Susan Blackmore – “The Self”

Slides:



Advertisements
Similar presentations
What Is the Unity of Consciousness? Tim Bayne & David Chalmers.
Advertisements

LECTURE 6 COGNITIVE THEORIES OF CONSCIOUSNESS
J. Blackmon. When a machine causes harm, why don’t we think it deserves punishment?  When a human kills someone, it’s common for people to think the.
Metaphysics Part II. Thought Experiment: Physical & Mental Properties A1. 2 more objects: quarters, books, grass… A2. 2 more physical descriptors: green,
Section III THE SELF Egos, Bundles and Multiple Selves Theories of Self Agency and Free Will.
Section 4.3 You Can’t Step into the Same River Twice Self as Process.
Philosophy 1010 Class 7/17/13 Title:Introduction to Philosophy Instructor:Paul Dickey Tonight: Finish.
Sigmund Freud On Dreams…. Who is Sigmund Freud?  Sigmund Freud was born in He began his study as a doctor and then specialized in psychiatry. In.
Summer 2011 Monday, 07/25. Recap on Dreyfus Presents a phenomenological argument against the idea that intelligence consists in manipulating symbols according.
Consciousness and The Self Joe Lau Philosophy HKU.
Introduction to Cognitive Science Philosophy Nov 2005 :: Lecture #1 :: Joe Lau :: Philosophy HKU.
Consciousness What is consciousness? Where does consciousness happen? How does consciousness happen?
CONSCIOUSNESS  Awareness of the environment  Awareness of internal mental events/states.
Free Will Theories  Agency Theory: we define ourselves as agents through free choices: this we experience (and is what our theory should explain)  Person.
PARFIT WHO THINKS THAT THERE IS NO SELF?. Derek Parfit (born 1942)
Sleep Dreams Hypnosis. SLEEP DISORDERS INSOMNIA 1 IN 10 ADULTS RECURRING PROBLEMS IN FALLING OR STAYING ASLEEP EXERCISE, AVOID CAFFEINE, AND HAVE REGULATED.
Descartes I am essentially rational, only accidentally an animal ‘essentially’ = logically necessarily ‘essentially’ = logically necessarily Strictly speaking,
1 The “observing self” as a necessary condition for conscious experience. --- or, why complicate things with “self” when “consciousness” is tough enough?
Religion and the philosophy of religion. “A religion involves a system of beliefs and practices primarily centered around a transcendent Reality, either.
DREAMS, DREAMS, DREAMS OH WHAT D0 THEY MEAN??? DEPENDS ON WHO YOU ASK…. DREAM THEORIES.
Persons, Minds and Brains
Chapter 11: Who Am I?. Introduction What is the nature of human beings and what constitutes their being? What is the nature of human beings and what constitutes.
Intro to Consciousness BSCS 2013 Fall (November 25-29, PHIL305) George Kampis, Professor Eötvös University, Budapest.
Mind-Body Dualism. The Mind-Body Problem The problem of explaining how a mind is connected to and interacts with a body whose mind it is, or the problem.
The Distributed Nature of Self  Questions to keep in mind: - What causes a sense of self? - Does the left hemisphere ‘interpreter’ bring together a unified.
Husserlian Phenomenology Dr. James A. Snyder Postmodern Philosophy.
Personal identity. An Ego Theorist claims that, if we ask what unifies someone’s consciousness at any time – what makes it true, for example, that.
Personal Identity Mind/Soul Brain Body Memory Story.
SELF TERMS Terms from the Chapter “Men go abroad to wonder at the height of mountains, at the huge wave of the sea, at the long courses of the rivers,
Philosophy of Mind: Theories of self / personal identity: REVISION Body & Soul - what makes you you?
Psychology: Chapter 1, Section 1
Materialism *Mind-brain identity *Reductionism *‘Soft materialism’
Dreams. What’s the Meaning Of Dreams? Depends Who You Ask ! Psychoanalytic Theorists like Freud will argue that dreams represent the royal road to the.
Section 4.3 You Can’t Step into the Same River Twice Self as Process McGraw-Hill © 2013 McGraw-Hill Companies. All Rights Reserved.
The Problem of Personal Identity.  There are 4 responses to this question  Illusion theory  Body theory  Soul theory  Memory theory.
Dissociative, Schizophrenia, and Personality Disorders Module 31.
What is Psychology? Pages What is Psychology? Give me your own personal definition of Psychology.
The Sociological Imagination
Philosophy: Questions and Theories Chapter 10
Philosophy of Mind Lecture II: Mind&behavior. Behaviorism
Some People Are Left-Brained, Others Are Right-Brained
Dreams.
The Sociological Imagination
Flashcards for Major Concepts
Need for Affiliation
DREAMS… WHAT DO THEY MEAN???
Freud’s Theory of Personality
Introduction to Philosophy Lecture 14 Minds and Bodies #3 (Jackson)
Teaching and Educational Psychology
Epistemology Summary.
mind and consciousness
Philosophy 1010 Title: Introduction to Philosophy
Dreams.
Recap Questions What is interactionism?
Section 5 at a Glance Personality Disorders
Dissociative and Somatoform Disorders
Global Cultures.
Think, pair, Share Is this the same person?.
The argument against the idea of the self
The argument against the idea of the self
Made up of densely packed neurons we call “gray matter”
Theories and principles associated with motivation
Thinking About Psychology: The Science of Mind and Behavior
Interactive lecture Jolanta Babiak Winter semester 2017/2018
Personal Identity.
UNIT 5 – STATES OF CONSCIOUSNESS
The Hume of the Treatise?
Dissociative Disorders
Biological Psychology Approach
Left brain/right brain thinking
Presentation transcript:

