Högskolan i Skövde

his.sePublications
Change search
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • apa-cv
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf
Defining self: Discovering self through loss of ego
University of Skövde, School of Bioscience.
2022 (English)Independent thesis Basic level (degree of Bachelor), 15 credits / 22,5 HE creditsStudent thesis
Abstract [en]

Although the self is central to human beings and has been pondered on for thousands and thousands of years, its nature remains unknown to us. Many want to solve the question of self but where does one even begin? Philosophers have investigated the self for hundreds if not thousands of years, and many theories and concepts exist. In more recent years it has become possible for science to investigate the self through the use of psychoactive substances. Most notably is the use of drug-induced ego-dissolution, where individuals report a state of self devoid of many of the characteristics that would normally be considered crucial for our everyday lives. This has created new circumstances, it is no longer solely philosophy that can investigate the self, but also science. By measuring the brain activity of participants who are experiencing this ego-dissolution, information about a disrupted self can be gathered. And by using this data more can be known about the normal state of self than ever before. Even though current research is young, it has still revealed certain elements of the self, such as the importance of connectivity between multiple brain regions. These findings strongly support the materialist network approach to the self, which philosophers are taking note of. Although many of the findings are of interest, they can still be underwhelming due to the vagueness of the exact nature of ego disruption being investigated and the lack of sophistication regarding the conceptualization of self.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2022. , p. 23
Keywords [en]
Self, ego-dissolution, philosophy, neuroscience, psychedelics
National Category
Neurosciences
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:his:diva-21586OAI: oai:DiVA.org:his-21586DiVA, id: diva2:1682475
Subject / course
Cognitive Neuroscience
Educational program
Cognitive Neuroscience - Neuropsychology and Consciousness Studies
Supervisors
Examiners
Available from: 2022-07-11 Created: 2022-07-11 Last updated: 2022-07-11Bibliographically approved

Open Access in DiVA

fulltext(281 kB)718 downloads
File information
File name FULLTEXT01.pdfFile size 281 kBChecksum SHA-512
d80d2629dbfb85e285866b7cf84491885f88c91c2068c85a6c8928514a69ad534aa94d1b5f5726ba81f45b1d05f4ab3b9c5c870380888a0580d8701b5a7baeb7
Type fulltextMimetype application/pdf

By organisation
School of Bioscience
Neurosciences

Search outside of DiVA

GoogleGoogle Scholar
Total: 718 downloads
The number of downloads is the sum of all downloads of full texts. It may include eg previous versions that are now no longer available

urn-nbn

Altmetric score

urn-nbn
Total: 607 hits
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • apa-cv
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf