Guest Lecture, January 10th: Professor Dan Zahavi - Defending a minimalist notion of self: Replying to recent critics

The talk will be a part of the conference: emotions across boundries

emotions across boundries - Conference program

In my talk, I will first briefly outline the main ideas and motivations behind the introduction of a minimalist notion of self. I will then consider a number of challenges and criticisms that this notion has recently been subjected to in articles appearing in Review of Philosophy and Psychology. These criticisms all engage in various ways with what might be called the universality question. If it is the case that our experiences are accompanied by a minimal sense of self such that one might talk of the existence of an experiential self, is it then something that holds with necessity, such that it characterizes all experiences however minimal or disordered they might be? Is it something that only holds for normal, adult, experiences? Or might it be something that only holds under rather special circumstances, say, when we reflectively scrutinize and appropriate our experiences?