Identity and self consciousness: two separate phenomena

Melina Gastelum Vargas	IIF, UNAM
Juan Manuel Argüelles San Millán	ENAH/UNAM

Abstract

Identity, personality and self-consciousness are often seen in cognitive science as almost the same cognitive capacity. In this paper we will justify an alternative and in many ways opposite opinion: that identity, at least in its most basic way, is a non-exclusive protocultural factor that requires cognitive capacities that are linked to social competence and to organism cooperation, and that it is not formed from self consciousness, although in its wider expression uses it. Furthermore we will support that identity is widely exogenous in the sense that it involves the group social capacities and not only endogenous in the sense that our brain is by itself the generator of identity. For this we revise some observations from not human private behaviour.

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Identity and self consciousness: two separate phenomena (159 KB)