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Evolutionary Theory Western Perspectives on Self, Subjectivity, and Intersubjectivity
In response to some of Johnson’s ideas on selfhood, Jay Ogilvy said that he thinks that human subjectivity is intimately connected to narrativity. Ogilvy pointed out that in his observation of monological science, subjectivity is portrayed as existing only in the dis-embodied and thinking individual. In his own stereoscopic vision of science, the self instead becomes constituted by its history, context, and relationships. The self is a node in a field, or a network of relationships. And the self is produced through an ongoing narrative of itself. Gordon Wheeler emphasized the cultural embeddedness of all subjectivity and selfhood. Wheeler is particularly interested in how a new public narrative for the human self can move us beyond the selfish gene myth that accords with the West’s hyper-individualism. Wheeler’s research in developmental psychology has led him to the view that the human self is much more intersubjectively situated than most evolutionary theorists think. In the near future we might say "man the relater" instead of "man the hunter." With respect to when individuality and subjectivity first evolved, Evan Thompson said that the notion of an individual should be tightly connected to the idea of selection. Thompson said that he thinks it is a mistake to apply the notion of selection too broadly, as Dan Dennett has in Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, in which he writes that evolution is simply an algorithmic process applicable in any sphere. Thompson suggested that only a self-maintained and self-produced biological identity that demonstrates interest in the world (from Spinoza’s notion of konetus) should be considered a self. That self’s interest in the world is a proto-form of desire proper. Francisco Varela called this "biological autonomy." Stu Kauffman calls the beings that display it "autonomous agents."
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