constitute a perspectival diffusion grate through which psychological reality is discerned. The reductionistic naturalism of scientifically apprehended reality is examined for the powerful resistances that impedite utilizing perspective in psychological investigations with consequences for our understanding of psychological reality. The impediments constructed by Quine, Sellars, Dennett, Metzinger, and cognitive psychology are all examined for their robust intractability to first-person perspective or anything that might seem similar. The conclusion suggested is that they all result from a ‘scientific near-sightedness’ of a strict naturalism. The result is that any intentionally dependent objects that are real in the lives of persons are eliminated as not real with no ontological significance. The assertion is that ordinary things such as car keys and employment are real and are ontologically significant.
When working in one’s study putting together a presentation, doing some accounting, or working on... more When working in one’s study putting together a presentation, doing some accounting, or working on a writing project, it is not solitude. It is just working. Work is recognized as a disciplined routine of privacy to get work done required to complete a task, and, necessarily, to attend to other concurrent responsibilities such as answering the phone, letting the dog out, go to the bathroom, checking a propane fuel truck coming into the yard, while maintaining the focus on the primary intended project. When the private work routine has run its course and terminates, say, to a noon meal, one leaves the work place, sometimes reluctantly and sometimes with relief, and joins one’s spouse or partner in a shared we-relation. Such a range of daily experiences are judged satisfactory, and overall is viewed happily. A routine supports a privacy that, in turn, supports focused reflective thinking cycle in the context of a shared we-relation of a marriage, that if satisfactory, can continue for an extended time. It provides both an experiential base for an outward-directed meaning to one’s life, and subjective inward-directed experiences that is one’s inward unfolding and growth of knowledge and concurrent range of affect, perceptual sensitivities, rationality, imagination, general ability, and ethical openness of one’s subjective breadth and depth being.
There is a gap between the first-person and third-person perspectives resulting in a
tension expe... more There is a gap between the first-person and third-person perspectives resulting in a tension experienced between psychological science, ‘experimental psychology,’ and applied consulting psychological practice, ‘clinical psychology.’ This is an exploration of that ‘gap’ and its resulting tension. First-person perspective is proposed as an important aspect of psychological reality in conjunction with the related perspectival aspects of second- and third-person perspectives. These 3 aspects taken ‘wholistically’ constitute a perspectival diffusion grate through which psychological reality is discerned. The reductionistic naturalism of scientifically apprehended reality is examined for the powerful resistances that impedite utilizing perspective in psychological investigations with consequences for our understanding of psychological reality. The impediments constructed by Quine, Sellars, Dennett, Metzinger, and cognitive psychology are all examined for their robust intractability to first-person perspective or anything that might seem similar. The conclusion suggested is that they all result from a ‘scientific near-sightedness’ of a strict naturalism. The result is that any intentionally dependent objects that are real in the lives of persons are eliminated as not real with no ontological significance. The assertion is that ordinary things such as car keys and employment are real and are ontologically significant.
Keywords: first-person, hard naturalism, liberal naturalism, personhood, third-person
Reviews the book Understanding Emotion in Chinese Culture: Thinking through Psychology by Louise... more Reviews the book Understanding Emotion in Chinese Culture: Thinking through Psychology by Louise Sundararajan, which explores emotional experience in Chinese culture using western psychological literature and by comparing Euro-American experience of emotion. What emerges is a conceptual toolbox for comparing two disparate cultures that are viewed as mirror reversed upside-down universes each to the other. It is argued that rationality is specific to the cultural niche in which it develops and varies from culture to culture. The concept of relational and non-relational thinking as related to Confucian and Daoist traditions is important, and the use of private and public personal space to arrive at social harmony is emphasized. Emotional refinement, it is asserted, emerges from personal creativity potentiated by solitude.
Self Comes to Mind continues a narrative that begins with Descartes Error (1994), continued
with ... more Self Comes to Mind continues a narrative that begins with Descartes Error (1994), continued with The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness (1999), and further developed by Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain (2003). These books are meant to be accessible to the general public, but are also useful to those professionals and researchers, who are not neuroscientists, seeking a review of recent neuroscientific empirical developments and thinking concerning self and consciousness. These books summarizing one person's effort to capture the complex phenomena of self, consciousness and mind totally within the neurological processes of the central nervous system take their place in a large corpus of literature concerning self that is complex and sometimes difficult. “Few ideas are as weighty and as slippery as the notion of self,” to borrow Jerrold Seigel’s apt characterization in the introduction to his account of the western intellectual discussion of its varied and changing ideas of self, The Idea of the Self (Seigel, 2005, p. 3).
