Personal Being
Rom Harré
Persons and Selves
D.M.B. 11.10.13.
Persons and Selves
Rom Harré offers a particular methodology to understand
the nature of personal being, and it is one particularly
suited to a study of the nature of isolation and solitude.
As before, the quoted sections given below, and the
diagrams, come directly from his book and may be used in
your assignment. Remember also that at the core of this
theory are three unities: identity, consciousness, and
agency. In terms of the assignment, this means that
whatever else you make of your source text, you will need
to analyse it in these terms at least, if in no others!
We resume with Harre’s introductory remarks, which are
intended to establish informally the distinction between
self and person. I have used colour to link quotes with my
explanations – I hope this helps.
Harré characterises the self in these terms:
‘The central pivot of my argument is this: the semantics
of the conceptual cluster around the general notion of the
‘self’ is to be understood as if the ‘self’ were a
theoretical concept like those of the natural sciences,
judged by its behavioural and material analogies and its
degree of co-ordination with the analytic analogue that is
in use in abstracting experiential patterns, which are to
be explained by invoking it’ (p. 25).
Take the concept of gravity as an illustration – we are aware of what
it does, we can measure the forces involved, and people were
subject to the consequences of gravity long before Isaac Newton
produced his theory and named it.
In language, we assume a self which co-ordinates experience, and
this ‘abstracted experience’ is then explained by referring to the
nature of the self that has carried out these observations!
Harré continues,
‘Unlike the natural sciences, in the human sciences the
productive process, and in particular the beings involved
in it, are themselves products of ‘educational’ processes
in which these very theoretical concepts play an
indispensable part. These beings are what they are
partly by virtue of holding this or that theory’ (p. 25).
In psychology, sociology, anthropology, etc. the production of new
concepts and their inter-relationship with others are all dependent
on the definition of the self that exists within the society that is
sustaining these kinds of research. But as these sciences become
embedded in the culture of that society, so the concepts begin to
influence the ‘making’ of individuals – think of Piagettian babies, or
Vygotskyian babies, etc!
So where does the ‘theoretical’ notion of the self
come from in the first place? Harre suggests:
‘[It is] my belief that the central constructing concept of
the individual human psychology is a concept of ‘self’, but
that it is a theoretical concept whose source analogue is
the socially defined and sustained concept of ‘person’
that is favoured in the society under study and is
embodied in the grammatical forms of public speech
appropriate to talk about persons. Our personal being is
created by our coming to believe a theory of self based
on our society’s working conception of a person. I can
change my personal being only if I can come to believe a
theory of self derived from the concept of a person
current in another and different society’ (p. 26; my
parentheses).
(For ‘Westerners’ these narratives may be helpful to consider:
Shogun, The Marsh Arabs, and The Jewel in the Crown.)
This gives a definition for the entire project:
‘By ‘person’ I intend the socially defined, publicly visible
embodied being, endowed with all kinds of powers and
capacities for public, meaningful action, … . By ‘self’ I
mean the personal unity I take myself to be, my singular
inner being, so to speak.’ … (p. 26; my ellipses).
Harré stresses that this sense of self is different from the ‘self-concept’
– a term used in psychology to indicate the bundle of beliefs that an
individual may hold about themselves, i.e., I’m honest, likeable, and
hard-working, etc. Harré’s self is much more deeply embedded in our
sense of identity as a ‘me’ or an ‘I’, in our sense of agency as ‘my
actions’, ‘my thoughts’, and the sense that this these thoughts are ‘my’
thoughts.
Personal Identity:
‘I distinguish the socially defined fact of personal identity, in
which the particularity of personal embodiment plays a
central part, from the personal sense of identity through
which a person conceives of him or herself as a singular
being with a continuous and unique history. The latter is a
necessary condition for the acquisition of a theory of the
self, which is experienced as the sense of identity.’ (p. 27).
Self-consciousness:
‘As a form of knowledge, consciousness must take on the
structure of the grammatical forms in which personal
knowledge is expressed in psycho-linguistically distinct
cultures. I argue for a distinction between consciousness as
the experiencing of something and consciousness as
knowing that one is experiencing something.’ (p. 27).
Harré adds that, ‘the experiential aspect of consciousness can
be expressed by using the concepts of ‘awareness’ and
‘attention’.’ (p. 27).
Agency:
‘To be an agent is to be something more than a creature with
a sub-personal psychology formed of active components like
drives, motivations, intentions and desires. To be an agent is
to conceive of oneself as (hold a theory that one is) a being in
possession of an ultimate power of decision and action. A
pure agent is capable of deciding between alternatives, even
if they are equally attractive or forceful. A pure agent is
capable of over-coming temptations and distractions to
realize its plans. It can adopt new principles and it can curb
its own desires.’ (p. 29).
