The True Self. Critique, Nature, and Method
The history of philosophy gives us many different accounts of a true self, connecting it to the essence of what a person is, the notion of conscience, and the ideal human being. Some proponents of the true self can also be found within psychology, but its existence is mostly rejected. Many psycholog...
Autores principales: | , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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Frontiers Media S.A.
2019
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Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6817459/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31695635 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02250 |
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author | Sparby, Terje Edelhäuser, Friedrich Weger, Ulrich W. |
author_facet | Sparby, Terje Edelhäuser, Friedrich Weger, Ulrich W. |
author_sort | Sparby, Terje |
collection | PubMed |
description | The history of philosophy gives us many different accounts of a true self, connecting it to the essence of what a person is, the notion of conscience, and the ideal human being. Some proponents of the true self can also be found within psychology, but its existence is mostly rejected. Many psychological studies, however, have shown that people commonly believe in the existence of a true self. Although folk psychology often includes a belief in a true self, its existence is disputed by psychological science. Here, we consider the critique raised by Strohminger et al., stating that the true self is (1) radically subjective and (2) not observable, hence cannot be studied scientifically (Strohminger et al., 2017). Upon closer investigation, the argument that the self is radically subjective is not convincing. Furthermore, rather than accepting that the true self cannot be studied scientifically, we ask: What would a science have to look like to be able to study the true self? In order to answer this question, we outline the conceptual nature of the true self, which involves phenomenological and narrative aspects in addition to psychological dimensions. These aspects together suggest a method through which this concept can be investigated from the first-person perspective. On a whole, we propose an integrative approach to understanding and investigating the true self. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-6817459 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2019 |
publisher | Frontiers Media S.A. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-68174592019-11-06 The True Self. Critique, Nature, and Method Sparby, Terje Edelhäuser, Friedrich Weger, Ulrich W. Front Psychol Psychology The history of philosophy gives us many different accounts of a true self, connecting it to the essence of what a person is, the notion of conscience, and the ideal human being. Some proponents of the true self can also be found within psychology, but its existence is mostly rejected. Many psychological studies, however, have shown that people commonly believe in the existence of a true self. Although folk psychology often includes a belief in a true self, its existence is disputed by psychological science. Here, we consider the critique raised by Strohminger et al., stating that the true self is (1) radically subjective and (2) not observable, hence cannot be studied scientifically (Strohminger et al., 2017). Upon closer investigation, the argument that the self is radically subjective is not convincing. Furthermore, rather than accepting that the true self cannot be studied scientifically, we ask: What would a science have to look like to be able to study the true self? In order to answer this question, we outline the conceptual nature of the true self, which involves phenomenological and narrative aspects in addition to psychological dimensions. These aspects together suggest a method through which this concept can be investigated from the first-person perspective. On a whole, we propose an integrative approach to understanding and investigating the true self. Frontiers Media S.A. 2019-10-22 /pmc/articles/PMC6817459/ /pubmed/31695635 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02250 Text en Copyright © 2019 Sparby, Edelhäuser and Weger. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. |
spellingShingle | Psychology Sparby, Terje Edelhäuser, Friedrich Weger, Ulrich W. The True Self. Critique, Nature, and Method |
title | The True Self. Critique, Nature, and Method |
title_full | The True Self. Critique, Nature, and Method |
title_fullStr | The True Self. Critique, Nature, and Method |
title_full_unstemmed | The True Self. Critique, Nature, and Method |
title_short | The True Self. Critique, Nature, and Method |
title_sort | true self. critique, nature, and method |
topic | Psychology |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6817459/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31695635 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02250 |
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