Dark Green Religion: Nature Spirituality and the Planetary Future is a passionately written book ... more Dark Green Religion: Nature Spirituality and the Planetary Future is a passionately written book that is ambitious in breadth and intent. The publication of On the Origin of Species in 1859 presented an alternative for understanding the world, human beings, and the place of human beings in that world-indeed, the universe-that contrasted sharply with the
context that the contributions of this book need to be evaluated, requiring the care that matches... more context that the contributions of this book need to be evaluated, requiring the care that matches the cumulative effort and scholarship that were required to construct this book and that reflects the larger program.
Antonio Damasio's routine of writing a book every few years addressing the neuroscience of the br... more Antonio Damasio's routine of writing a book every few years addressing the neuroscience of the brain's construction of mind, consciousness, emotions, and self has the fortunate effect of creating some transparency in neuroscientific research. Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain is the latest presentation in the narrative that began with Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain (Damasio, 1994), further developed in The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness , and was followed by Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain .
The constructive approach in psychology describes several maturing efforts to understand human ex... more The constructive approach in psychology describes several maturing efforts to understand human experience and account for the emergence of self in a way that leads to a more viable science of psychology that transcends its apparent biological constraints. The Sociocultural Turn in Psychology: The Contextual Emergence of Mind and Self is a welledited effort to explore some of the more radical perspectives within this increasingly visible and influential movement.
301 pp. ISBN 978-0-470-97496-4 (hardcover); ISBN 978-0-470-97495-7 (paperback). $104.95, hardcove... more 301 pp. ISBN 978-0-470-97496-4 (hardcover); ISBN 978-0-470-97495-7 (paperback). $104.95, hardcover; $49.95, paperback http://dx.The concept and applications of mindfulness have drawn increasing interest and stimulated corresponding research to provide an empirical basis to incorporate mindfulness into mainstream psychological literature. These efforts were illuminated in a special edition of the journal Emotion (see Williams, 2010). In his commentary on that issue, Richard Davidson (2010) acknowledged the growing body of scientific literature regarding mindfulness and that it is not surprising that a primary goal of emotional regulation emerges in this research. Davidson pointed out that there has been a large amount of research done on meditation but also that only recently has it been recognized as a procedure useful in regulating emotion (Davidson, p. 8).
New York, NY: Pantheon Books, 2010. 367 pp. ISBN 978-0-307-37875-0. $28.95 Reviewed by Richard Du... more New York, NY: Pantheon Books, 2010. 367 pp. ISBN 978-0-307-37875-0. $28.95 Reviewed by Richard Duus Antonio Damasio's routine of writing a book every few years addressing the neuroscience of the brain's construction of mind, consciousness, emotions, and self has the fortunate effect of creating some transparency in neuroscientific research. Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain is the latest presentation in the narrative that began with Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain (Damasio, 1994), further developed in The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness , and was followed by Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain (Damasio, 2003).
Justification, Reasoning, and Ethics: An Inquiry of Othering Processes, 2021
Othering processes are attributed to originate in epistemic violence. One of the goals of the ind... more Othering processes are attributed to originate in epistemic violence. One of the goals of the indigenous psychology project is to correct and to avoid forms of epistemic violence. Investigating bounded indigenous cultural enclaves, some of which are local and in the our own countries, raises a pair of problematic issues: objectively true contrasted to the relatively true and the nature of truth contrasted to justification. The surprising complexity of the objectively true as intertwined with the relatively true of an enclave of an encultured group is explored by Held. I describe a general context for how to think about and compare different cultures, following Sundararajan, using a multidimensional concept of harmony and symmetry. Following Wellmer, truth and justification relations are explored in which reasons and the truth that reasons support
Intersubjective space occurs between two or more members of a community. When those
members join... more Intersubjective space occurs between two or more members of a community. When those members jointly engage a shared project second-person engagement is joined. The purpose of this paper is to present an account of intersubjective space as second-person perspective. A joint engagement of a project by members of a community, that could be a simple conversation, gives rise to a unitary we-relation that is a second-person engagement. The structure of second-person encounter is described by four properties of an interdefinable circle that consists of the authority to confront an other person of one’s community with a claim of a transgression which becomes a practical reason for the person confronted to direct their conduct for which she is unconditionally responsible. Direct first-person experience of a we-relation is the empathic connection of a unitary property of a second-person engagement while reactive attitudes are the emotional context of moral conduct. Second-person engagement is inherently moral that derives from the properties of the interdefinable circle and the social infrastructure of the community an engagement is embedded. Moral autonomy derives from the imperative nature of the principles derived from a social infrastructure. Such a principle can be recognized as a categorical imperative. Conduct is moral and responsible only if autonomous.
