Publication date: 16 April 2018 Source: Author: Remi Chukwudi Okeke, Desmond Okechukwu Nnamani This study interrogates the notion of an envisaged age of wisdom whereby, the current information / knowledge worker era will be succeeded by a new order, in which information and knowledge will be impregnated with purpose and principles. The study thus examines the issue of worker commitment and organizational citizenship behaviour in the assumed age of wisdom. The analytical framework of the study is the rational (...) choice theory. Precedent to the envisioned age of wisdom is the condition of putting service before self. We argued in the study that the age of wisdom-position contextually discountenances with a fundamentally contentious issue in human affairs, which has to do with whether the individual in the society is an inherently self-interested or an innately altruistic being. In the study’s re-imaginations, worker commitment and organizational citizenship behaviours will continue to be influenced by the intrinsic tendencies, in the regards of subjective rationality. In contrast to the assumed precedent-condition of putting service before self in the imminent age of wisdom, this study sees general continuity in subjective rationalities but with massive increases in universal productivity, arising from enduring human inventiveness and sundry efforts. (shrink)

Organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) is considered vital for organizations’ performance, and there is notable interest in factors that foster it. However, recent research has questioned the absolute positivity of OCB and pointed to its understudied possible adverse effects (e.g., on employees’ well-being). The present research aims to shed light on these issues by exploring the daily dynamics of employees’ social and emotional work lives’ interplay with their OCB. Specifically, the research focuses on teachers, whose job enables notable OCB (...) and whose performance is profoundly affected by it. Based on the literature linking work relationships and emotional experiences with OCB, we examined the interplay between teachers’ OCB and their daily perceived supervisor and colleague support, and daily positive and negative emotional experiences. Sixty teachers completed self-report questionnaires of the research variables every day for twelve workdays. Results indicated significant associations of daily supervisor support and negative emotions with increased OCB on the following day, links of daily positive emotions with decreased OCB on the following day, and associations of daily OCB with increased negative emotions on the following day. These findings point to daily processes that may underly longer-term effects of OCB (such as burnout), including a potential downward spiral of negative emotions that seem to result from OCB and reinforce it. (shrink)

In spite of an increasing number of studies on ethical climate, little is known about the antecedents of ethical climate and the moderators of the relationship between ethical climate and work outcomes. The present study conducted firm-level analyses regarding the relationship between chief executive officer (CEO) ethical leadership and ethical climate, and the moderating effect of climate strength (i.e., agreement in climate perceptions) on the relationship between ethical climate and collective organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). Self-report data were (...) collected from 223 CEOs and 6,021 employees in South Korea. The results supported all study hypotheses. As predicted, CEOs' self-rated ethical leadership was positively associated with employees' aggregated perceptions of the ethical climate of the firm. The relationship between ethical climate and firm-level collective OCB was moderated by climate strength. More specifically, the relationships between ethical climate and interpersonally directed collective OCB and between ethical climate and organizationally directed collective OCB were more pronounced when climate strength was high than when it was low. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are addressed herein. (shrink)

Religion and faith are often central aspects of an individual’s self-concept, and yet they are typically avoided in the workplace. The current study seeks to replicate the findings about the role of religious beliefs and practices in shaping an employee’s reactions to stress/burnout and job attitudes. Second, we extend the literature on faith in the workplace by investigating possible relationships between religious beliefs and practices and citizenship behaviors at work. Third, we attempted to study how one’s perceived freedom (...) to express his/her religious identity at work was related to workplace attitudes and behaviors. Mixed results suggest that religiosity can be related to stress and burnout, job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and Organizational Citizenship Behavior. More research is needed to further qualify the results and explore the effects of one’s perceived freedom to express his/her religious identity in the workplace. (shrink)

The current study presents an integrative model examining the double-edged sword effect of unethical pro-organizational behavior (UPB) from the perspective of the actors. Drawing on the moral self-regulation perspective and psychological entitlement literature, we propose that employees who engage in UPB may experience an increase in moral deficits and psychological entitlement, resulting in increased organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and decreased work effort, respectively. We further propose that moral attentiveness strengthens the positive relationship between UPB and moral (...) deficits but weakens the positive relationship between UPB and psychological entitlement. Moreover, the strength of the indirect effects of employee UPB on OCB and work effort is also contingent upon employees’ moral attentiveness. The hypothesized moderated mediation model is supported by a multisource and time-lagged research design based on a sample of 256 supervisor–subordinate dyads. Key theoretical and practical implications and future research directions are discussed. (shrink)

