The Self Is a Fuzzy Set of Characteristics

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The self is kind of a fuzzy set of characteristics most of us have a little variation. Maybe we kind of intuitively give ourselves the big five personality you know I'm introverted here and extroverted there. The last bit of the book was originally going to discuss exactly that idea. There's a final section called a circle of meaning the idea that you draw meaning from that circle of family resemblances. Don't think look which is what begins starting to structure to do when we assume essences, he says.

Shermer and Alderson-Day discuss the psychologist’s journey to understand the phenomenon of sensed-presence: the disturbing feeling that someone or something is there when we are alone. Using contemporary psychology, psychiatry, neuroscience, and philosophy, Alderson-Day attempts to understand how this experience is possible. Is it a hallucination, a change in the brain, or something else? The journey to understand takes us to meet explorers, mediums, and robots, and step through real, imagined, and virtual worlds.

Ben Alderson-Day is an Associate Professor in Psychology and a Fellow of the Wolfson Research Institute for Health and Wellbeing at Durham University. A specialist in atypical cognition and mental health, his work spans cognitive neuroscience, psychiatry, philosophy, and child development. His new book is Presence: The Strange Science and True Stories of the Unseen Other.