Background The fourth section of the 1967 Abortion Act states that individuals (including health care practitioners) do not have to participate in an abortion if they have a conscientious objection. A conscientious objection is a refusal to participate in abortion on the grounds of conscience. This may be informed by religious, moral, philosophical, ethical, or personal beliefs. Currently, there is very little investigation into the impact of conscientious objection on service users in Britain. The perspectives of service users are imperative (...) in understanding the real-world consequences and potential impact of conscientious objection and should be considered when creating and reviewing policies and guidelines. This research provided a platform for women and those who can become pregnant to share their experiences and opinions at a time when these voices are largely excluded in the great tradition of Western political philosophy and law-making processes. Method Five service users were interviewed using a narrative interview approach to uncover their abortion journeys and experiences of conscientious objection. Findings The findings were presented as found poems and uncovered that doctors are not always: informing service users that they have a conscientious objection to abortion, giving service users enough information to access abortion (indirect referral), treating them non-judgmentally, and providing medically correct information. Service users did not experience burdens such as long waiting times and were still able to access legal abortion. However, service users did experience negative emotional effects, as they were often left feeling scared, angry, and hopeless when they were not referred and/or were mistreated. Conclusions Findings indicate that conscientious objection could work in practice. However, it is currently failing some individuals on an emotional level, as not all doctors are adhering to guidelines. Conscientious objection in Britain needs to be addressed, to ensure service users receive fair, impartial, non-judgmental care. (shrink)

The narrative approach to teaching Peace and Justice attempts to address the division between activists and church-goers that is often found on Catholiccampuses. The former, who advocate for social change, tend to regard religious faith as self-serving, while the latter, who emphasize community service, tend toregard activism as “radical.” By studying the life-stories of individuals whose contributions to the struggle for justice reflect the unfolding of a spiritual journey, students come to see that religious faith can be integral (...) to a life dedicated to social change. Barack Obama’s autobiography exemplifies the youth’s journey to self-acceptance which the theologian John Dunne identifies as the second of the four great tasks of an individual’s life. The stages of this journey involve breaking free of narcissism and what theologian Miroslav Volf calls “embracing” the other. (shrink)

Recent works on narrative self-concept still do not pay enough attention to how a person’s actions influence her narration. Narrative structures may enable the subject to give meaning and continuity over time to her experience. But also, a person’s behavior can make sense of her self-concept. From this perspective, the Narrative Identity Theory might be insufficient for addressing the challenge of making sense of the subject’s actions during the interaction itself. The Dramatic Identity Theory's proposal (...) can complement the Narrative Theory on such points. Accordingly, this work will explore the relationship between these two theories in order to explain how the Dramatic Identity Theory can solve these problems, with a proposal based on the analogy between a theater actor’s performance and the subject's actions. (shrink)

The essay argues that narrative approaches to human personhood which conceptualize the goal of human personhood in terms of the fulfillment of a capacity for self-constitution by means of deliberate choices tend to make inordinate and inhuman claims for human agency. The narrative approaches of the psychoanalyst and psychoanalytic theorist, Roy Schafter, and of the theologian and ethicist, Stanley Hauerwas, illustrate this. Both thinkers implicitly deny the permanent vulnerability of human agency in the area of (...) the appropriation of narratives. In the case of Hauerwas, this also implies a denial of theneed for God’s grace in the area of the appropriation of narratives. The work of the philosopher, Paul Ricoeur, serves as a contrast to Schafer and Hauerwas and demonstrates that a narrative approach to human persons does not need to make inordinate claims for an autonomous human capacity for self-constituion. The last part of the essay shows how the rejection of the need for God’s grace in the area of the appropriation of narratives is connected to a rejection of the idea of innocent suffering. (shrink)

Within the last fifty years as philosophy, psychology, and cognitive science have moved towards increasingly more embodied theoretical frameworks, there has been growing interest in Dance Movement Therapy. DMT has been shown to be effective in mitigating negative symptoms in several psychopathologies including PTSD, autism, and schizophrenia. Further, DMT generally helps participants gain a stronger sense of agency and connection with their body. However, it has been argued that it is not always clear what constitutes these changes in DMT participants. (...) I argue that we can better understand the empirical and phenomenological results of DMT across psychopathologies if we adapt an enactive embodied approach to cognition. I use the framework of embodied enactive cognition and narrative theories of the self to develop an account of DMT as a form of narrative change. I claim that through the acquisition of new bodily skill and bodily awareness, DMT can cause changes to the participant’s narrative self-understanding. (shrink)

