Do 'I' actually exist?

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FBM
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Re: Do 'I' actually exist?

Post by FBM » Sat Jan 15, 2011 3:31 pm

This isn't light reading, but it could be informative:

http://www.soton.ac.uk/~crsi/Changes_in.pdf

Here's a taste of the beginning; follow the link if you want the full Monty:
The topic of the self has produced some of the most prolific investigations
in social cognition. Representative empirical foci are the structural
properties of the self (Higgins, Van Hook, & Dorfman, 1988; see
Higgins & Bargh, 1987, for a review), the memorial, processing, and
judgmental consequences of the self (for reviews, see Kihlstrom et al.,
1987; Markus & Wurf, 1987), and the cognitive bases of trait selfdescriptiveness
judgments (Klein & Loftus, in press).
An additional empirical trend has sought to place the self in context,
whether social, cognitive, or affective. The social context is composed
of the physical or imagined presence of others. The cognitive context
is broadly defined in terms of constructs stored in memory. Affective
context refers to affective states. The affective context is of particular
relevance to this chapter.
Research placing the self in affective context has taken two general
directions. One direction explores the effects of the self on affective
states. This line of research has generated several interesting findings.
For example, discrepancies between the actual and the ideal self generate
dejection-related emotions, whereas discrepancies between the actual
and ought self engender agitation -related emotions (Higgins, 1987);
self-complexity is associated with reduced negative affect (Linville,
"A philosopher is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn't there. A theologian is the man who finds it." ~ H. L. Mencken

"We ain't a sharp species. We kill each other over arguments about what happens when you die, then fail to see the fucking irony in that."

"It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions in favor of vegetarianism while the wolf remains of a different opinion."

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