Structural realist account of the self

Date

2016-12-01

Author

Davoody Benı, Majıd

Metadata

Show full item record

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Item Usage Stats

158
views

0
downloads

In this paper, inspired by the late twentieth century developments in philosophy of science (ontic structural realism), I propose an ontological scheme to accommodate the scientifically-informed anti-substantivalist views of the self. I call the position structural realist theory of the self (SRS for short). More specifically, I argue that SRS provides a middle ground for bringing a metaphysical reconciliation between the two recurring, and apparently competing forms of such anti-substantivalist views, i.e., eliminativism and pluralism. The notion of the structural self, as the underpinning pattern that is the subject of the ontological commitments in SRS, is not as cumbersome as the orthodox substantivalist notion, and yet accounts for the relation of the different aspects and elements of the self by integrating them structurally into a central unifying pattern of selfhood. I use the experimental studies of Northoff et al. (Neuroimage 31:440-457, 2006) about the processing of the self-related stimuli in the cortical midline structure of the brain, to argue that the underlying pattern of the selfhood could be sought at the level of information processing (in the sense of generic computation). I also add a programmatic suggestion about how the different situated, experiential and extended aspects of the selfhood could be structurally incorporated into this underlying pattern.

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/93790

Journal

SYNTHESE

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-016-1098-9

Collections

Department of Philosophy, Article

Suggestions

OpenMETU
Core

New directions in the direction of time Bağcı, Gökhan Barış; Grünberg, Teo; Department of Philosophy (2006) This thesis analyzes the direction of time problem in the framework of philosophy of science. The radiation arrow, Newtonian arrow, thermodynamic arrow and quantum mechanical arrow have been studied in detail. The importance of the structure of space-time concerning direction of time is emphasized.
Structural realism without metaphysics: Notes on Carnap's measured pragmatic structural realism Davoody Benı, Majıd (2015-01-01) Carnap's reinvention of the Ramsey-sentence approach to scientific theories has been at the center of a new debate in recent years. Following Grover Maxwell, Psillos (2000a) argued that Carnap's re-invention of the Ramsey-sentence had failed to lead to the desired neutral stance in the realism-instrumentalism debate, and ended, instead, to a form of structural realism which happened to be liable to Newman's objection to Russell's version of structural realism. The objection held that without putting suitabl...
Epistemological naturalism, skeptical threat and the question of normativity in post-apocalyptic times Baç, Mutlu Murat (2007-01-01) My aim in this paper is to critically deal with two issues confronting naturalist philosophers who want to steer a middle course between radical naturalism and total apriorism in epistemology. These issues are (1) the role of a priori in ordinary human knowledge, and (2) who succeeds and who fails in properly dealing with the skeptical challenge. I focus on the views of P. Kitcher and L. BonJour with an aim to display the strengths and weaknesses of the naturalist perspective. My conclusion is that there ar...
Structural Realism, Metaphysical Unification, and the Ontology and Epistemology of Patterns Davoody Benı, Majıd (2017-01-01) Ladyman and Ross's account of the metaphysical component of ontic structural realism was associated with a unificationist view of the connection between fundamental physics and special sciences. The aim of the present article is to assess the sense of unification that is at issue in Ladyman and Ross's definition of metaphysics. Given the ontic core of Ladyman and Ross's version of structural realism, it should be assumed that the unifying endeavour is worthwhile only if the connective links that underpin un...
Syntactical Informational Structural Realism Davoody Benı, Majıd (2018-12-01) Luciano Floridi's informational structural realism (ISR) takes a constructionist attitude towards the problems of epistemology and metaphysics, but the question of the nature of the semantical component of his view remains vexing. In this paper, I propose to dispense with the semantical component of ISR completely. I outline a Syntactical version of ISR (SISR for short). The unified entropy-based framework of information has been adopted as the groundwork of SISR. To establish its realist component, SISR sh...

Citation Formats

M. Davoody Benı, “Structural realist account of the self,” SYNTHESE, vol. 193, no. 12, pp. 3727–3740, 2016, Accessed: 00, 2021. [Online]. Available: https://hdl.handle.net/11511/93790.