In this paper, I take up the problem of the self through bringing together the insights, while correcting some of the shortcomings, of Indo–Tibetan Buddhist and enactivist accounts of the self. I begin with an examination of the Buddhist theory of non-self ( anātman ) and the rigorously reductionist interpretation of this doctrine developed by the Abhidharma school of Buddhism. After discussing some of the fundamental problems for Buddhist reductionism, I turn to the enactive approach to philosophy (...) of mind and cognitive science. I argue that human beings, as dynamic systems, are characterized by a high degree of self-organizing autonomy. Therefore, human beings are not reducible to the more basic mental and physical events that constitute them. I critically examine Francisco Varela’s enactivist account of the self as virtual and his use of Buddhist ideas in support of this view. I argue, in contrast, that while the self is emergent and constructed, it is not merely virtual. Finally I sketch a Buddhist-enactivist account of the self. I argue for a non-reductionist view of the self as an active, embodied, embedded, self-organizing process—what the Buddhists call ‘I’-making ( ahaṃkāra ). This emergent process of self-making is grounded in the fundamentally recursive processes that characterize lived experience: autopoiesis at the biological level, temporalization and self-reference at the level of conscious experience, and conceptual and narrative construction at the level of intersubjectivity. In Buddhist terms, I will develop an account of the self as dependently originated and empty, but nevertheless real. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 10.4 (2003) 361-367 [Access article in PDF] Psychopathology and Two Kinds of Narrative Account of the Self Tim Thornton Keywords self, narrative, reductionism, embodiment, Dennett, Strawson, McDowell The self plays an important role in psycho pathology. Conditions such as dementia raise the question of how much loss of memory and awareness there can be before there is, if ever, also (...) a loss of the self. Syndromes such as Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) or Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD) raise the possibility of a fragmentation of one self into a number of selves. Depersonalization disorder suggests a kind of diminution both of the sense of self and the reality of the world. Symptoms such as thought insertion suggest a different kind of fragmentation of the coherence of thought within a self.At the same time there is something prima facie paradoxical about the very idea of the fragmentation or loss of self. It seems to be one thing for a self to suffer loss, quite another to think of the self as being lost. Although the experiences or beliefs had or entertained by a self might be disordered or chaotic, how can a self be anything other than whole and seem real and whole to itself?The narrative approach to the self looks like a tool purpose built to shed light on some aspects of psychopathology. The papers in this issue have examined its application to four revealing case histories and questioned its effectiveness in accounting for features of psychopathology. But in this short note I wish to stand back from the particular cases discussed in previous papers and to shed light on the general approach by setting out two contrasting versions of it. Crudely put, the first forges a connection between the concepts of self and personality; the second between the concepts of self and person. I will use the contrast between these two to draw some general lessons for the philosophy of psychopathology. Dennett's Austere Narrative Account I will start with Dennett's influential version of a narrative account of the self. His central idea is that the very idea of a self should be understood as dependent on a particular kind of interpretative strategy. Roughly, this contrasts with the idea that it is a more basic datum calling out for notice prior to adopting a specific theoretical perspective.Dennett suggests an analogy with centers of gravity both to outline the consequences of this view for the reality of selves, and the connection between the self and the interpretative strategy involved. [End Page 361] A center of gravity is just an abstractum. It's just a fictional object. But when I say it's a fictional object, I do not mean to disparage it; it's a wonderful fictional object, and it has a perfectly legitimate place within serious, sober, echt physical science. (Dennett 1992) The concept of a center of gravity is deployed within a branch of physics to describe and predict the behavior of physical systems acting under physical forces. It is the theoretical context that determines the nature of centers of gravity; at the same time, they contribute to that broader context. Dennett stresses that they are abstract or calculation-bound theoretical objects to contrast with objects that are also theoretically posited but causally interactive, such as microphysical particles (Dennett 1987, 53).Dennett has also used the analogy with abstracta to account for mental states such as beliefs, desires, and other propositional attitudes, which he suggests are ascribed using a particular interpretative strategy: the "Intentional Stance" (Dennett 1987, 13-42). The suggestion is that by showing the necessity of adopting that stance to make sense of human behavior he can defend a form of objectivity about mental states even while rejecting the industrial-strength realism that requires identifying mental states with physical, and thus causally interactive, internal states.Selves are given similar treatment. Like centers of gravity or mental states, they are theoretical, even fictional, entities articulated within an interpretative theoretical stance: A self is also an abstract object, a theorist's fiction... (shrink)

Some narrative approaches assume a tight relation between narrative and selfhood. They hold that the self-understanding of persons as individuals possessing a set of particular character traits is above all narratively structured for it is constituted by stories persons tell or can tell about their lives. Against this view, it is argued that self-understanding is also characterized by certain non-narrative and invariant mental features. In order to show this, a non-narrative awareness of (...) class='Hi'>self-identity over time will be analyzed. It will be argued that this basic form of awareness plays a fundamental role for the possibility of a richer form of self-understanding. (shrink)

On the phenomenological view, a minimal form of self-consciousness is a constant structural feature of conscious experience. Experience happens for the experiencing subject in an immediate way and as part of this immediacy, it is implicitly marked as my experience. For the phenomenologists, this immediate and first-personal givenness of experiential phenomena must be accounted for in terms of a pre-reflective self-consciousness. In the most basic sense of the term, selfconsciousness is not something that comes about the moment one (...) attentively inspects or reflectively introspects one's experiences, or in the instant of self-recognition of one's image in the mirror, or in the proper use of the first-person pronoun, or in the construction of a self-narrative. Rather, these different kinds of self-consciousness are to be distinguished from the pre-reflective self-consciousness which is present whenever I am living through or undergoing an experience, i.e., whenever I am consciously perceiving the world, whenever I am thinking an occurrent thought, whenever I am feeling sad or happy, thirsty or in pain, and so forth. (shrink)