Susan Blackmore – “The Self” Lecture 12 – The Self Susan Blackmore – “The Self”

What it the Self? Owner Someone who is acting, having conscious experiences, making decisions, etc. Science does not need an inner self. Brains are “causally closed”—”we can see how one neuron affects another, how groups of neurons form and dissipate, and how one state leads to another, and there is no need for any further intervention” (66).

Ego versus Bundle Theories Ego Theories: We are single, continuing selves. Scientific Theories: neural correlates of the self or enduring structures in the brain. Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism. Bundle Theorists: There are no single, continuing selves. There are only ‘bundles’ of experiences or sensations. David Hume Buddhism

Split Brains https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZM LzP1VCANo What implications about the self should we draw from these experiments? Sperry thought that patients have two conscious entities. Gazzaniga argued that only the left hemisphere, which uses language and organizes belief, houses the self. Or maybe there is no self, just experiences.

Hypnosis and Dissociation Does hypnosis involve a special state of consciousness or does it divide consciousness? Do cases of multiple personality, now known as “dissociative identity disorder,” provide evidence for there not being a single unified self?

Theories of Self 1. “Thought is itself the thinker” William James – The Principles of Psychology “He argues that our own thoughts have a sort of warmth and intimacy about them which he attempts to explain in this way: at any time there may be a special kind of Thought which rejects some of the contents of the stream of consciousness but appropriates others, pulling them together and calling them ‘mine’. The next moment another such Thought comes along, taking over the previous ones and binding them to itself, creating a sense of unity” (79).

Theories of Self 2. Self = particular groups of interacting neurons. For example, global workspace theory. “A hierarchy of contexts determines what gets into the spotlight in the theatre of consciousness. Dominant among these is the self-system which allows information to be reportable and usable. Multiple personality can be explained by different context hierarchies competing for access to the global workspace and to memory and the senses” (80). “Brain processes are said to be experienced by a self because they are displayed or made available to another brain process” (80). Blackmore suggests these theories leave conscious experiences unexplained.

Theories of Self 3. Self as Narrative Gravity Daniel Dennett Self is like a center of gravity in that it is a useful abstraction. Self is a center of narrative gravity. We tell stories about a self and we come to believe there is a single unified inner self, but really this is just a useful fiction.