Marguerite Sandholm

Topic: Conceptions of Self

Who am I? How should we understand ‘the self’ and how do we understand ourselves? Is the self just an illusion? In this course, we will survey a variety of contemporary philosophical treatments of the concept of the self, including no-self theories, the self as a bodily manifestation, narrative accounts of the self, and alienated senses of self which occur in psychopathological cases. In exploring aspects of the self, we will ask: What grounds do we have to construct a notion of the self? How might facets of the self be constituted in experience, by our bodies, or through narratives? How might they be challenged by cases like the rubber hand illusion, schizophrenia, dissociative identity disorder, and autism? Are there wrong ways of being a self or relating to oneself? What belongs within the boundaries of the self? In answering these questions, we will consider how the philosophical arguments we read fit with findings from psychology and psychiatry.