Despite the proliferation of research on ethical leadership, there remains a limited understanding of how specifically the assumingly moral component of this leadership style affects employee behavior. Taking an identity perspective, we integrate the ethical leadership literature with research on the dynamics of the moral self-concept to posit that ethical leadership will foster a sense of moral identity among employees, which then inspires followers to adopt more ethical actions, such as increased organization citizenship behavior. We further argue that (...) these identity effects should be more pronounced when leaders are perceived to be group prototypical, as their actions then speak louder to followers’ sense of identity. Two studies—a scenario experiment with 138 participants and a field study with 225 employees—provided support for our hypothesized moderated mediation model. Perceived ethical leadership positively affected OCB via followers’ moral identity but only under conditions of high perceived leader group prototypicality. We discuss how the identity pathway of ethical leadership can facilitate novel theorizing about moral transference. Our findings also suggest that, when hiring external ethical leaders or training internal managers, practitioners are well advised to consider that these individuals may only be effective in morally transforming followers when they are perceived as prototypical for the group. (shrink)

Little is known empirically about the role of supervisor listening and the emotional conditions that listening facilitates. Having the opportunity to speak is only one part of the communication process between employees and supervisors. Employees also react to whether they perceive the supervisor as actively listening. In two studies, this paper examines three important outcomes of employee perceptions of supervisor listening. Furthermore, positive and negative affect are investigated as distinct mediating mechanisms. Results from Study 1 revealed that employee perceptions of (...) supervisor listening reflected supervisors’ self-ratings of how they listen to their employees and these perceptions were associated with the three work outcomes. Study 2 replicated the findings in a larger sample and found evidence for two explanatory mechanisms. Positive affect mediated the effects of perceived supervisor listening on organizational citizenship behavior and turnover intention, whereas negative affect mediated listening effects on emotional exhaustion and turnover intention. Implications for organizational research and managerial practice concerning workforce sustainability are discussed. (shrink)

BackgroundValue-driven career attitude is considered a dimension of a protean career attitude. Individuals with this attitude seek out personally meaningful experiences and set their own psychological career success standards. This study investigates the association between value-driven career attitude and job performance. It looks at how organizational citizenship behavior affects the relationship between value-driven career attitudes and job performance.MethodsA self-reported questionnaire was used to collect data from 400 random employees of SMEs in Pakistan during the early pandemic. We (...) chose Cochran’s formula to determine the appropriate sample size, and PLS-SEM was used to analyze the model. P-O fit and self-determination theory is the theoretical lenses used in this study. The underpinning theories to this study enable the researchers to establish a link between VDCA, OCB, and job performance.ResultsBy analyzing a sample of 400 employees from active enterprises, we discover that VDCA contributes to an improvement in job performance. Furthermore, OCB plays an intervening effect in the relationship between VDCA and job performance. Thus, the study provided evidence for the underpinning models of P-O fit and self-determination theory.ConclusionThis study adds to the body of knowledge by investigating the connections between VDCA, OCB, and job performance in SMEs. The existing literature sheds scant light on these linkages, leaving a gap that this study will address. The current study expands on other themes to provide an in-depth analysis of many under-explored PCA outcomes, which may open up new avenues for future researchers to broaden and strengthen PCA with other constructs. (shrink)

Aiming to reduce the difficulty of managing and motivating knowledge workers, and promote the psychological well-being of them in Chinese hospitals, this study examines how k-workers’ leader–member exchange influences their task performance and the mediation effect of organizational citizenship behavior. Through a self-administered survey, valid questionnaires were collected from 384 k-workers in Chinese hospitals, and partial least squares structural equation modeling was employed for data analysis. The findings show that LMX is positively related to OCB and task (...) performance, and that OCB mediates the relationship between LMX and task performance. This research has theoretical implications and also provides practical suggestions on how to manage, motivate, and inspire k-workers, and promote the psychological well-being of them, and finally enhance the organizational performance in Chinese hospitals. (shrink)