The Self and its Disorders develops a philosophical and interdisciplinary approach to the formulation of an “integrative” perspective in psychiatry. In contrast to some integrative approaches that focus on narrow brain-based conceptions, or strictly on symptomology, this book takes its bearings from embodied and enactive conceptions of human experience and builds on a perspective that understands self as a self-pattern—a pattern of processes that include bodily, experiential, affective, cognitive-psychological, reflective, narrative, intersubjective, ecological, and normative factors. (...) It provides a philosophical analysis of the notion of self-pattern, framed in terms of dynamical organization. It then draws on phenomenological, developmental, clinical, and experimental evidence to propose a method for studying the effects of psychopathologies on the self-pattern, and includes discussions of network theory, predictive processing models, and the role of narrative. This book explores the hypothesis that psychiatric disorders are self-disorders, and includes specific discussions of schizophrenia, anxiety disorders, depression, borderline personality disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder and autism spectrum disorder, as well as traumatic effects of torture and solitary confinement. Other topics include diagnostic classification, symptom overlap, and transdiagnostic complexity. Several chapters explore a variety of philosophical issues that relate to therapeutic approaches, including deep brain stimulation, meditation-based interventions, and the use of artificial intelligence and virtual reality. (shrink)

In “Mad Narratives: Self-Constitutions Through the Diagnostic Looking Glass,” by using narrative approaches to the self, I explore how the diagnosis of mental disorder shapes personal identities and influences flourishing. My particular focus is the diagnosis grounded on the criteria provided by the Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). I develop two connected accounts pertaining to the self and mental disorder. I use the memoirs and personal stories written by the subjects with a DSM (...) diagnosis as illustrations to bolster my claims. First, expanding on the narrative approaches to the self, I explain how narratives about a subject shape her self-constitution. I elucidate how this process is generated by drawing on research in developmental psychology, cognitive science, and social psychology. Next, using this account as a springboard, I argue that the DSM diagnosis of mental disorder serves as a source of narrative, entering into the patients’ autobiographical and social narratives. This plays an important role in the diagnosed subjects’ self-understanding, self-constitution and flourishing. In this vein, how mental disorders are classified is not only a theoretical question about accurately taxonomizing the various experiences related to mental distress but also an ethical question about which ways of talking about mental disorders will allow subjects to respond effectively to their psychological distress, to flourish and to live autonomous and fulfilling lives. Finally, I suggest that the DSM-based narratives wield a double-edged sword when it comes to the subject’s flourishing: On the one hand, there are problems with some DSM-based narratives that stem from the DSM diagnostic schema and the culture of DSM diagnoses. These problems render these DSM-based narratives unbeneficial for flourishing as they constrain the range of adoptive social, cognitive and emotional responses the subjects can give to their mental disorders. On the other hand, there are grounds to believe that some DSM-based narratives help subjects to flourish. For instance, they provide certainty to subjects' otherwise puzzling symptoms and help them reach out to others with similar experiences. Understanding how the DSM-based narratives can both benefit and harm will help us address problems with psychiatric diagnoses and the dissemination of knowledge about mental disorders in popular culture. The project aims to convince both philosophers and psychiatrists that no plausible theory of the self can be developed without attending to the topic of mental disorder and that no theory of mental disorder can be complete without devising the tools provided by the philosophical approaches to the self as well as developmental and social psychology. It also calls for methodological alterations in mental health ethics research, arguing that a careful scrutiny of mental disorder memoirs can advance the ethical underpinnings to the practice of psychiatry. (shrink)

This paper offers a narrative approach to understanding the process of clinical reasoning in complex cases involving medical uncertainty, moral ambiguity, and futility. We describe a clinical encounter in which the pediatric health care team experienced a great deal of conflict and distrust as a result of an ineffective process of interpretation and communication. We propose a systematic method for analyzing the technical, ethical, behavioral, and existential dimensions of the clinical reasoning process, and introduce the Clinical Reasoning Discussion Tool—a (...) dialogical and interpretive device aimed at improving communication, understanding, empathy, and moral deliberation in the clinical setting. (shrink)

The paper is a dialogue between a conservation architect who works on medieval churches and an analytic aesthetician interested in the principles underlying restoration and conservation. The focus of the debate is the explanatory role of narrative in understanding and justifying elective changes to historic buildings. For the architect this is a fruitful model and offers a basis for a genuinely new approach to a philosophy of conservation. The philosopher, however, has been sceptical about appeals to narrative in (...) other contexts (for example, self-identity), and rehearses some reasons for this scepticism. The dialogue explores the pros and cons of the narrative approach to conservation and seeks to forge a compromise that acknowledges concerns about inflated claims for narrative while pursuing the merits of this particular application. (shrink)

