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(2014) Self and other, Oxford, Oxford University Press.
The chapter introduces two very different conceptions of self. According to social constructivism, one cannot be a self on one’s own, but only together with others. According to a more experience-based approach, selfhood is a built-in feature of experiential life. Importantly, both these approaches reject the definition of the self espoused by the anti-realists, that is, the view that the self, if it exists, must be an unchanging and ontologically independent entity. Most of the chapter is then taken up by a closer examination of the experience-based, phenomenological, proposal. In a first step, this is done through an examination of the relation between phenomenal consciousness and self-consciousness. Next, different conceptions of experiential ownership are distinguished and discussed, and the notion of an experiential self is then defined in terms of the first-personal character of experience.
Publication details
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199590681.003.0002
Full citation:
Zahavi, D. (2014). Consciousness, self-consciousness, and selfhood, in Self and other, Oxford, Oxford University Press, pp. 10-24.
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