Notion Of Self Research Articles

Autonomy and Vulnerability: Elements of a Phenomenology of Reflection and Reason

AbstractLarge parts of the Western philosophical tradition, powerful in Kant’s transcendental conception, have reserved the concept of autonomy for rational subjects that think and act on reasons. While this captures an essential aspect of autonomy, the dimensions of embodiment and vulnerability remain unreflected or are subsumed under the heteronomous conditions of the human subject. If the conception of autonomy, though, doesn’t start with the concept of a rational subject but from the perspective of living beings, autonomy and vulnerability seem intrinsically connected, as Jonas’ (1973; 1997) concept of “needful freedom” suggests. This article argues for a deep connection between human autonomy and vulnerability. Methodologically, the argument follows the life-mind-continuity thesis (Thompson, 2007) and lays out the embodied account of autonomy that enactivism offers. Two crucial moments are: 1. The organism can distance itself from the environment. 2. This enables it to establish its own norms. However, the norms of bodily self-regulation also render the organism vulnerable. This conception, though, needs specification for capturing human autonomy. As enactivists like E. Thompson assume, phenomenology is essential to theorizing about human autonomy. I will develop a phenomenological concept of autonomy starting from three notions of selfhood (Zahavi, 2008) and arguing for a central role of the reflective self for human autonomy. Reflection grounds both moments of autonomy: Self-distancing and the possibility of taking a stance by relying on reasons. In the phenomenological sense, autonomy is thus the ability to respond to reasons for which reflection is necessary. However, this ability is bound to a particular form of vulnerability that manifests in some psychopathologies. This vulnerability will be shown in conclusion by Blankenburg’s reflections on the role of autonomy in mental diseases.

USING CREATIVE NARRATIVES AND VISIONS OF LATER LIFE TO QUEER GERONTOLOGICAL SCHOLARSHIP

Abstract Queering gerontology calls for more diverse and inclusive visions of old age, including those that resist normative ways of being. LGBTQ people have particular contributions to make to this project given their experiences of non-normative life events, sequences, and desires. This study presents a secondary qualitative data analysis, drawing from two existing datasets (13 life reviews with older bisexual-identified women and 40 creative narratives published in Bi Women Quarterly). The analysis examines queer and non-normative visions and experiences of aging from the perspective of queer and trans individuals across the life course. The findings are examined through the lens of three principles of queer gerontology, illustrating the potential of queer and creative visions of aging to reimagine the potential of gerontological scholarship. Notably, the creation and dissemination of queer narratives of aging and later life deepen visibility and awareness of diverse and marginalized experiences while also offering new and creative ways of imagining later life for all populations. The examined narratives engage critical perspectives, often dispelling normative ways of being through camping up, resisting, or queering notions of self, kinship, life and death, and the narrative form. Narratives also illustrate the engagement of multiple epistemologies, creating potential for more creative modes of inquiry, including creative writing and imagery, in envisioning later lives. These findings indicate the potential of revisiting existing data through the lens of queer gerontology principles to illuminate the possible forms queer gerontological scholarship could take, both empirical and conceptual.

Buddhist Tāmāṅs Funerals: Nirvana as an Ultimate Goal of Rituals

The purpose of this research article is to describe Buddhist way of funeral rituals of Tāmāṅs, who are the biggest Buddhist indigenous ethnic people of Nepal. They believe cycles of life, reincarnation, good deeds and enlightenment. The rituals that take place around death and funerals are to help the deceased to die in peaceful mind and get nirvana i.e. salvation. They believe in reincarnation and the freeing of the soul. To them, the death is a natural part of the cycle of life and how a person acts throughout their life will determine their future lives after death through reincarnation. Therefore, the death should occur in a calm and peaceful environment with family in attendance. The ultimate goal is to liberate from life and rebirth so they can reach the state of nirvana. To achieve this, they must get rid themselves of worldly desires and all notions of self, ultimately attaining total enlightenment. In the research conducted area, the dead body is found to have been either cremated or buried in ridge. The Buddhist monks i.e. Lamas lead the ceremony. The mourning periods are usually 3rd, 7th, 21st or 49th day after the death of a person. The mourners wear white strips of cloth during the mourning period.