Part 1 of this exploratory study demonstrated that for terminal, instrumental, and work values, supervisors could only accurately assess the extent to which their terminal values are congruent with their employees, whereas, employees could only accurately describe degrees of alignment with their supervisors' work values. Thus, supervisors appear to possess conscious awareness of the terminal values held by their employees and employees similarly possess conscious awareness of their supervisors' work values. Part 2 of the study examined what each (...) of these two parties might do with their conscious knowledge concerning value congruence with the other member. Supervisor ratings and employee self-ratings concerning employee job performance, citizenship, climate fit, working relationship (LMX), and other issues, were correlated with supervisor terminal value congruence estimates and employee work value congruence estimates respectively. For supervisors, only one significant finding was noted, indicating a positive relationship between the supervisors' awareness of terminal value congruence with the employee and the supervisors' estimate of the employee's potential for future promotion. For employees, seven hypotheses received support demonstrating relationships between the employees' awareness of supervisor/employee work value congruence and self-ratings of work behaviours, citizenship behaviours, volunteerism behaviours, work climate behaviours, work climate attitudes, work climate organizational-wide attitudes, and the supervisor/employee working relationship. Implications for management and future research are discussed. (shrink)

Part 1 of this exploratory study demonstrated that for terminal, instrumental, and work values, supervisors could only accurately assess the extent to which their terminal values are congruent with their employees, whereas, employees could only accurately describe degrees of alignment with their supervisors’ work values. Thus, supervisors appear to possess conscious awareness of the terminal values held by their employees and employees similarly possess conscious awareness of their supervisors’ work values. Part 2 of the study examined what each (...) of these two parties might do with their conscious knowledge concerning value congruence with the other member. Supervisor ratings and employee self-ratings concerning employee job performance, citizenship, climate fit, working relationship (LMX), and other issues, were correlated with supervisor terminal value congruence estimates and employee work value congruence estimates respectively. For supervisors, only one significant finding was noted, indicating a positive relationship between the supervisors’ awareness of terminal value congruence with the employee and the supervisors’ estimate of the employee’s potential for future promotion. For employees, seven hypotheses received support demonstrating relationships between the employees’ 0awareness of supervisor/employee work value congruence and self-ratings of work behaviours, citizenship behaviours, volunteerism behaviours, work climate behaviours, work climate attitudes, work climate organizational-wide attitudes, and the supervisor/employee working relationship. Implications for management and future research are discussed. (shrink)

Based on social cognitive theory, we studied the relationship between coaches’ paternalistic leadership and youth athletes’ organizational citizenship behavior and the mediation effect of athletes’ trust in coaches, in China. This age-specific research was conducted among more than 2,000 Chinese youth soccer players. Overall, 758 youth soccer players, aged 13–18 years, completed a self-report questionnaire. The results showed that the three dimensions of the coaches’ PL have different relationships with OCB, and the differences were due to differences (...) in athletes’ ages. Additionally, we verified the mediation role of trust. Our research conclusions are of great significance to the study of Chinese youth soccer as in-depth research can provide a deeper and more precise understanding of the relationship between PL and the OCB of Chinese youth soccer players. This study expands the literature on social cognitive theory and sheds light on the relationship between coach leadership and athlete OCB by providing extensive evidence. (shrink)

... Let me start my investigation by taking a brief look at the way in which self-awareness is expressed linguistically, as in the sentences "I am tired" or ...

Workplace stressors were identified to have critical impacts on employee creativity. However, little is known about how and when involuntary citizenship behavior (i.e., compulsory citizenship behavior, CCB)-induced stress might exert influence on employee creativity. To fill this void, the present study firstly develops a moderated mediation model to investigate the CCB—employee creativity association as well as the underling mechanism and contextual condition of this relationship. By integrating social cognitive theory such as self-efficacy theory and conservation of resources (...) (COR) theory, we propose that CCB predicts employee creativity through the mediating role of creative self-efficacy (CSE), with the individual characteristics (i.e., personality traits) of negative affect acting as a boundary condition. Using two-wave time-lagged survey data collected from a sample of 251 front-line employees in 10 manufacturing firms in Southern China, the results show that: (a) CSE mediates the negative relationship between CCB and employee creativity; (b) negative affect moderates the relationship between CCB and CSE; (c) negative affect moderates the indirect influence of CCB on employee creativity through CSE. As the level of negative affect rises, this indirect relationship is stronger. Finally, important theoretical and managerial implications and promising avenues for future research are addressed. (shrink)