The enormous growth in medical humanities programs during the past decade has resulted in an extensive literature concerning the content of the discipline and the issues that have been addressed. Comparatively little attention, however, has been devoted to the structure of the discipline of medical humanities concerning the process or the theoretical aspects of the pedagogy of teaching the discipline. This report explicitly addresses the pedagogical aspects of the discipline by comparing and contrasting two different basic approaches to the (...) discipline referred to as the classical humanities approach and the humanistic psychology approach which roughly approximate the cognitive and affective approaches respectively. These two approaches are compared and contrasted in terms of their goals, objectives, methods of implementation, philosophical assumptions and evaluational techniques. (shrink)

This study investigates the three major educational philosophies behind the medical humanities programs in the United States. It summarizes the characteristics of the Cultural Transmission Approach, the Affective Developmental Approach, and the Cognitive Developmental Approach. A questionnaire was sent to 415 teachers of medical humanities asking for their perceptions of the amount of time and effort devoted by their programs to these three philosophical approaches. The 234 responses constituted a 54.6% return. The approximately 80:20 gender ratio of males to (...) females and other demographic data on age and educational background were consistent with other studies of the field of medical humanities.Reflections on the results in Table II indicate that some changes need to take place in the teaching of the medical humanities if the perceived ideal is to be achieved. In order for the current teachers of the medical humanities to think that the appropriate philosophies behind the teaching of the medical humanities are being implemented as they should be, much less time and effort need to be devoted to the Cultural Transmission Approach. With no other published reports on the educational philosophies behind the medical humanities programs, this study created a new knowledge base about this relatively young and rapidly emerging field. (shrink)

Although philosophical approaches to the self are diverse, several of them are relevant to cognitive science. First, the notion of a 'minimal self', a self devoid of temporal extension, is clarified by distinguishing between a sense of agency and a sense of ownership for action. To the extent that these senses are subject to failure in pathologies like schizophrenia, a neuropsychological model of schizophrenia may help to clarify the nature of the minimal self and its (...) neurological underpinnings. Second, there is good evidence to suggest that although certain aspects of the minimal self are primitive and embodied, other aspects may be accessed only in reflective consciousness. Employing a modified concept of the minimal self, it may be possible to construct a robotic form of non-conscious self-reference that depends on an interaction between the robotic body and its environment. In contrast to the minimal self, the narrative self involves continuity over time and is directly relevant to discussions of memory and personal identity. There is growing consensus among philosophers and cognitive scientists about the importance of narrative and its relation to episodic memory and left-hemisphere functions. There are, however, at least two different views of how the narrative self is structured. On one model it is nothing more than an abstract point. On a more extended view, proposed here, the self is a rich amalgam of narratives that allows for the equivocations, contradictions, and self-deceptions of personal life. Even in this case, however, neurocognitive models contribute to our understanding of how narrative identity is structured. (shrink)

In this article, I outline various ways in which artifacts are interwoven with autobiographical memory systems and conceptualize what this implies for the self. I first sketch the narrative approach to the self, arguing that who we are as persons is essentially our (unfolding) life story, which, in turn, determines our present beliefs and desires, but also directs our future goals and actions. I then argue that our autobiographical memory is partly anchored in our embodied interactions with (...) an ecology of artifacts in our environment. Lifelogs, photos, videos, journals, diaries, souvenirs, jewelry, books, works of art, and many other meaningful objects trigger and sometimes constitute emotionally-laden autobiographical memories. Autobiographical memory is thus distributed across embodied agents and various environmental structures. To defend this claim, I draw on and integrate distributed cognition theory and empirical research in human-technology interaction. Based on this, I conclude that the self is neither defined by psychological states realized by the brain nor by biological states realized by the organism, but should be seen as a distributed and relational construct. (shrink)

The dominant framework for understanding selfhood in contemporary psychology has been one that privileges a highly individualistic conception of self. This is reflected in both the language and approaches of psychotherapy where the influence of contextual factors are given marginal consideration in order to maintain some type of 'objectivity' or 'neutrality' in counseling. We argue that an understanding of selfhood which does not take into account the 'relational' nature of selfhood as well as the cultural or historical context (...) of the client, will likely alienate clients who do not view their self through the individualized lenses of psychology. In order to deal with this problem, we adopt an approach to cultural psychology that views the self as a relational narrative. Such a narrative does not imply an unrestricted freedom to construct our self, but understands the limits to selfhood implied in the web of meanings constitutive of our culture and the web of relations from which our self emerges. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

The paper is a dialogue between a conservation architect who works on medieval churches and an analytic aesthetician interested in the principles underlying restoration and conservation. The focus of the debate is the explanatory role of narrative in understanding and justifying elective changes to historic buildings. For the architect this is a fruitful model and offers a basis for a genuinely new approach to a philosophy of conservation. The philosopher, however, has been sceptical about appeals to narrative in (...) other contexts (for example, self-identity), and rehearses some reasons for this scepticism. The dialogue explores the pros and cons of the narrative approach to conservation and seeks to forge a compromise that acknowledges concerns about inflated claims for narrative while pursuing the merits of this particular application. (shrink)

