Know thyself

In this: publication
By this: publisher
In this Subject: Psychology ,&nbsp; Political Science
By this author: Wilkes, Kathleen V.

Author: Wilkes, Kathleen V.

Source: Journal of Consciousness Studies, Volume 5, Number 2, 1998 , pp. 153-165(13)

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Abstract:

The burden of this article is that although the idea of `the self'which Galen Strawson decribes in his target article is initially very attractive, it eventually doesn't work. There is a lot of competition for a `pole position'notion -- `human', `person', psuche, `soul', even `sake'-- and the idea of `self'does not seem to deserve the prize. What Strawson wants to do with the notion of a `self'can be done equally well, and more economically, by the first-person pronoun. A question raised repeatedly is: `What is a self worth wanting?'Perhaps the greatest area of disagreement with Strawson's article is with his idea that `the self'needs to have little or nothing to do with time-related plans and emotions: guilt and remorse; pride; hope and expectation; career choices . . . even such apparently mundane things as pension-plans -- in fact, any long-term forward- or backward-looking psychological phenomena. The question of realism (about `the self') is pressed.

Document Type: Research article

Affiliations: 1: St Hilda's College, Oxford OX4 1DY, U.K.

Publication date: 1998-01-01