Agency, cont.
‘I believe that what is transcendental to experience is
none other than the social conditions under which
persons are created from mere organic beings by their
acquiring a theory appropriate to their society. To be
self-conscious and to act freely are not, I believe,
mysterious capacities, but particular ways of thinking
about what one is experiencing, planning, executing and
so on.’ (p. 29).
For Harré, then, proof that agency, identity, and
consciousness exist ‘above’ sub-personal desires,
intentions, etc. depends on taking akrasia (weakness of
the will) seriously, along with bloody-mindedness.
These represent the two poles of the self’s unified
autonomy.
His second chapter is devoted to the
analysis of the dimensions of application
and the root components underpinning
the concept of autonomous being, and by
way of a reminder, recall that in week 1,
I indicated that Harré dispenses with the
commonly used ‘Cartesian’ distinctions
between mental and material actions,
between subjective v. objective facts, or
‘inner’ and ‘outer’ experiences.
‘A field of application can be presented as a space. Taking
the metaphor a step further, I shall call the critical study of
fields of application ‘dimensional analysis’ and the teasing out
of root ideas … ‘componential analysis’.’ (p. 35).
Harré, later in the same chapter, provides this diagram:DISPLAY
Public
Passive
Individual
Collective
REALIZATION
Active
See slide 12 for
explanation.
AGENCY
Private
(Figure 2.1, p. 44.)
The three axes constitute, in Harré’s terms, three ‘spaces’
which are independent of one another.
The figure indicates that display, realization, and agency
are features of human life which can vary independently
to one another, and within each dimension according to
the distinction between there being one instance and
many. For ‘display’, the range is from the private to the
public and so one can think of public spectacles and
private fantasies, presentations intended for public forms
of recognition, and those private acts of display which are
only intended for oneself. For ‘realisation’ the range runs
from individual to collective, and what is identified is the
manner by which an action is realised – through public
works or by individual interventions. Finally, there is
‘agency’ itself, but the range here seems to be different in
kind, since it runs from activity to passivity. The problem
is resolved, however, if ‘passivity’ means obeying orders!
Harré makes the point that with such a diagram one can
think of it as being like a solid square block that has been
cut in half horizontally, vertically, and through its depth
resulting in eight smaller square blocks or quadrants.
He continues, ‘Each of the eight cells offers possibilities for
the use of psychological concepts. The location ‘private –
collective – active’ allows for the attribution of quasipsychological concepts to such pseudo-entities as firms.
For instance, the concept of ‘information’ could be applied
to this location in the three-space. We might speak of
concealing information from other firms.’ (p. 44).
In terms of of the narratives likely to feature in your first
assignment, the act of going into solitude is likely to result
in the location ‘private – active – individual’, but it may be
preceded by a sense that one’s self was forced to exist as
‘passive – public – collective’.
‘A psychological attribute need not be forever fixed in a
particular application. The development of a human being
would typically involve a time-dependent displacement of
attributes through the three-space. For instance, small
children have not learned to keep their intentions to
themselves. The concept of ‘intention’ for a two-year old
would be located in the region public – individual – active. A
year and a half earlier, at the stage of psychological
symbiosis, when his mother is formulating his intentions for
him, the concept would be located in the region public –
collective – passive, the social region.’ (p. 44). He continues
with a warning: ‘… I do not want the poles of my dimensions
to be taken as distinctions … I am proposing that the
dimensions are continua. A psychological concept can be
considered as more or less privately displayed. The
continuity of the dimensions is mediated by language and
other symbolic systems which span the space between the
poles.’ (p. 45).
Harré now provides a second diagram, and makes the
following comment:
‘In the private – public dimension language is understood as a common
instrument of representation. In the individual – collective dimension
language is understood as a common instrument of action, e.g. ‘I order
…’ compared with ‘It is required that …’ (p. 45, Harré’s italics).
DISPLAY
Public
Social
1
Individual
4
Collective
REALIZATION
2
3
Personal
Private
Figure 2.2, p. 45.
The last figure illustrates how Harré thinks
personal/child development, can be mapped onto
a two-space array of person dimensions through
changing networks of social interaction.
Figure 4.1 (p. 107),
N.B. this is
adapted for our
purposes –
shown by text in
colour.
Individual
DISPLAY
Public
Person
4
1
If the development is
from an existing form of
personhood, rather than
from a new born, then a
social equivalent to
‘symbiosis’ is likely.
Collective
REALIZATION
The issue of personal
development is also
tackled in a related way
by Donald Winnicott –
PowerPoint to follow.
3
2
Self – position where
symbiosis with the
mOther begins to
Private relax.