This essay explores some of the affinities between current theories of North American Indigenous trickster narratives and continental philosophy where they are both concerned with the question of responsibility in subject formations. Taking up the work of Judith Butler, Franz Kafka and Gerald Vizenor, the author works to show how both continental and Indigenous intellectual traditions work against any assumed stability for the ‘I’ in the narration of the self, yet toward responsible relationality. Such affinities, however, emerge from differing (...) socio‐cultural and linguistic horizons that are not reducible one to the other. This is particularly so with regard to the natural world and the ways in which Indigenous narratives are developed to foster responsible subjects to a larger biotic environment. Through discussion of such affinities and differences, the author seeks to broaden and multiculturalize contemporary debates in philosophy. (shrink)

This article contrasts the Caseness and Narrative approaches for treating individuals who are psychiatrically labelled. In Caseness a "mental health professional" negatively values those symptoms believed to be caused by a physical pathology. In the subsequent labeling of the "patient" a transfer of ownership of the person's body to the "medical system" occurs. Intervention ensues, by coercion and force if deemed necessary, to stop symptom expression. In contrast, the Narrative approach looks upon periods of distress as potentially (...) transformative experiences within the context of a life story. The complexity captured by a "narrative web," the emphasis on a dynamic self able to make choices, and a sense of closure are among the properties that Narrative highlights. This approach also helps redress the power disparity inherent in Caseness by letting the distressed person establish the discourse from which a dialogue can ensue. This article argues that the Narrative approach provides a more humane and healing context for people who are psychiatrically labeled. (shrink)

This paper explores the thought of Paul Ricœur from a feminist point of view. My goal is to show that it is necessary to narrate differently the history of our culture – in particular, the history of philosophy – in order for wommen to attain a self-representation that is equal to that of men. I seek to show that Ricoeur’s philosophy – especially his approach to the topics of memory and history, on the one hand, and the human capacity (...) for initiative, on the other hand– can support the idea that it is possible and legitimate to tell our history otherwise by envisioning a more accurate truth about ourselves. (shrink)

Based on a careful study of his unpublished manuscripts as well as his published work, this book explores Peirce's general theory of signs and the way in which Peirce himself used this theory to understand subjectivity.

In this article, I outline various ways in which artifacts are interwoven with autobiographical memory systems and conceptualize what this implies for the self. I first sketch the narrative approach to the self, arguing that who we are as persons is essentially our life story, which, in turn, determines our present beliefs and desires, but also directs our future goals and actions. I then argue that our autobiographical memory is partly anchored in our embodied interactions with an (...) ecology of artifacts in our environment. Lifelogs, photos, videos, journals, diaries, souvenirs, jewelry, books, works of art, and many other meaningful objects trigger and sometimes constitute emotionally laden autobiographical memories. Autobiographical memory is thus distributed across embodied agents and various environmental structures. To defend this claim, I draw on and integrate distributed cognition theory and empirical research in human-technology interaction. Based on this, I conclude that the self is neither defined by psychological states realized by the brain nor by biological states realized by the organism, but should be seen as a distributed and relational construct. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Aestheticism and SpiritualismA Narrative Study of the Exploration of Self through the Practice of Chinese CalligraphyMing-Tak Hue (bio)IntroductionCalligraphy has been used to preserve significant writings and texts in a beautiful form and to make the different styles of writing enjoyable. It is not only the art of beautiful handwriting but also a cultural heritage and tradition that reflects the culture and history of a society, a race, (...) a nation, and a country. Hence, it has very great educational value. In China calligraphy is done with a brush, which was a common writing implement in ancient times. In addition to its utilitarian function, calligraphy is the most fundamental element in other types of art, such as painting and seal-carving, and is closely connected to many subject disciplines, such as literature, history, and philosophy. Brush calligraphy is still popular in Chinese society and is frequently used in different forms of publication, such as banners and newspapers; however, it is becoming more popular for these publications to be created mechanically or in electronic form with computers rather than by hand. In the context of schooling, a similar phenomenon can be seen. Many teachers in Hong Kong, as elsewhere, are concerned that fewer and fewer students have the chance to write with a pen and enjoy the beauty of writing, as the use of computers and different types of electronic devices for writing become more popular with the general public.The aim of this article is to examine the meaning of the practice of Chinese calligraphy from a cultural perspective and to draw school practitioners' attention to the importance of calligraphy education in the promotion of the whole-person growth of students and of multicultural education. Relevant literature on Western and Chinese calligraphy will be reviewed. Then an explanation will be given on how a narrative approach to the personal experience method and textual analysis were adopted for the data analysis. The article argues that calligraphy serves more than a utilitarian function. It [End Page 18] has also been used as an aesthetic practice and spiritual discipline. Hence, it is suggested that the calligraphy of brushwork is not only delightful to the eye but also an inspiration to the spirit. It is a practice of mindfulness for promoting self-reflection and self-cultivation, which leads calligraphy practitioners to reflect in their mind and heart, and so brings them into a harmonious relationship with others and the natural world.Literature ReviewIn Western societies for the last one hundred years, calligraphy has been rediscovered and relearned.1 Knight pointed out that the heritage and traditions of calligraphy have not been properly addressed and inherited in Western societies. Uyehara further suggested that calligraphy had been basically restudied and relearned in Europe and the United States up until the end of World War II. Edward Johnston (1872-1944) could be the most influential scholar who attempted to rediscover the art of Western calligraphy, lettering, and illuminating. In his study of ancient inscriptions and old manuscripts, three essential qualities of calligraphy were identified: "legibility," "beauty," and "character."2 When creating a piece of artwork, calligraphers have to ensure the legibility of the letter forms, the mastery of the skills of creating beautiful writing, and the readability of their works. As he explained,To make good letters and to arrange them well. To make good letters is not necessarily to "design" them—they have been designed long ago—but it is to take the best letters we can find, and to acquire them and make them our own. To arrange letters well requires no great art, but it requires a working knowledge of letter-forms and of the reasonable methods of grouping these forms to suit every circumstance.3Similarly, Knight highlighted the essential qualities of "legibility" and "beauty." Further, he stressed that the "creativity" of calligraphy should be imposed upon the tradition and cultural heritage of ancient manuscripts. As he said,[M]any of the conventions we use today in letter design and typography were established during the manuscript age. To know the classic work of this period is to know more about the ground we stand upon. If we grasp the... (shrink)