Body of Mine, Yours, and Everyone in Between: Communicating Gender Dysphoria Through Immersive Storytelling

<div><span>This article explores the potential of new, immersive realities to convey the complex experiences of gender dysphoria and body dissatisfaction, using the innovative and multi-award-winning experience <em>Body of Mine</em> as a case study. Recognizing a gap in understanding and empathy towards gender-queer communities, <em>Body of Mine</em> employs an innovative full-body tracking solution to place users into the body of someone else, combined with first-person documentary interviews and interactive elements aimed at fostering a deeper connection and insight into the transgender experience. Initial feedback from users indicates a heightened awareness and emotional connection to the challenges faced by individuals with gender dysphoria, as well as an increase in self-body positivity, based on a study conducted in collaboration with the University of Tübingen’s Department of Psychology. This project underscores the power of immersive storytelling in fostering embodied understanding, while also acknowledging the ethical complexities and voyeuristic risks when sharing narratives from vulnerable communities, and explores innovative methods for tackling social issues through emerging technology. It concludes by contemplating the implications of immersive technologies for the concept of identity in a world that increasingly transcends the physical body, suggesting a future where the notion of self is not confined to physical form but is fluid, multifaceted, and continually redefined within boundless digital horizons.</span></div>

Introduction to Quiddity College

The aim of this brief Introduction is to situate this unpublished manuscript in relation to Stephenson’s published writings on Q methodology and, more broadly, to his attempt to develop a science of subjectivity. The Introduction draws attention to how the core strands of Stephenson’s theory, especially the notions of self, concourse, play, and his adoption of “consciring,” converged with his lifelong interest in education. Quiddity College provides, as envisaged by Stephenson, an ideal college philosophy and curriculum for the fostering of the cultivation of subjectivity. His plans for Quiddity are developed in the light of the premise that culture is fashioned in play – in communication, societal conversation – and intelligent writing and speaking. The introduction concludes by noting how many of the themes in this manuscript resonate with current educational debates.

“In the middle of up and down ikigai is there”: Japanese women’s embodied narratives of personal crisis

This study focuses on Japanese women’s embodied narratives of personal crisis and explores notions of self and understandings of ikigai, loosely translated as “meaning in life” or “life worth living,” as a result of the crisis. I draw on notions of illness narratives by Arthur Frank and Havi Carel’s phenomenological study of illness and extend Carel’s framework to examine broader personal crisis as an embodied disruption of normality, referred to as “bodily doubt.” Data analysis suggests that women’s crisis experiences and ideas of self and ikigai are influenced by dimensions such as culture, society, language, sense of self and moral constructions. I use ikigai studies, particularly Gordon Mathews’ work, to argue that although women describe an emerging new sense of self and ikigai derived from crisis, their ideas still present a tension between a self that navigates socio-cultural norms and internal desires. This study argues that studying embodied narratives of personal crisis offers us a way of thinking more actively about such narratives in interrelational, socio-cultural-bodily terms, in other words, as a process constructed in conversation between self, culture, society and moral beliefs.

Neurological Reductionist Theory of Self

My primary concern in this paper will be regarding the nature of the entities we call selves or persons. This is a metaphysical or ontological question. However, this metaphysical question is intimately connected with the phenomenological question. In the first section of this paper, I would like to explore the different ontological stances one may take regarding self. The second section includes exploring the different grounds for retaining the notion of self in bigger metaphysical picture. In the concluding section of my paper, I would like to collate all the fragments of arguments to get a total picture of the main structure of the argument. I would also like to mention at the end the ontic status, I would like to confer to the self and also the theory of self that would stem on being conferred upon such an ontic status. While arguing for such a theory I would include on the one hand the positive arguments in favour of the thesis I would like to uphold and on the other hand show how the proponents of contemporary theories of self could explain the phenomenon which could not otherwise be explained by the traditional theories of self. Not only evidences from current research disprove some of the traditional functions and attributes assigned to self like epistemic transparency, etc. but also these (traditional) self-theories cannot accommodate many of the functions which currently neurosciences ascribe to the self.

