The Experienced Self and the Remembered Self

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This is just the first step. If they can get us to wear the mask, what else are they going to force us to do? They're going to take our slippery slope. Well, probably both. I could take that more seriously if there was any apparent movement in that direction that had a chance in hell of succeeding. But it just couldn't happen that way. Right. So how does this relate to the Kahneman's idea of the experiencing self and the remembered self? Yeah. Same thing. That sort of corresponds to the system one, system two distinction that I was talking about where the experiencing self is not so much our self, it's really our automatic reactions at work.

It’s become fashionable to argue that free will is a fiction: that we humans are in the thrall of animal urges and unconscious biases and only think that we are choosing freely. In Freely Determined, research psychologist Kennon Sheldon argues that this perception is not only wrong but also dangerous.

Shermer and Sheldon discuss: definitions of free will, determinism, compatibilism, libertarian free will • dualism • reductionism, materialism, predetermination, and epiphenomenalism • Christian List’s three capacities for free will • AI, Star Trek’s Data, sentience and consciousness, ChatGPT, GPT-4 • how what people believe about free will and determinism influences their behaviors • the case for hard determinism • brain injuries, tumors, addictions, and other “determiners” of behavior • emergence • symbolic self • System 1 vs. System 2 thinking • Experiencing Self vs. Remembered Self • subjective well-being and happiness.

Kennon M. Sheldon is professor of psychology at the University of Missouri. He is one of the founding researchers of positive psychology, a fellow of the American Psychological Association, and a recipient of the Templeton Foundation Positive Psychology Prize. He lives in Columbia, Missouri. He is the author of numerous scientific papers and scholarly books, including Stability of Happiness: Theories and Evidence on Whether Happiness Can Change; Designing the Future of Positive Psychology: Taking Stock and Moving Forward; Current Directions in Psychological Science; and Self-Determination Theory in the Clinic. His new book integrates all this research into a popular trade book Freely Determined: What the New Psychology of the Self Teaches Us About How to Live.