According to recent social interactionist accounts in developmental psychology, a child's learning to talk about the past with others plays a key role in memory development. Most accounts of this kind are centered on the theoretical notion of autobiographical memory and assume that socio-communicative interaction with others is important, in particular, in explaining the emergence of memories that have a particular type of connection to the self. Most of these accounts also construe autobiographical memory as a species of episodic (...) memory, but its episodic character, as such, is not typically seen as falling within the remit of an explanation in social interactionist terms. I explore the idea that socio-communicative interaction centered on talk about the past might also have an important role to play, quite independently of considerations about the involvement of the self in memory, in accounting for the emergence of memories that are episodic in character, i.e., memories that involve the recollection of particular past events. In doing so, I also try to shed light on a distinctive role that talk about the past plays in socio-communicative interaction. (shrink)

This article examines the narrative approach to self found in philosophy and related disciplines. The strongest versions of the narrative approach hold that both a person's sense of self and a person's life are narrative in structure, and this is called the hermeneutical narrative theory. This article provides a provisional picture of the content of the narrative approach and considers some important objections that have been raised to the narrative approach. It defends (...) the view that the self constitutes itself in narrative and argues for something less than the hermeneutical view insofar as the narrative is less agency-oriented and without an overarching thematic unity. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In this commentary I evaluate what McGowan’s project would conclude with respect to the treatment of professional Australian Football League player Adam Goodes, who was incessantly ‘booed’ by crowds for the final two years of his career. Analysing Goodes’ case in light of McGowan’s argument leads me to two observations. First, McGowan’s norm-enactment approach is incredibly useful because it explains how words like ‘boo’ (with unstable meaning) can constitute actionable discrimination. Second, however, I wonder if a narrow focus on (...) whether such speech is legally actionable might encourage an overestimation of the power of laws to shepherd new g-norms into social practices. (shrink)

This paper explores the heart and brain metaphors used in the meaning-making efforts of Chinese individuals diagnosed with depression. Past studies assert that the origin of Chinese language metaphors for thinking and feeling can be found in traditional Chinese medico-philosophical theory, where the heart is viewed as the seat of thought and emotion, and the brain, which constitutes the cognitive center in western theories of the self, is secondary. While most participants employed heart metaphors to express thinking and feeling, (...) many of the participants also employed brain metaphors. Instead of suggesting that this multiplicity implies westernization, this paper argues that cultural understandings of the self can be multiple. To appreciate this, it is necessary to look at spontaneously generated speech in a narrative context. This paper thus analyzes three participant narratives, a process that carries several implications for studies approaching the relationship between metaphor, culture, and the self. (shrink)

The increased complexity of health information management sows the seeds of inequalities between health care stakeholders involved in the production and use of health information. Patients may thus be more vulnerable to use of their data without their consent and breaches in confidentiality. Health care providers can also be the victims of a health information system that they do not fully master. Yet, despite its possible drawbacks, the management of health information is indispensable for advancing science, medical care and public (...) health. Therefore, the central question addressed by this paper is how to manage health information ethically? This article argues that Paul Ricœur’s ‘‘little ethics’’, based on his work on hermeneutics and narrative identity, provides a suitable ethical framework to this end. This ethical theory has the merit of helping to harmonise self-esteem and solicitude amongst patients and healthcare providers, and at the same time provides an ethics of justice in public health. A matrix, derived from Ricœur’s ethics, has been developed as a solution to overcoming possible conflicts between privacy interests and the common good in the management of health information. (shrink)

If the self—as a popular view has it—is a narrative construction, if it arises out of discursive practices, it is reasonable to assume that the best possible avenue to self-understanding will be provided by those very narratives. If I want to know what it means to be a self, I should look closely at the stories that I and others tell about myself, since these stories constitute who I am. In the following I wish to question (...) this train of thought. I will argue that we need to operate with a more primitive and fundamental notion of self; a notion of self that cannot be captured in terms of narrative structures. In a parallel move, I will argue that there is a crucial dimension of what it means to be other that is equally missed by the narrative approach. I will consequently defend the view that there are limits to the kind of understanding of self and others that narratives can provide. (shrink)

Adopting a materialist approach to the mind has far reaching implications for many presuppositions regarding the properties of the brain, including those that have traditionally been consigned to “the mental” aspect of human being. One such presupposition is the conception of the disembodied self. In this article we aim to account for the self as a material entity, in that it is wholly the result of the physiological functioning of the embodied brain. Furthermore, we attempt to account for (...) the structure of the self by invoking the logic of the narrative. While our conception of narrative selfhood incorporates the work of both Freud and Dennett, we offer a critique of these two theorists and then proceed to amend their theories by means of complexity theory. We argue that the self can be characterised as a complex system, which allows us to account for the structure of the wholly material self. (shrink)

This paper argues that the newspaper Notre Journal enshrined the importance of narrative in the revolutionary psychiatry of its founder and editor, Frantz Fanon. Anchoring my analysis in the interdisciplinarity of the medical humanities, I demonstrate how care at Hôpital Blida-Joinville in colonial Algeria was mediated by the written word. I examine Fanon’s physician writing and editorial texts detailing the use of narrative approaches in the clinic. As an object of care, Notre Journal’s promotion of psychic healing, (...) social actions, and engaged professional practice shaped the interactions and experiences of patients and staff. Printed and distributed to the wider institution, the newspaper created community—during an oppressive French Occupation and at the outset of the War of Independence—in addition to nurturing creativity, curiosity, solidarity, and accountability. Still, Fanon would come to recognize the limits of narrative methods amidst cultural oral traditions, illiteracy, and divergent attitudes about narrating the self. (shrink)

The problems that arise from the presence of self-attacking ar- guments and odd-length cycles of attack within argumentation frameworks are widely recognized in the literature on defeasible argumentation. This paper introduces two simple semantics to capture different intuitions about what kinds of arguments should become justified in such scenarios. These semantics are modeled upon two extensions of argumentation frameworks, which we call sustainable and tolerant. Each one is constructed on the common ground of the powerful concept of admissibility introduced (...) by Dung in [10]. The novelty of this approach consists in viewing the admissibility of a subset of arguments as relative to potentially challenging subsets of arguments. Both sustainable and tolerant semantics are more credulous than preferred semantics (i.e. they justify at least the same arguments, and possibly more). Given certain sufficient conditions they coincide among them as well as with other semantics introduced by Dung. (shrink)

The purpose of the research is to explicate the Buddhist principles of ethical analysis of premeditated murder as an immoral act. The author solves this problem through the method of case study of exegetical treatises of outstanding Buddhist thinkers Vasubandhu (4th-5th centuries) and Yašomitra (8th century). It is shown that the ethical analysis of premeditated murder is based on a religious anthropological concept (the Buddhist doctrine of human action producing karmic retribution). Sinful intent is interpreted as an immoral mental urge (...) that generated a verbal intention to take the life of a certain person or a certain animal. According to the canonical point of view, there are three mental roots of immoral acts - greed, hatred, ignorance. The ethnical analysis of sinful intent is aimed at determining the connection of intent with any of these three mental phenomena. In accordance with this principle, Buddhist thinkers have identified three types of premeditated murder. All of them produce a “black” (unfavorable) karmic fruit, i.e. an unfortunate form of rebirth, exacerbating physical suffering. Great attention is paid by the author to the problem of the karmic responsibility of individuals ordering murders and the executors of such orders. In the considered sources, the verbal order to kill and its physical execution are interpreted as equally immoral actions that produce collective karmic responsibility. The author of the research examines in detail a special class of premeditated murder, fraught with inevitable infernal retribution. This class includes murders of benefactors (mother, father, arhat) and Buddhist ascetics practicing asceticism. These malicious sins were interpreted as an insurmountable obstacle to achieving a soteriological goal, even in the distant transcendental future. It is shown that Buddhist exegetes have developed principles for diagnosing these sins and characterized the immoral personal characteristics of sinners (disrespect towards parents, Buddhist preachers and religious ascetics, heretical denial of spiritual values, shamelessness, arrogance, ignorant self-will, misanthropy). (shrink)

The potential of memory modification techniques (MMTs) has raised concerns and sparked a debate in neuroethics, particularly in the context of identity and authenticity. This paper addresses the question whether and how MMTs influence authenticity. I proceed by drawing two distinctions within the received views on authenticity. From this, I conclude that an analysis of MMTs based on a dual-basis, process view of authenticity is warranted, which implies that the influence of MMTs on authenticity crucially depends on the specifics of (...) how memory modification would eventually work. Therefore, I continue with a systematic analysis of possible properties of MMTs in which I distinguish between the dimensions of memories and the kinds of experiences that can be modified as well as the properties of the process of memory modification. The impact of MMTs on authenticity is analyzed regarding the possible properties of MMTs and based on a narrative approach to authenticity which fulfills the requirements of a dual-basis, process view of authenticity. Lastly, I explore the potential of MMTs to shift the balance between self-discovery and self-creation within authenticity and thereby alter the concept itself as well as the value of authenticity. (shrink)