Relational self and farmworker law reform: the case of Indonesia

This article celebrates and explores Keebet Benda-Beckmann’s important work on the centrality of “relationality” in legal pluralism, in Indonesia in particular, and more generally in the non-Western world. We aim to extend Benda-Beckmann’s argument on the centrality of relationality and legal pluralism into our analysis of an urgent project of Indonesian law reform: farmworker protection. We make an interpretive claim on the status of “relational self” as an organizing idea in the Indonesian legal consciousness. To build that interpretive claim, we provide qualitative context drawn from our field research in two farmworker communities in rural West Java, Indonesia. With the situation of Indonesian farmworkers as its case study, this paper presents how relational self-construal can be a starting point for the introduction of a greater access to justice. To build its argument, the paper first identifies relational self as the Indonesian farmworkers’ central notion of self. Ultimately, the paper develops a model of law reform proposal that takes relational self as its overarching supposition.

Exploring Chinese kindergarten teachers’ identities and emotions: A sociocultural perspective

Exploring Chinese kindergarten teachers’ identities and emotions: A sociocultural perspective

Society, Social Structures, and Community in Clinical Ethics

Abstract Society and social structures play an important role in the formation and evaluation of concepts and practices in clinical ethics. This is evident in the ways the authors in this issue explore a wide range of arguments and concepts in clinical ethics including moral distress and conscience based practice, phenomenological interview techniques and gender dysphoria, continuous deep sedation (CDS) at the end of life, the notion of patient expertise, ethically permissible medical billing practices, the notion of selfhood and patient centered care in dementia patients, and the definition of minimal risk as used in research regulations.

Ecological Virtuous Selves: Towards a Non-Anthropocentric Environmental Virtue Ethic?

Existing predominant approaches within virtue ethics (VE) assume humans as the typical agent and virtues as dispositions that pertain primarily to human–human interpersonal relationships. Similarly, the main accounts in the more specific area of environmental virtue ethics (EVE) tend to support weak anthropocentric positions, in which virtues are understood as excellent dispositions of human agents. In addition, however, several EVE authors have also considered virtues that benefit non-human beings and entities (e.g., environmental or ecological virtues). The latter correspond to excellent character dispositions that would extend moral consideration and care for the benefit of non-human beings, entities, or entire ecosystems. In this direction, a few authors have argued that EVE could be considered non-anthropocentric insofar as it could: (a) promote non-human ends, well-being, and the flourishing of non-human beings and entities; (b) involve significant relations to non-humans. Drawing from different traditions, including ecofeminism and care ethics, we argue for a broader notion of self and a decentered notion of virtues. The broader notion of selfhood corresponds to the “ecological self”, one that can be enacted by both human and non-human beings, is embedded in a network of relations, and recognizes the more-than-human world as fundamental and yet indispensable otherness. We suggest that this broader notion of agency allows for an expansive understanding of virtues that includes a-moral functional ecological virtues, which can be exercised not only by humans but also by certain non-human beings. This alternative understanding of selfhood and ecological virtues within EVE could have several theoretical and practical implications, some of which may enable different types of agencies and transform collective action.

Potencjał doświadczenia niepełnosprawności dla dziedzictwa.

The relation between accessibility and conservation is often contested, resulting in tensions between accessibility advocates and heritage experts. While the importance and necessity of accessibility and gradually the broader notion of inclusivity for diverse users (e.g. disabled people) is becoming more evident, existing discussions mainly focuses on the issues and problems of accessibility in the heritage context. In this article, instead of focusing on the constraints, we present disability experience as a generative resource rather than hindering liability. Disabled people, referred to as ‘the other’ and ‘strangers in their own land’, similar to people with different ethnicities, cultures and genders, have been subject to discrimination. In the heritage practice, the notion of self and other is mainly focused on colonial and occupied heritage. Additionally, it can be seen in the division between heritage experts and the others. Acknowledging the existing challenges at the crossroad of accessibility and conservation, following the example of research that rethinks disability’s meaning and its impact on architecture, our research on inclusive built heritage builds upon methods used in the context of inclusive design and adapts them for the heritage context in order to gain insights into disabled people’s experience of built heritage. By conducting multiple case studies in diverse heritage sites in collaboration with disabled people as user/experts, we observe the potential of the theoretical and methodological output of the research for the broader conservation practice, which is gradually moving towards collaborative approaches involving diverse others. The approach put forward by our research provides an opportunity to rethink our normative approach in heritage conservation, questioning assumptions and habits (in e.g. heritage evaluation) and challenging our preconceptions.

LIVING WITH DEMENTIA: EXPERIENCES OF LGBTQ PEOPLE WITH DEMENTIA AND SIGNIFICANT OTHERS

Abstract Dementia is commonly conceptualized in biomedical terms as a deterioration of brain function and a subsequent loss of self. However, dementia scholars have increasingly underscored how the self of the person with dementia may be maintained through social interactions in their everyday life. This may pose specific challenges for LGBTQ people who may not be out in care settings due to fear of discrimination and whose chosen family may not be recognized by formal care providers. This paper presents preliminary findings from a qualitative study conducted in Sweden with LGBT individuals living with dementia. The project builds on policy analysis as well as semi-structured interviews with LGBTQ people with dementia, people significant to them such as partners, family and friends, and interviews with frontline care staff and managers within dementia care. The thematic analysis illustrates how experiences of living with dementia as an LGBTQ person vary depending on the progression and type of dementia, the individuals’ social support network, how open one is with their sexual orientation or gender identity, living at home or in a dementia care facility, socioeconomics, and other factors. In line with how other ageing scholars have pointed to the potentiality of queer theory to move beyond framing dementia as pathology and decline, concepts of queer time and queer failure are used here to understand the results in ways that disrupt notions of self, temporalities, normativity, subjectivity and what it means to age successfully.

Improvisation and Radical Objectivization Identities in Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber: A Lacanian Reading

This research applies Lacanian psychoanalysis to scrutinize the use of improvisation and radical objectivization in Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber. Drawing on Lacan's theory of the "mirror stage," the work argues that Carter's use of these literary techniques disrupts the reader's sense of identity and challenges their preconceived notions of self and other. Through close analysis of key passages from the text, the research demonstrates how Carter's use of these techniques creates a sense of alienation and fragmentation in the reader, as they are forced to confront the unsettling and often disturbing aspects of the stories. The work also explores how Lacan's concept of the "phallus" is invoked in Carter's work, as she challenges traditional gender roles and subverts the dominant male gaze through the use of powerful female protagonists. Further, it maintains that Carter's use of these techniques, offers a powerful critique of patriarchal norms and invites the reader to engage with the complex and often contradictory nature of identity and desire. By disrupting traditional fairy tale tropes and challenging patriarchal norms, Carter invites the reader to engage with the complex and often unsettling nature of identity and desire, and offers a powerful critique of the ways in which these concepts are shaped and constructed by dominant cultural narratives.

The Child Protagonist as Agent and Subject inHarriet's DaughterandCrick Crack, Monkey

This paper explores two novellas by Black Caribbean women writers: Crick Crack, Monkey by Trinidadian author Merle Hodge, and Harriet's Daughter by Tobagonian-born M. NourbeSe Philip. In Hodge's work, the protagonist, Tee, must negotiate between two worlds. The first is that of her early home with the rough working-class aunt (Tantie), seemingly chaotic but also full of warmth, humour, and familial love. This is juxtaposed against her new home with her haughty Aunt Beatrice, who advocates colonial values and demands conformity from her niece for Tee to gain acceptance and belonging. In contrast to Hodge's protagonist, Tee, Philip's Margaret keenly desires closer ties to her Caribbean identity. She creates a world of refuge against an environment that seeks to erase blackness and crafts a self in relation to her chosen identity, exercising agency with respect to her notions of selfhood and citizenship.

Queer(y)ing aging-potentialities and problems in applying Queer Theory to studies of aging and later life.