Drawing on social exchange theory, this study examines a mechanism, namely organizational social capital, through which self-sacrificial leadership is related to two types of employee behaviours: organizational citizenship behaviours and counterproductive behaviours. The results of two different studies in Egypt showed that self-sacrificial leadership is positively related to OSC which, in turn, is positively related to OCBs and negatively related to CPBs. Overall, the findings suggest that self-sacrificial leaders are more likely to achieve desirable (...) employee behaviours through improving the quality of social relationships among employees. (shrink)

This study explores the efficacy of a specific tool – the articulation of the ideal self – in job engagement, psychological well-being, and organizational citizenship behavior. We hypothesized that employees who can visualize their jobs as part of their ideal self – in particular how it helps in its development and realization – would feel higher levels of engagement and fulfillment in their lives, as well as engage in greater amounts of helping and voice OCB. A (...) total of 239 full time employees from five companies in Costa Rica filled out the ideal self questionnaire, the job engagement, and psychological well-being surveys, and were evaluated by their peers on task behavior and helping and voice OCB. Results of the SEM model showed that the ideal self was positively related to job engagement, psychological well-being and helping and voice. These findings contribute to the research on the impact and importance for organizations to help employees find meaningfulness in their work. (shrink)

In this paper I explore the influence of an organisation's structure, such as that of the National Education System, in the emergence of desirable social properties. In this case the concern is schools with adequate performance. It is assumed that there is a circular causality between structure and the social results of schools. I highlight some of the structural requirements to have justice, sense of belonging, trust, honesty and cooperation as emerging properties of these schools, beyond normative statements. These are (...) requirements for effective citizenship. In order to study this, it is necessary to observe the structures that constitute collectives into organisations. Central to this paper is a case study that I carried out at Millfield Primary School in the U.K., which focused on the observation of citizenship as a dynamic process permanently being constructed. This case went beyond the normative understanding of citizenship as established in the new school curriculum to be implemented from September 2002. I take the view that the aim of citizenship is to build up a community in which one is constituted as a citizen. For that purpose we need enabling people to build up their own communities. My conclusion from this case study suggests that current educational methodologies aim at teaching a "model of" citizenship rather than at providing the necessary tools to think about and create suitable spaces "for" citizenship. The case study shows that it is necessary to reinforce in schools practical methods to create membership and respect for others. (shrink)

Research on unethical pro-organizational behavior has predominantly focused on its antecedents, while overlooking how engaging in such behavior might affect employees’ psychological experience and their downstream work behaviors. Integrating cognitive dissonance theory with the moral identity literature, we argue that engaging in UPB restricts moral identity internalization as a result of attempts to alleviate the cognitive dissonance about moral self-regard, which in turn translates into decreased organizational citizenship behavior and increased counterproductive workplace behavior. Moreover, employees’ construal (...) level weakens these indirect effects by alleviating the negative effect of engaging in UPB on moral identity internalization. The results from one experimental study and one multi-wave, multisource field study provide support for these predictions. Our research extends knowledge on the negative consequences of UPB for actors and organizations. (shrink)

In recent years there has been much psychological and neurological work purporting to show that consciousness and self-awareness play no role in causing actions, and indeed to demonstrate that free will is an illusion. The essays in this volume subject the assumptions that motivate such claims to sustained interdisciplinary scrutiny. The book will be compulsory reading for psychologists and philosophers working on action explanation, and for anyone interested in the relation between the brain sciences and consciousness.

The prominent call to legalise same-sex marriage in Australia raises questions concerning whether its achievement will result in amplified societal acceptance of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people, and on what grounds this acceptance will take place. Same-sex marriage may not challenge heteronormative and patriarchal features typically associated with marriage, and may serve to reinforce a hierarchy that promotes traditional marriage as the ideal relationship structure. This may result in only assimilationist acceptance of LGBT people. However, the consequence of (...) inclusion to marriage ought to reflect social acceptance of LGBTs as people worthy of equal treatment in dignity and in rights, regardless of perceived differences or similarities to a supposed majority standard. This article argues that justice would be best served by introducing and promoting a variety of State-sanctioned unions whilst simultaneously introducing same-sex marriage. This ‘pluralisation strategy’ would increase awareness and legitimacy of other relationship-recognition options, promoting respectful acceptance of LGBT and heterosexual people alike. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 8.4 (2001) 339-341 [Access article in PDF] Schizophrenia and Self-Awareness Dan Zahavi In his paper, "Cogito and I: A Bio-Logical Approach," Kimura Bin raises a number of intriguing issues. Let me in the following address a few of them. Kimura Bin's point of departure is the idea that schizophrenia is basically to be understood as a disorder of self and self-experience. (...) Thus, fundamental alterations in the sense of possession and control of one's own thoughts, actions, sensations, or emotions figure among the most prominent symptoms in its advanced stages. But even in the absence of overt symptoms, the schizophrenic may feel uncertain about her selfhood, and it is often in an attempt to restore or at least sustain her precarious self-identity that the patient engages in characteristic obsessive self-reflections that frequently simply exacerbate the problem.1. One way to illustrate what is peculiar about the self-disorder in schizophrenia is by contrasting it with the symptoms found in senile dementia. Whereas the demented patient might lack any knowledge about the features that characterize him from a third-person perspective, i.e., age, nationality, profession, location, etc., he is usually in possession of an intact first-person perspective: He is still aware of the I-Here-Now. In schizophrenia, the problem is typically exactly the reverse (Tatossian 1997, 26). This contrast makes it tempting to argue, as Kimura Bin in fact does, that we need to distinguish two different dimensions of selfhood: the self as subject and the self as object. Of course, by making that distinction, we are immediately partaking in a classical philosophical discussion. Thus, at least since Kant, it has been customary to distinguish between the transcendental subject and the empirical or mundane subject. This distinction can be cashed out as a distinction between two different ways of being aware of oneself, one external, the other internal. On the one hand, I can think of myself from a third-person perspective, that is, I can refer to an object by way of a proper name, a demonstrative, or a definite description, and occasionally this object happens to be myself. When I refer to myself in this way, I am referring to myself in exactly the same way that I can refer to Others, and Others can refer to me (the only difference being that I am the one doing it, thus making the reference into a kind of self-reference). Apart from being external and contingent, this kind of self-reference is also non-thematic, since it can occur without my knowledge of it, that is, I can refer to myself from the third-person perspective without realizing that I myself am the referent. In contrast, the self-reference available from the first-person perspective—the one expressed in the subject-use of "I"—is of an internal kind. Not only is it impossible to refer to anybody and anything apart from oneself in the first-person way, but it also belongs to the proper use of "I" that one knows that one is referring to oneself. That is, apart from being internal and necessary, the self-reference in question is also of a thematic nature. In [End Page 339] more traditional terms: One can be conscious of oneself as an empirical object with mental properties, and one can be conscious of oneself as the subject of intentionality. Or again, one can be aware of oneself as a causally determined known object, as a part of the world, and one can be aware of oneself as a knowing subject, as—to paraphrase Wittgenstein—the limit of the world. In short, the difference between the empirical subject and the transcendental subject is closely linked to the difference between being aware of oneself as an object in the world and being aware of oneself as a subject for the world.Utilizing this distinction, it can be said that schizophrenia involves a disturbance on the transcendental level (this way of speaking would, by the way, be anathema to a classical Kantian transcendental philosophy but more acceptable to the... (shrink)

Several conditions for being an intrinsically intentional agent are put forward. On a first level of intentionality the agent has representations. Two kinds are described: cued and detached. An agent with both kinds is able to represent both what is prompted by the context and what is absent from it. An intermediate level of intentionality is achieved by having an inner world, that is, a coherent system of detached representations that model the world. The inner world is used, e.g., for (...) conditional and counterfactual thinking. Contextual or indexical representations are necessary in order that the inner world relates to the actual external world and thus can be used as a basis for action. To have full-blown intentionality, the agent should also have a detached self-awareness, that is, be able to entertain self-representations that are independent of the context. (shrink)

In this essay I defend both the individual plausibility and conjoint consistency of two theses. One is the Intentionality Thesis: that all mental states are intentional . The other is the Self-Awareness Thesis: that if a subject is aware of an object, then the subject is also aware of being aware of that object. I begin by arguing for the individual prima facie plausibility of both theses. I then go on to consider a regress argument to the effect (...) that the two theses are incompatible. I discuss three responses to that argument, and defend one of them. (shrink)

The central questions that guide phenomenological investigations of daydreaming can be formulated as follows: What must consciousness be if it is to be capable of daydreaming? How does daydreaming relate to other modes of experience, especially mind-wandering, lucid and non-lucid dreaming, and phantasizing? What are the eidetic features and constitutive functions of daydreaming in the overall life of consciousness? My goal in this chapter is to show that a phenomenological analysis of daydreaming can make an important contribution to the cross-disciplinary (...) science of daydreaming precisely because it directly addresses these fundamental questions. The phenomenological analysis of daydreaming developed here suggests the following: (1) The life of consciousness is characterized by the intertwining of sleep and wakefulness. Just as there is wakefulness in sleep, so also is there sleep in wakefulness. (2) The life of consciousness is not confined to the here and now. Besides those experiences which unfold from the present standpoint, there is also another group of experiences that can be qualified as absorbed, or displaced, experiences. (3) A phenomenological analysis of daydreaming brings to light how different modes of experience are characterized by different modes of self-awareness. (shrink)

Merleau-Ponty suggests that to perceive is to be “geared into” the world. In perceiving, we are related to a temporally structured modal space of bodily possibilities that is co-constituted by the body and the world. When we perceive, we are “geared into” this structure and responsive to it; when we misperceive, we are not. In misperceiving, we are unaware of our failure to be geared into the world, and in this respect, we lack awareness of what we are doing. (...) In explaining misperception via this lack of self-awareness, Merleau-Ponty anticipates a key feature of M. G. F. Martin's epistemic disjunctivism: the idea that perceptions and misperceptions can be indiscriminable because of a self-awareness we lack, rather than a set of positive phenomenal features that two experiences share. However, because Merleau-Ponty's account of self-awareness imposes relatively few cognitive demands, he is able to explain how adults, infants, and dogs can be self-aware in the same sense, and how they can fail to discriminate between their experiences in the same way. This provides Merleau-Ponty with the resources to answer Susanna Siegel's objection to epistemic disjunctivism on the basis of “cognitively unsophisticated hallucinators.”. (shrink)

Prior research on citizenship behavior has mainly focused on its voluntary side—organizational citizenship behavior. Unfortunately, although compulsory behavior is a global organizational phenomenon, the involuntary side of CB—compulsory citizenship behavior, defined as employees’ involuntary engagement in extra-role work activities that are beneficial to the organization : 77–93, 2006)—has long been neglected and very little is known about its potential negative consequences. Particularly, research on CCB–counterproductive work behavior association is still in its nascent stage. Therefore, drawing (...) on moral disengagement theory and social exchange theory, we firstly attempt to systematically investigate how and when CCB leads to CWB. Specifically, we see employee silence as a critical form of passive CWB and propose a moderated mediation model. In the model, CCB predicts silence through MD—a set of cognitive mechanisms that deactivate moral self-regulatory processes, with the Chinese culture-specific concept of supervisor–subordinate guanxi, which captures the supervisor–subordinate non-work-related personal ties, acting as the contextual condition. Two-wave data collected from a sample of 293 employees in 17 manufacturing firms in China supported our hypotheses. The results revealed that the more employees experienced compulsory feelings caused by CCB, the more they morally disengaged and, in turn, resorted to avoidant or passive responses as a coping strategy. Further, s–s guanxi serves as a reverse moderator in that high s–s guanxi mitigates the destructive impact of CCB, makes employees less inclined to morally disengage, and thereby largely prevents them from practicing workplace silence behavior. Implications for theory and intervention strategies for practice are discussed. We also propose several promising avenues for future research. (shrink)

Self-awareness is commonly expressed by means of indexical expressions, primarily, first- person pronouns like.

