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To know the self as a matrix of maybe: An account of the specialness of self-knowledge
Uppsala University, Disciplinary Domain of Humanities and Social Sciences, Faculty of Arts, Department of Philosophy, Logic and Metaphysics.
2020 (English)Independent thesis Advanced level (degree of Master (Two Years)), 30 credits / 45 HE creditsStudent thesis
Abstract [en]

The essay is an attempt to make sense of the apparently special relation between self-knowledge and agency. To achieve that goal, the essay translates the account of what it is like to be a human self offered by Sartre into the language of evolutionary psychology. In L’être et le néant, Sartre describes the phenomenology of the self as a series of inescapable choices in a contingent set of circumstances. This essay identifies Sartre’s description with what Baumeister, Maranges and Sjåstad call a matrix of maybe: the mechanism of nonfactual pragmatic prospection found in humans. Consequently, it defines the self as a matrix of maybe operating within a contingency matrix and reflecting on its own operation. Self-knowledge, the essay concludes, seems special because we routinely and erroneously ascribe to the self features of its contingency matrix. Most of our true first-person claims should not be read as I PREDICATE. Instead, they can be explicated as I have to act in a world where C PREDICATE, where C is the relevant part of the contingency matrix.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2020. , p. 77
Keywords [en]
the self, self-knowledge, self-reflection, selfhood, choice, Sartre, Being and Nothingness, participant perspective, nonfactual prospection, matrix of maybe, alternative futures
Keywords [fr]
L’être et le néant
National Category
Philosophy
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-413530OAI: oai:DiVA.org:uu-413530DiVA, id: diva2:1442571
Subject / course
Theoretical Philosophy
Supervisors
Examiners
Available from: 2020-06-17 Created: 2020-06-17 Last updated: 2020-06-17Bibliographically approved

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CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf