I think Yael and I have  a similar aesthetic  and interest in the impact of naming on the self.

My planned research topic looks at how the Self blurs with the identities of fictional characters when reading a novel. A good story compels readers to suspend their Self as they become another person. A group of boys and girls listening to a campfire story can be transformed into a single person (the protagonist) and return to their former selves after the story ends. Who are we then when we are immersed in a character of a book and for a brief moment become a young boy, an old woman, a whale hunter or a dying soldier? Where is our Self in those moments when we become them? This research will look at the ancient yet effective method of story telling, in particular how character identification is achieved and how it affects our sense of Self. Story telling can also be used as a form of teaching that imparts knowledge through experience (indirectly via a fictional character) which, having Lieberman’s argument in mind, shows how a malleable Self helps group living. This research builds on the works of neuroscientists such as Antonio Damasio, Alva Noe, and Matthew Lieberman, of fiction writers, of philosophers such as Avie Noe, Daniel Dennett. I will also look at how mystics use story telling to enter students’ minds.

1. Find an idea or claim that Lieberman can only make in response to a source. Describe how he uses the source, using Mark Gaipa’s categories:

Lieberman cites Friedrich Nietzsche as saying that: “Whatever they may think and say about their egoism, the great majority nonetheless do nothing for their ego their whole life long: what they do is done for the phantom of their ego which has formed itself in the heads of those around them and has been communicated to them.”

In response to Nietzsche’s view, Lieberman argues that the self is socially constructed. It seems that based on Gaipa’s source categories, he used Strategy 8, or crossbreeding. Lieberman uses Nietzsche’s philosophical view and pairs it with his finding in neuroscience to come up with an argument that is different from the (presumably) prevailing understanding that the Self comes from within.

2. Choose a passage in Lieberman’s book that seems to relate to one or more of our course texts in an interesting way. Transcribe and cite the passage. Then discuss its relationship to the other text(s):

Lieberman writes on page 191 that the self “exists primarily as a conduit to let the social groups we are immersed in supplement our natural impulses with socially derived impulses. The social world imparts a collection of beliefs about ourselves, about morality, and about what constitutes a worthwhile life.”

This relates to Antonio Damasio’s comments on page 218 on the pdf file:

“Once autobiographical selves can operate on the basis of knowledge etched in brain circuits and in external records of stone, clay, or paper, humans become capable of hitching their individual biological needs to the accumulated sapience. Thus begins a long process of inquiry, reflection, and response, expressed throughout recorded human history in myths, religions, the arts and various structures invented to govern social behavior – constructed morality, justice system, economics, politics, science and technology.”

Here the two passages relate not by way of their shared understanding of the Self but precisely because of their contradictory views. Lieberman thinks the Self is constructed socially while Domasio thinks the Self expands into the social world, emerging out of a protoself. It is worth pointing out that both based their opposing conclusions on intensive studies on the brain. Their contradictory views despite their common field of study and methods are what links the two passages together.