In this paper I propose to inquire into the theory of self-awareness propounded by the two Buddhist epistemologists, Dignaga and Dharmakirti. I first give an outline of the Buddhist notion of consciousness, then deal with the notion of objectual appearance, and finally dwell on the theory itself together with certain arguments in its favor. It is shown that the Buddhists subscribed themselves to the following self-awareness thesis: that our waking consciousness is always pre-reflectively and nonconceptually aware (...) of itself. Adopting an approach of interpretive and comparative analysis, I also clarify significant differences between the theory and the correspondent Cartesian views in order to reveal the theory's contemporary relevancy. (shrink)

I explore Aristotle’s account in the Nicomachean Ethics of how agents attain self-awareness through contemplation. I argue that Aristotle sets up an account of self-awareness through contemplating friends in Books VIII-IX that completes itself in Book X’s remarks on theoretical contemplation. I go on to provide an account of how contemplating the divine, on Aristotle’s view, elicits self-awareness.

Three pathologies of alienation have been claimed to refute the philosophical thesis that introspection-based self-ascriptions of mental states are immune to error through misidentification. In this paper, I show that this critique of the Immunity Thesis is misguided; the cases of alienation either are not self-ascriptions or do not involve misidentification. Rather, these cases undermine a widely assumed explanation of immunity, which is based on the idea that self-ascriptions of mental states are identification-free. I argue that, given (...) a certain understanding of the Immunity Thesis, identification-freedom does not explain immunity anyhow, and I offer an alternative explanation, one which posits a tight link between first-personal awareness and ownership of a mental state. (shrink)

How should we think about the role of visual spatial awareness in perception and perceptual knowledge? A common view, which finds a characteristic expression in Kant but has an intellectual heritage reaching back farther than that, is that an account of spatial awareness is fundamental to a theory of experience because spatiality is the defining characteristic of “outer sense”, of our perceptual awareness of how things are in the parts of the world that surround us. A natural (...) counterpart to this idea is to treat self-consciousness as residing in a kind of sense that is fundamentally “inner”, such as introspection or whatever else gives one privileged access to his own mental states as well as the proprioceptive and kinesthetic awareness of bodily position. This division is compatible, of course, with the idea that inner sense provides an awareness of a distinctive kind of “body space”, but it treats that as importantly different from the awareness of the worldly space around one. -/- In contrast to such a picture, this dissertation proposes an account of visual spatial awareness according to which it is no less a source of self-consciousness than of the awareness of the objects around us, and an account of self-awareness in which visual experience is essentially implicated. I begin by arguing that we should think of visual spatial awareness not as necessary for the individuation of visual sensations but rather as an essential element in the awareness of an experientially objective world. In the subsequent chapters, I argue that in being visually aware of the egocentric positions of the worldly objects around us we are often aware also of our own spatial locations with respect to them, and that the visual experience of the world around one and one’s own situation in it is often an essential component in the knowledge that a human agent will have of his own intentional actions. (shrink)

In my 2003 SCR paper “Inner speech and conscious experience” (LINK) I put forward the notion that we most often need to talk to ourselves in order to understand who we are. That is, inner speech is frequently required to access self-information and to gradually build a self- concept. To illustrate, let’s imagine that you want to reflect on an abdominal pain you are currently experiencing. It is very likely that you will engage in an internal monologue, thinking (...) “Why is it that my belly hurts? I feel cramps... Ha! I get it—I skipped breakfast...” You could go on and also notice: “I’ve been missing breakfast often lately... I tend to sleep in, I don’t eat breakfast, and by noon I’m starving... And I didn’t go to the gym as often as I should have... This is bad—I’m getting _lazy_...” Here the adjective “lazy” constitutes the conclusion that you have drawn from your inner monologue; it may then become a more or less permanent part of your self-concept. (shrink)

An alternative model of the relation between consciousness and self-consciousness is proposed. The model combines a non-standard version of the higher-order theory of consciousness with the global neuronal workspace theory and argues that implicit higher-order self-awareness is a pervasive feature of the globally integrative states formed in the global workspace.

According to some phenomenological accounts of intersubjectivity, self-awareness precedes and makes possible our understanding of others. Consequently, an "egological account of consciousness" is a precondition for a viable theory of intersubjectivity.1 While Edmund Husserl embraces this assumption of the primacy of self-awareness, Jan Patočka seems to elaborate the opposite stance. As Patočka puts it, in the "contact and in the mirror of the other we encounter ourselves, for the first time."2 Is self-awareness a precondition (...) for an intersubjective encounter, or is it the other way around? Husserl and Patočka seem to espouse exactly opposite claims.Nevertheless, the picture I draw here is more nuanced. On the one... (shrink)