Queer Theory is a radically deconstructionist perspective within the humanities and social sciences. Since its initial emergence in the late 1980s and early 1990s in the field of sexualities studies, Queer Theory has increasingly been used to challenges normative notions of self, identity, temporality and the nature of being, more broadly. Whilst Queer Theory has been utilized, to some extent, in gerontology and aging studies, this article makes an original contribution to this endeavor, assessing the potentiality and problems with queer(y)ing three aspects of aging: chronology; cognition; and frailty and vulnerability. To achieve this, the article draws on ideas from some key Queer theorical writers, existing studies of queer aging and illustrates theoretical points with qualitative data collected from two LGBTQ+ projects to illustrate. The article also considers problems with Queer Theory in challenging normativities associated with aging. It is concluded that despite problems, Queer Theory remains an important and valuable theoretical approach for disturbing and challenging many of the norms and understandings that shape and constrain older LGBTQ+ people's lives, in particular, and therefore have importance for how we think and understand aging and later life sociologically.

“The compound mass we term SELF”: Mary Shepherd on selfhood and the difference between mind and self

AbstractIn this paper, I argue for a novel interpretation of Shepherd's notion of selfhood. In distinction to Deborah Boyle's interpretation, I contend that Shepherd differentiates between the mind and the self. The latter, for Shepherd, is an effect arising from causal interactions between mind and body—specifically those interactions that give rise to our present stream of consciousness, our memories, and that can unite these two. Thus, the body plays a constitutive role in the formation of the self. The upshot of this interpretation is that it can dissolve the problem of individuating mind that Boyle identifies. Briefly, the problem consists in Shepherd seemingly individuating minds in terms of their associated bodies and bodies in terms of the minds they are united with. My interpretation, however, allows to see that Shepherd neither wants nor needs to individuate the mind in isolation of the body and to read the passages, in which the problem seems to arise, as being about what makes living beings individual—with mind and body both playing a crucial role in this context.

Evil, Constructed: A Salient Part of an Emerging Spiritual Veteran Identity.

This article investigated constructions of evil among deployed Swedish veterans. Six cases were used to demonstrate common themes of these constructions: humans are capable of everything; anyone can be violated, even killed; evil and cruelty comes in many forms; coldness/cynicism; exhausting to witness suffering and pain; and existential rumination. The impact of these can affect a veteran's identity and their notions of self. However, processing encounters with evil is seen, in some Christian perspectives, as an essential prerequisite for spiritual growth, and this might be potentially important to supporting the emergence of spiritual veteran identities. A pastoral care giver or military chaplain can serve as an existential conversation partner who can assist veterans when approaching such experiences and its potential impact. This may be especially fertile in secular contexts, where pastoral wisdom and ontological approaches can be hard to find in the everyday lives of veterans.

Où est le moi? Annie Ernaux’s Relational Narration of Identity in Les Années

Abstract: This article examines Annie Ernaux’s Les Années at the intersection of identity as ipse and as idem . On the one hand, identity is attached to the notion of self ( ipse ): objectifiable and changing, it emerges via the cultural phenomena inscribed into the text. On the other, identity is conceived as permanence over time ( idem ) and is found in the descriptions of photographs, corporeal sensations, and metaphors of identity Ernaux employs (Dorothea Tanning’s Birthday , the Matryoshka doll set). Depicting these two views simultaneously, Ernaux crafts an autobiographical subject as bound to the collective body while also remaining uniquely singular.

Self-orienting in human and machine learning.

A current proposal for a computational notion of self is a representation of one's body in a specific time and place, which includes the recognition of that representation as the agent. This turns self-representation into a process of self-orientation, a challenging computational problem for any human-like agent. Here, to examine this process, we created several 'self-finding' tasks based on simple video games, in which players (N = 124) had to identify themselves out of a set of candidates in order to play effectively. Quantitative and qualitative testing showed that human players are nearly optimal at self-orienting. In contrast, well-known deep reinforcement learning algorithms, which excel at learning much more complex video games, are far from optimal. We suggest that self-orienting allows humans to flexibly navigate new settings.