Categories and Embodied Objects

Abstract

The immediate purpose of this paper is to develop the idea that the subjective self is a natural category. Its characteristics, such as reflexivity and recursiveness, provide for a mix of semiotic and logical depictions of subjectivity and the self. This conception of a subjective self dramatically affects the psychology of the self and the observer. Not only does a subjective self fit into current-day conceptions of autopoeisis and natural phenomenology, but also the features of the natural category force a re-evaluation of how William James's natural psychology limits the psychologist-observer to a focus on the objective self. The broad aim of the paper is to place within a natural psychology the self as subjective and as object, and the psychologist as self and as observer.