Hi Liz, great comments, I enjoyed your writing! And I agree with you on the reading list. However come to think of it, one Siri novel might have been enough as I’m sure there are many other writers who can shed an […]
This course’s reading lists provided a good balance of books in what is a broad and ambitious subject to tackle. In fact, just as Liz pointed out, I would not have read many of the readings on my own but am glad […]
Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin is a novel that contains a novel and, while not as obvious as Atwood’s approach, Siri Hustvedt’s The Blazing World felt like a similar experience by containing a character […]
It’s an interesting point you raise about how people with mental disorder are not given the same treatment when they try to live on with their illness as those with physical injury or disability. It […]
My paper is about how our Self dissolves into the identity of fictional characters and what happens to the Self as the characters grow so that in Antjie Krog’s words “at the end of the story we do not want to be […]
Yes, I remember now. I’ve read about it in an article somewhere on the Internet. I wonder whether people with Synesthesia have a more expanded Qualia which has to do with experiencing sensory […]
This sounds interesting. By art of knowing and illusion, I’m thinking of mind tricks or how the brain often blocks us from seeing what’s happening in front of our eyes. Does your topic relate to […]
Thanks Jen, Prof. Tougaw, I’ve just ordered Campbell’s Power of Myth and Vermeule’s Why we Care About Fictional Characters from Amazon. There’s tons of material out there about characters in fiction and the self, […]
First of all, I could not help but compare the book with my own experience as a former journalist and how the mundane job of transcribing and translating could, in this book, become the central task out of which […]
My planned research topic looks at how the Self blurs with the identities of fictional characters when reading a novel. A good story compels readers to suspend their Self as they become another person. A group of […]
While both have their root in neuroscience, Matthew Lieberman and Antonio Damasio differ about the idea of Self. Damasio sees the Self as an elaborated tool the brain concocts to ensure the hemostasis of an […]
I can related to item 1 on your list not because I wonder about the same thing but because sometimes I have similar bouts of curiosity about everyday objects or experiences too mundane to really think […]
Maud Casey’s novel contains plenty of pieces that, just like Elizabeth’s puzzle, shapes one’s identity into a whole. Among these pieces what strikes me as central, at least to the Doctor’s attempt in helping […]
Hi Dag,
When Noe tries to explain that consciousness is an activity through interaction with the environment, I wonder whether he wants to say that consciousness is a form of energy. That seems to be the natural […]
Hi Amber,
I had the same reaction about Damasio and Noe. Despite their opposing arguments, they seem to have much in common by the way they refer to each other’s domains. Damasio, being a neuroscientist, builds […]
In the first few chapters of the books The Feeling of What Happens and Self Comes to Mind, Antonio Damasio takes on the mystery of consciousness by grounding his answers to the biological foundation of the mind. […]
Hi Liz,
Your comments on the interdisciplinary approach in Hustvedt’s book is helpful in that they summarize the different disciplines she combined to write her book, something she did not bother to explain to […]
The theme of a self that is transcendence runs throughout Hustvedt’s book. But in writing this book she’s stuck in dwelling between two places, the self as the contained object and identity and the self that is […]
