Chapter
Sixteen
Egos, bundles, and theories of self
I have very intense passions, and while I am in their grip my impet-
uousness is without equal: I know neither restraint, nor respect,
nor fear, nor decorum; I am cynical, insolent, violent, bold: there is
no shame that could stop me, nor danger that could frighten me:
beyond the one object that occupies me, the universe is nothing to
me. But all that lasts only a moment, and the moment that follows
annihilates me.
(Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Confessions [Les Confessions], 1782–1789)SELVES AND BODIES, WORLDS,
AND OTHERS
Some of the accounts outlined so far take some notice of the bodily and envi-
ronmental context of the self; many do not. Zahavi’s theory, influenced by the
phenomenological tradition, emphasises the role of embodiment in structuring
and constituting experience. A frequent collaborator of Zahavi’s, Irish-American
philosopher Shaun Gallagher, expands on this capacity as something given from
the very outset:
The fact of embodiment is not something we need to reflect on to
recognise. I do not need to reflectively ascertain that my body is mine,
or that it is my body that is in pain or that is experiencing pleasure. In
normal experience, this knowledge is already built into the structure of
experience.
(2005, p. 29)This raises again the question which came up in Zahavi’s reflections on unity: if
an important part of the concept of self is feeling that my experiences belong to
me, we confront the question of what mineness is and feels like. Drawing on Bud-
dhist ideas, the philosopher Miri Albahari (2006; and discussed in Zahavi, 2011)
distinguishes between perspectival ownership, where the experience presents
itself as distinctive to the subject of the experience, and personal ownership, a
stronger sense of identifying oneself as the owner of an experience: thinking of it
(whether reflectively or pre-reflectively) as being mine or apprehending it as part
of me. Albahari thinks that having a sense of self requires not just perspectival
ownership but personal ownership: not just being a point of view but drawing
boundaries between what belongs to ‘me’ or other. But for her, crucially, having
a sense of self is not the same as having a self. The sense of self exists but the self
itself does not. Our experiences precede and create our sense of self rather than
the other way round.
The idea that a self, or sense of self, is generated by facts about our experi-
ence (rather than experiences being possible because we have or are selves) is
shared by social constructionist theories of self. These hold that selves are not
born, but emerge in our interactions with other people. So instead of selves
coming together in relationships, selves (or just the idea of selves) emerge from
relationships.