Subjectivity is a slippery entity for psychology for which a conceptual framework is,
subsequentl... more Subjectivity is a slippery entity for psychology for which a conceptual framework is, subsequently, undeveloped. Subjectivity processes include evolving experience episodes and its unifying thinking core. This inquiry presented in this paper targeted the structure of experience, its relation to an I, its relation to thinking, and its intersubjective nature. A proposed outline of the processes of subjectivity are presented derived from William James, Hector Neri Castañeda, and Lynne Rudder Baker. The resulting subjectivity structure is empirically developed from linguistic indexical references which are used to map processes with which a person receives experience and intersubjectively shares it. Experience and thinking are shown to be entwined in a stream of experience by an internal reflexivity of first-person perspective which constitutes a person and a corresponding system of I-strands. Experience is tied to a doxastic matrix, mind in an other vocabulary, in a relation that integrates an experience-thinking episode to the accretions of past experiences and beliefs which prepares for continuing thinking and action. It is proposed that a noumenal I outside the world constructs the world from internal experience to counter Cartesian radical doubt which makes the sensory world uncertain and in which only one’s experience is reliably one’s own. Keywords: subjectivity, first-person perspective, indexical referents, doxastic pedestal, I-strands, reflexivity, self-consciousness
Subjectivity is a slippery entity for psychology for which a conceptual framework is, subsequentl... more Subjectivity is a slippery entity for psychology for which a conceptual framework is, subsequently, undeveloped. Subjectivity processes include evolving experience episodes and its unifying thinking core. This inquiry presented in this paper targeted the structure of experience, its relation to an I, its relation to thinking, and its intersubjective nature. A proposed outline of the processes of subjectivity are presented derived from William James, Hector Neri Castañeda, and Lynne Rudder Baker. The resulting subjectivity structure is empirically developed from linguistic indexical references which are used to map processes with which a person receives experience and intersubjectively shares it. Experience and thinking are shown to be entwined in a stream of experience by an internal reflexivity of first-person perspective which constitutes a person and a corresponding system of I-strands. Experience is tied to a doxastic matrix, mind in an other vocabulary, in a relation that integrates an experience-thinking episode to the accretions of past experiences and beliefs which prepares for continuing thinking and action. It is proposed that a noumenal I outside the world constructs the world from internal experience to counter Cartesian radical doubt which makes the sensory world uncertain and in which only one’s experience is reliably one’s own.
This paper pursues the general intention of working toward integrating the disparate literature a... more This paper pursues the general intention of working toward integrating the disparate literature about self and fitting them into psychological thinking so as to clarify what a self is in clinical, applied and scientific practice. The question is whether there is anything that can be called a self that has an ontological status, or whether what we refer to as self is simply a linguistic way of indexing one's location in the various kinds of spaces one can be said to virtually inhabit: the political space that identifies whether we are liberal or conservative; the economic space concerning how we are engaged; the social space specific to any one or a group of people as a friend or enemy; and on. The term self occurs ubiquitously in our thinking and communications as a reference, but also there is more. Beyond linguistic and cognitive referencing there is an adherence of individual identity, the reflective individual act, and there is the self-other relationship. An examination of Donald Winnicott, the reflections of Charles Larmore, and other investigations may offer ways of thinking about and conceptualizing the self that fits with psychological practice and science. It may, then, give a glimpse of a beginning platform in which the variety of ways we use the term self in psychology can be made transparent and evolve a coherent way of thinking about and using self concepts that will sharpen the way we engage in psychological discourse and influence practice. In any event, this is a beginning of an investigation of a way of handling the complexities of self and self-concepts that psychologists may find interesting if not useful.
Abstract
There is a gap between the first-person and third-person perspectives resulting i... more Abstract There is a gap between the first-person and third-person perspectives resulting in a tension experienced between psychological science, ‘experimental psychology’, and applied consulting psychological practice, ‘clinical psychology’. This is an exploration of that ‘gap’ and its resulting tension. First-person perspective is proposed as an important aspect of psychological reality in conjunction with the related perspectival aspects of second- and third-person perspectives. These three aspects taken ‘wholistically’ constitute a perspectival diffusion grate through which psychological reality is discerned. The reductionistic naturalism of scientifically apprehended reality is examined for the powerful resistances that impedite utilizing perspective in psychological investigations with consequences for our understanding of psychological reality. The impediments constructed by Quine, Sellars, Dennett, Metzinger, and cognitive psychology are all examined for their robust intractability to first-person perspective or anything that might seem similar. The conclusion suggested is that they all result from a ‘scientific near-sightedness’ of a strict naturalism. The result is that any intentionally dependent objects that are real in the lives of persons are eliminated as not real with no ontological significance. The assertion is that ordinary things such as car keys and employment are real and are ontologically significant.
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Papers by Richard Duus
A routine supports a privacy that, in turn, supports focused reflective thinking cycle in the context of a shared we-relation of a marriage, that if satisfactory, can continue for an extended time. It provides both an experiential base for an outward-directed meaning to one’s life, and subjective inward-directed experiences that is one’s inward unfolding and growth of knowledge and concurrent range of affect, perceptual sensitivities, rationality, imagination, general ability, and ethical openness of one’s subjective breadth and depth being.
eBook 74,89 € | £63.99 | $84.99 74,89 € (D) | 74,89 € (A) | CHF [2] 85,00 Available from your library or springer.com/shop MyCopy [3]
Duus, R. (2020). Constituting Selves: Psychology’s Pragmatic Horizon. Switzerland AG: Springer Nature. doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/978–3–030–39017–4
tension experienced between psychological science, ‘experimental psychology,’
and applied consulting psychological practice, ‘clinical psychology.’ This is an
exploration of that ‘gap’ and its resulting tension. First-person perspective is
proposed as an important aspect of psychological reality in conjunction with the
related perspectival aspects of second- and third-person perspectives. These 3
aspects taken ‘wholistically’ constitute a perspectival diffusion grate through which
psychological reality is discerned. The reductionistic naturalism of scientifically
apprehended reality is examined for the powerful resistances that impedite utilizing
perspective in psychological investigations with consequences for our understanding
of psychological reality. The impediments constructed by Quine, Sellars,
Dennett, Metzinger, and cognitive psychology are all examined for their robust
intractability to first-person perspective or anything that might seem similar. The
conclusion suggested is that they all result from a ‘scientific near-sightedness’ of a
strict naturalism. The result is that any intentionally dependent objects that are real
in the lives of persons are eliminated as not real with no ontological significance.
The assertion is that ordinary things such as car keys and employment are real and
are ontologically significant.
Keywords: first-person, hard naturalism, liberal naturalism, personhood, third-person
with The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness (1999), and
further developed by Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain (2003). These books
are meant to be accessible to the general public, but are also useful to those professionals and
researchers, who are not neuroscientists, seeking a review of recent neuroscientific empirical
developments and thinking concerning self and consciousness. These books summarizing one person's
effort to capture the complex phenomena of self, consciousness and mind totally within the
neurological processes of the central nervous system take their place in a large corpus of literature
concerning self that is complex and sometimes difficult. “Few ideas are as weighty and as slippery as
the notion of self,” to borrow Jerrold Seigel’s apt characterization in the introduction to his account of
the western intellectual discussion of its varied and changing ideas of self, The Idea of the Self (Seigel,
2005, p. 3).
Drafts by Richard Duus
members jointly engage a shared project second-person engagement is joined. The purpose of this
paper is to present an account of intersubjective space as second-person perspective. A joint
engagement of a project by members of a community, that could be a simple conversation, gives rise
to a unitary we-relation that is a second-person engagement. The structure of second-person
encounter is described by four properties of an interdefinable circle that consists of the
authority to confront an other person of one’s community with a claim of a transgression which
becomes a practical reason for the person confronted to direct their conduct for which she is
unconditionally responsible. Direct first-person experience of a we-relation is the empathic
connection of a unitary property of a second-person engagement while reactive attitudes are the
emotional context of moral conduct. Second-person engagement is inherently moral that derives from
the properties of the interdefinable circle and the social infrastructure of the community an
engagement is embedded. Moral autonomy derives from the imperative nature of the principles
derived from a social infrastructure. Such a principle can be recognized as a categorical
imperative. Conduct is moral and responsible only if autonomous.
Keywords: intersubjectivity, we-experience, morality, second-person stand, practical
reasons, autonomy, reactive attitudes
subsequently, undeveloped. Subjectivity processes include evolving experience episodes and its
unifying thinking core. This inquiry presented in this paper targeted the structure of experience,
its relation to an I, its relation to thinking, and its intersubjective nature. A proposed outline of
the processes of subjectivity are presented derived from William James, Hector Neri Castañeda,
and Lynne Rudder Baker. The resulting subjectivity structure is empirically developed from
linguistic indexical references which are used to map processes with which a person receives
experience and intersubjectively shares it. Experience and thinking are shown to be entwined in
a stream of experience by an internal reflexivity of first-person perspective which constitutes a
person and a corresponding system of I-strands. Experience is tied to a doxastic matrix, mind in
an other vocabulary, in a relation that integrates an experience-thinking episode to the accretions
of past experiences and beliefs which prepares for continuing thinking and action. It is proposed
that a noumenal I outside the world constructs the world from internal experience to counter
Cartesian radical doubt which makes the sensory world uncertain and in which only one’s
experience is reliably one’s own.
Keywords: subjectivity, first-person perspective, indexical referents, doxastic pedestal, I-strands,
reflexivity, self-consciousness
Keywords: subjectivity, first-person perspective, indexical referents, doxastic pedestal, I-strands,
There is a gap between the first-person and third-person perspectives resulting in a tension experienced between psychological science, ‘experimental psychology’, and applied consulting psychological practice, ‘clinical psychology’. This is an exploration of that ‘gap’ and its resulting tension. First-person perspective is proposed as an important aspect of psychological reality in conjunction with the related perspectival aspects of second- and third-person perspectives. These three aspects taken ‘wholistically’ constitute a perspectival diffusion grate through which psychological reality is discerned. The reductionistic naturalism of scientifically apprehended reality is examined for the powerful resistances that impedite utilizing perspective in psychological investigations with consequences for our understanding of psychological reality. The impediments constructed by Quine, Sellars, Dennett, Metzinger, and cognitive psychology are all examined for their robust intractability to first-person perspective or anything that might seem similar. The conclusion suggested is that they all result from a ‘scientific near-sightedness’ of a strict naturalism. The result is that any intentionally dependent objects that are real in the lives of persons are eliminated as not real with no ontological significance. The assertion is that ordinary things such as car keys and employment are real and are ontologically significant.
A routine supports a privacy that, in turn, supports focused reflective thinking cycle in the context of a shared we-relation of a marriage, that if satisfactory, can continue for an extended time. It provides both an experiential base for an outward-directed meaning to one’s life, and subjective inward-directed experiences that is one’s inward unfolding and growth of knowledge and concurrent range of affect, perceptual sensitivities, rationality, imagination, general ability, and ethical openness of one’s subjective breadth and depth being.
eBook 74,89 € | £63.99 | $84.99 74,89 € (D) | 74,89 € (A) | CHF [2] 85,00 Available from your library or springer.com/shop MyCopy [3]
Duus, R. (2020). Constituting Selves: Psychology’s Pragmatic Horizon. Switzerland AG: Springer Nature. doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/978–3–030–39017–4
tension experienced between psychological science, ‘experimental psychology,’
and applied consulting psychological practice, ‘clinical psychology.’ This is an
exploration of that ‘gap’ and its resulting tension. First-person perspective is
proposed as an important aspect of psychological reality in conjunction with the
related perspectival aspects of second- and third-person perspectives. These 3
aspects taken ‘wholistically’ constitute a perspectival diffusion grate through which
psychological reality is discerned. The reductionistic naturalism of scientifically
apprehended reality is examined for the powerful resistances that impedite utilizing
perspective in psychological investigations with consequences for our understanding
of psychological reality. The impediments constructed by Quine, Sellars,
Dennett, Metzinger, and cognitive psychology are all examined for their robust
intractability to first-person perspective or anything that might seem similar. The
conclusion suggested is that they all result from a ‘scientific near-sightedness’ of a
strict naturalism. The result is that any intentionally dependent objects that are real
in the lives of persons are eliminated as not real with no ontological significance.
The assertion is that ordinary things such as car keys and employment are real and
are ontologically significant.
Keywords: first-person, hard naturalism, liberal naturalism, personhood, third-person
with The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness (1999), and
further developed by Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain (2003). These books
are meant to be accessible to the general public, but are also useful to those professionals and
researchers, who are not neuroscientists, seeking a review of recent neuroscientific empirical
developments and thinking concerning self and consciousness. These books summarizing one person's
effort to capture the complex phenomena of self, consciousness and mind totally within the
neurological processes of the central nervous system take their place in a large corpus of literature
concerning self that is complex and sometimes difficult. “Few ideas are as weighty and as slippery as
the notion of self,” to borrow Jerrold Seigel’s apt characterization in the introduction to his account of
the western intellectual discussion of its varied and changing ideas of self, The Idea of the Self (Seigel,
2005, p. 3).
members jointly engage a shared project second-person engagement is joined. The purpose of this
paper is to present an account of intersubjective space as second-person perspective. A joint
engagement of a project by members of a community, that could be a simple conversation, gives rise
to a unitary we-relation that is a second-person engagement. The structure of second-person
encounter is described by four properties of an interdefinable circle that consists of the
authority to confront an other person of one’s community with a claim of a transgression which
becomes a practical reason for the person confronted to direct their conduct for which she is
unconditionally responsible. Direct first-person experience of a we-relation is the empathic
connection of a unitary property of a second-person engagement while reactive attitudes are the
emotional context of moral conduct. Second-person engagement is inherently moral that derives from
the properties of the interdefinable circle and the social infrastructure of the community an
engagement is embedded. Moral autonomy derives from the imperative nature of the principles
derived from a social infrastructure. Such a principle can be recognized as a categorical
imperative. Conduct is moral and responsible only if autonomous.
Keywords: intersubjectivity, we-experience, morality, second-person stand, practical
reasons, autonomy, reactive attitudes
subsequently, undeveloped. Subjectivity processes include evolving experience episodes and its
unifying thinking core. This inquiry presented in this paper targeted the structure of experience,
its relation to an I, its relation to thinking, and its intersubjective nature. A proposed outline of
the processes of subjectivity are presented derived from William James, Hector Neri Castañeda,
and Lynne Rudder Baker. The resulting subjectivity structure is empirically developed from
linguistic indexical references which are used to map processes with which a person receives
experience and intersubjectively shares it. Experience and thinking are shown to be entwined in
a stream of experience by an internal reflexivity of first-person perspective which constitutes a
person and a corresponding system of I-strands. Experience is tied to a doxastic matrix, mind in
an other vocabulary, in a relation that integrates an experience-thinking episode to the accretions
of past experiences and beliefs which prepares for continuing thinking and action. It is proposed
that a noumenal I outside the world constructs the world from internal experience to counter
Cartesian radical doubt which makes the sensory world uncertain and in which only one’s
experience is reliably one’s own.
Keywords: subjectivity, first-person perspective, indexical referents, doxastic pedestal, I-strands,
reflexivity, self-consciousness
Keywords: subjectivity, first-person perspective, indexical referents, doxastic pedestal, I-strands,
There is a gap between the first-person and third-person perspectives resulting in a tension experienced between psychological science, ‘experimental psychology’, and applied consulting psychological practice, ‘clinical psychology’. This is an exploration of that ‘gap’ and its resulting tension. First-person perspective is proposed as an important aspect of psychological reality in conjunction with the related perspectival aspects of second- and third-person perspectives. These three aspects taken ‘wholistically’ constitute a perspectival diffusion grate through which psychological reality is discerned. The reductionistic naturalism of scientifically apprehended reality is examined for the powerful resistances that impedite utilizing perspective in psychological investigations with consequences for our understanding of psychological reality. The impediments constructed by Quine, Sellars, Dennett, Metzinger, and cognitive psychology are all examined for their robust intractability to first-person perspective or anything that might seem similar. The conclusion suggested is that they all result from a ‘scientific near-sightedness’ of a strict naturalism. The result is that any intentionally dependent objects that are real in the lives of persons are eliminated as not real with no ontological significance. The assertion is that ordinary things such as car keys and employment are real and are ontologically significant.