Workshop

Self and the Social

6th and 7th March 2014,

Institute for Philosophy of Language

New University of Lisbon

Entrance to the workshop is free but please register via email.  Any additional question please contact: jorgalvesenator@gmail.com, alexandergerner@yahoo.com, hipolito.ines@gmail.com

Self and the Social

A fundamental aspect in the study of the self is the relationship between self and others. Several issues have emerged: does the sense of self depend on the relationship with the other? Or can one think the self logically, without reference to others? Is the social feeling towards the other innate, and how does the social self evolve? Is there a constitutional embodied otherness/ strangeness (Waldenfels) for instance in relation to double concept of the the living body/ lived body or the body schema/ body image (Gallagher) or bodies in technology (Ihde)? What is the relationship of self/other in between existential incorporated feelings (Ratcliffe) of „otherness“ and external other bodies? Are our brains, social relational organs (Fuchs)? Are mental disorders social? What is the role of social interaction in diseases such as autism, schizophrenia etc.? What is the relationship between empathy and body language in social interaction? What is the relationship between sub-personal, interpersonal and personal in the social self? In sum: Do we become human/ a self by embodied social interaction? What is the role of the other in the concept of self?

We ask for contributions to the above and below mentioned questions:

(a) What are the neural, psycho-biological, psycho-social developmental and philosophical bases of affective exchange and attunement with others, of shared engagegment (Hobson & Hobson), joint attention (Seemann) and joint bodily movements (intercorporality), touch, intimate relationships, and shared gestures in interaction spaces and relations of common objects such as in pointing (Cappuchio) or the development of the human bodily basic ecological and social self (Thomas Fuchs)? What are structural features that enable specific perception-action loops constituting, or transforming social interaction between self and others?

(b) How do social skills in children in the context of awareness of others develop during interaction? Should we adopt a (radical) enactive (Hutto) concept of self to investigate socially mediated cognition?

(c) How does a personal self come up in the first and second person perspective? Should we start from a second-person approach to explain the cognitive-affective foundations of the self? What is the relation of affective co-attunement/ engagement, shared emotions/ bodily existential feelings with the constitution of (bodily) intersubjectivity?

(c) How does intersubjectivity/ intercorporality change in psychopathology?

What are intersubjective/intercorporal factors affecting psychopathologies, especially in schizophrenia, autism and somatoform disorders. How can we extract implications for treating psychopathology of the self from a social self point of view? What do feelings of disembodiment have to do with the disruptions in self-other relations?

(d) How are touch, mutual gesture and perspective-taking of the self-other related in meaningful, embedded, embodied self-world constitution? How do gestures and intercorporality constitute the relation of bodily engagement, bodily fluency and affective bodily attunement (Maeise) that helps the self to orient in the world or to constitute subjectivity in the first place?

(e) How are intercorporality and intersubjectivity related to each other?

What is the role of hands, gestures, the face and mutual gaze in dynamic relations between organisms in intersubjectivity? How can we distinguish between contextual factors and factors constituting a multidisciplinary theoretical and empirical approach towards the exchange between self and others in shared action-perception spaces?

(f) How do technologies of the body/ embodied techniques (Ihde) constitute, change or enhance the self-other relation? How is the empathetic self-other relation mediated by (interactive) arts and technologies as in cinematic experience?

Linking the state of art and novel approaches of the social self in intersubjectivity/ intercorporality studies, this Workshop aims to raise questions, inviting new theoretical and methodological approaches in the studies of self and its social constitutional context. This Workshop attempts to assess a framework to the contemporary research theories in the fields of phenomenology, developmental psychology, evolutionary psychology, psychoanalysis, neuroscience, psychiatry, cognitive psychology as well as in visual/ interactive and performing arts, cinema philosophy and philosophy of technology linked to the self and the social.

Find more information here.