From Minimal Self to Self as Hyper-generalized Sign: Notes for an Integrated Model of Subjectivity

The self can be understood as a "hyper-generalized sign" that emerges from intersubjective sense-making, consistent with an emergentist view of personal identity. Integrating phenomenological, cognitive, and enactive research, the paper argues that pre-reflective consciousness and the non-conceptual self of the living body are not separate entities but part of a single psychological construct. This construct includes various forms of the self—minimal, pre-reflective, non-conceptual, ecological, and extended—studied in embodied and situated cognitive science. The theoretical perspective proposes a semiotic model of mind where the self is a dynamic product of intersubjective processes rather than a static substance.

Study at a glance

Abstract

This paper proposes a phenomenologically oriented theoretical perspective and it aims at showing that intersubjectivity and its dynamics of sense-making are consistent with an emergentist view of the personal Self. In particular, this paper proposes a semiotic model of mind and a correlated conception of the self as a “hyper-generalized sign”. The starting point for this analysis is based on models emerging from phenomenological, cognitive and enactive research which differentiate between pre-reflective consciousness and a non-conceptual self of the living body. The paper will try to develop a single non-hypostatised construct of a psychological and psychodynamic kind that includes and integrates all those intersubjective features of cognition addressed by phenomenological research on the various forms of the self (the minimal Self; the pre-reflective Self; the non-conceptual Self; the ecological Self; the extended Self) which are also an object of study for embodied and situated approaches in the cognitive sciences.