The most important distinction in value theory is the subjective-objective distinction which determines the epistemological status of value judgments about medical intervention. Ethical decisions in medical intervention presuppose one of three structures of justification — namely, an inductive approach, a deductive approach which can be either consequentialist or non-consequentialist, and a uniquely ethical approach. Inductivism and deductivism have been discussed extensively in the literature and are only briefly described here. The uniquely ethical approach which presupposes value objectivism is analyzed in (...) detail. This method involves a purely ethical inference which moves from facts to values directly with an emphasis on reason which involves a non-logical justification (as opposed to illogical). It involves the use of natural practical arguments which have an imperative conclusion but no imperative premise and exhibit a value-requiredness between two states of affairs. (shrink)

It has been argued that Extended Cognition (EXT), a recently much discussed framework in the philosophy of cognition, would serve as the theoretical basis to account for the impact of Brain Computer Interfaces (BCI) on the self and life of patients with Locked-in Syndrome (LIS). In this paper I will argue that this claim is unsubstantiated, EXT is not the appropriate theoretical background for understanding the role of BCI in LIS. I will critically assess what a theory of the (...) extended self would comprise and provide a list of desiderata for a theory of self that EXT fails to accommodate for. There is, however, an alternative framework in Cognitive Science, Enactivism, which entails the basis for an account of self that is able to accommodate for these desiderata. I will outline some first steps towards an Enactive approach to the self, suggesting that the self could be considered as a form of human autonomy. Understanding the self from an enactive point of view will allow to shed new light on the questions of whether and how BCIs affect or change the selves of patients with LIS. (shrink)

Purpose. Based on tracing dualistic tendencies in the history of the concept “self” formation, the paper aims to clarify in what way dualism – contradistinction of the self and sociality, in particular – is being overcome in phenomenological and hermeneutic approaches to the self. Methodology. The systematic and integrative approaches, hermeneutic, phenomenological and retrospective methods, comparative analysis, description and synthesis underlie the research conducted in this paper. Theoretical basis. The development of the concept “self” (...) is traced based on historical retrospective of its definitions. The paper shows the influence of Kantian interpretation of the self upon the contemporary approaches, presents the comparative analysis of the most recent definitions of the self and illustrates the study results on the relation of the self to the body, the world, the narration and the identity with reference to Martin Heidegger, Paul Ricoeur and Charles Taylor in particular. Originality. An integration of phenomenological and hermeneutic approaches to the self is introduced in the paper. It is argued that phenomenological and hermeneutic interpretations can be represented as complementing each other, since they share the anti-dualist perspective and interweave in description of the key aspects of the self, particularly sociality and language. Conclusion. Dualism is overcome in the contemporary interpretations of the self as it is clear from the phenomenological and hermeneutic approaches example. There is no more acute opposition between the self and the world, the self and the body, the self and the social life of a person. The self is considered as “being-in-the-world” which unfolds through intersection of different dimensions: subjectivity, body, temporality, language and sociality. Sociality provides the self with a moral framework through identity and enables conditions for person’s self-fulfillment, since the self reaches completeness only by transcending itself towards the others. The modern discovery of the self entails the need to invent a new type of solidarity. (shrink)

This article discusses the [development and] use of a video life-world schema to explore alternative orientations to the shared health consultation. It is anticipated that this schema can be used by practitioners and consumers alike to understand the dynamics of videoed health consultations, the role of the participants within it and the potential to consciously alter the outcome by altering behaviour during the process of interaction. The study examines health consultation participation and develops an interpretative method of analysis that includes (...) image elicitation (via videos), phenomenology (to identify the components of the analytic framework), narrative (to depict the stories of interactions) and a reflexive mode (to develop shared meaning through a conceptual framework for analysis). The analytic framework is derived from a life-world conception of human mutual shared interaction which is presented here as a novel approach to understanding patient-centred care. The video materials used in this study were derived from consultations in a Walk-in Centre (WiC) in East London. The conceptual framework produced through the process of video analysis is comprised of different combinations of movement, knowledge and emotional conversations that are used to classify objective or engaged WiC health care interactions. The videoed interactions organise along an active or passive, facilitative or directive typical situation continuum illustrating different kinds of textual approaches to practice that are in tension or harmony. The schema demonstrates how practitioners and consumers interact to produce these outcomes and indicates the potential for both consumers and practitioners to be educated to develop practice dynamics that support patient-centred care and impact on health outcomes. (shrink)

In this book we offer a theory of the self, whose core ideas are that the self is a process of self-representing, and this process aims mainly at defending the self-conscious subject against the threat of its metaphysical inconsistence. In other words, the self is essentially a repertoire of psychological manoeuvres whose outcome is a self-representation aimed at coping with the fundamental fragility of the human subject. Our picture of the self differs from (...) both the idealist and the eliminative approaches widely represented in contemporary discussion. Against the idealist approach, we deny that the self is something primitive and logically prior. Rather, we take it to be the result of a process of construction that starts with subpersonal unconscious processes. On the other hand, we also reject the anti-realistic, eliminative argument that, from the non-primary, derivative nature of the self, infers its status as an illusory by-product of real neurobiological events, devoid of any explanatory role. (shrink)