Towards an Integrated Theory of Self-consiousness: Self-Concept - Sociality - Time (Veranstaltung: 26.-27.03.2011, Berlin)

The problem of self-consciousness is a central problem of philosophy. Self-consciousness, or the ability to think about oneself as oneself, is at the root of our ability for moral self-evaluation, or our ability to create a narrative identity, and has interesting implications concerning social cognition. Accordingly, many attempts have been made to provide a theory of self-consciousness, and, following the linguistic turn in analytical philosophy, such a theory is often thought to be found through an analysis of the linguistic expressions of self-consciousness, in particular the semantics of the first person pronoun (Spitzley 2000). However, this way of approaching the problem has recently been called into question by proponents of theories of nonconceptual content who argue that we ought to look at the nonconceptual ways of representing the self that provide the foundation for our later ability to acquire a concept of ourselves(Bermúdez 1998; Legrand 2006;2007). Other issues that have recently found new or renewed attention are the social roots and the diachronic structure of self-consciousness (Newen & Fiebich 2009; de Vignemont 2010; Zahavi 2001). Unfortunately though, as of yet, discussions of these different facets of self-consciousness have remained rather isolated, due in part to the different methodological angles from which they tend to be approached. The aim of this workshop is to mitigate this shortcoming by bringing together a number of carefully selected articles that will explore and bridge the different facets of self-consciousness. The workshop will consist of three sections.