Published in two parts, the present article addresses whether self-awareness is necessarily involved in each of the six kinds of consciousness that The Oxford English Dictionary identifies under the word consciousness. Part I inquires into how, if at all, self-awareness enters consciousness1: a cognitive relation between people in which they have joint and mutual cognizance; consciousness2: a psychological process of conceiving of oneself in certain sorts of respects on a firsthand evidentiary basis; and consciousness3: being occurrently (...) aware of anything at all, including nonexistent particulars. An instance of consciousness1 may or may not have a reflexive object, but it will perforce include both inner awareness and awareness of oneself as an object of the other’s awareness. Consciousness2 requires self-awareness in the forms of witnessing or having witnessed potential evidence about oneself, inner awareness of this witnessing when it occurred, inner awareness and self-awareness as involved in remembering having witnessed that evidence, occurrent awareness of features of one’s character or personality, and bringing self-witnessed evidence to bear in judging of the latter. In contrast, consciousness3, which in a particular instance may be an occurrent self-awareness, need not involve any self-awareness at all. (shrink)

Published in two parts, the present article addresses whether self-awareness is necessarily involved in each of the six kinds of consciousness that The Oxford English Dictionary identifies under the word consciousness. Part I inquires into how, if at all, self-awareness enters consciousness1: a cognitive relation between people in which they have joint and mutual cognizance; consciousness2: a psychological process of conceiving of oneself in certain sorts of respects on a firsthand evidentiary basis; and consciousness3: being occurrently (...) aware of anything at all, including nonexistent particulars. An instance of consciousness1 may or may not have a reflexive object, but it will perforce include both inner awareness and awareness of oneself as an object of the other’s awareness. Consciousness2 requires self-awareness in the forms of witnessing or having witnessed potential evidence about oneself, inner awareness of this witnessing when it occurred, inner awareness and self-awareness as involved in remembering having witnessed that evidence, occurrent awareness of features of one’s character or personality, and bringing self-witnessed evidence to bear in judging of the latter. In contrast, consciousness3, which in a particular instance may be an occurrent self-awareness, need not involve any self-awareness at all. (shrink)

Quite a few recent models are rapidly introducing new concepts describing different levels of consciousness. This situation is getting confusing because some theorists formulate their models without making reference to existing views, redundantly adding complexity to an already difficult problem. In this paper, I present and compare nine neurocognitive models to highlight points of convergence and divergence. Two aspects of consciousness seem especially important: perception of self in time and complexity of self-representations. To this I add frequency of (...) self-focus, amount of self-related information, and accuracy of self-knowledge. Overall, I conclude that many novel concepts (e.g., reflective, primary, core, extended, recursive, and minimal consciousness) are useful in helping us distinguish between delicate variations in consciousness and in clarifying theoretical issues that have been intensely debated in the scientific literature—e.g., consciousness in relation to mirror self-recognition and language. Ó 2005 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. (shrink)

Philosophy remains ensnared between reifying the isolated individual subject and reducing it to the structuring forces of nature and society. Neither strategy appears suitable to the first-person participant perspective of the lived-experience of being a finite, conditional self within the world. This self is experienced as embodied, social, and other-dependent, and as environmentally and perspectivally “my own” such that it potentially resists, rather than reproducing, structural forces. In this chapter, I reconsider Dilthey’s alternative to the reductive poles of (...) this dialectic. Dilthey is primarily known in subsequent hermeneutics and social theory as a philosopher of reflexive self-awareness (Innewerden), self-reflection (Selbstbesinnung), and structural methodological individualism. In his works, his critics perceive the specter of the idealist subject and romantic individualism. They thereby miss his radicality. The self is an intersection of natural and social processes, as explained in the third-person, impersonal perspective of the natural and structural social sciences. Yet, the self is formed in historically situated autobiographical and reflective individuation, self-awareness, and self-formation. This hermeneutical situation calls for interpretive understanding in everyday self-other relations, life contexts, and forms of inquiry that interpret historical life from out of itself in relation to its own lived participant perspective. Dilthey’s felt and reflexive self-awareness entails, through resistance and relationality, the differentiation of self and others, things, environment, and world; the formation of an autobiographical sense of self through life’s continuities and discontinuities; and the interpretive, social, and material activities through which individuals not only manifest social systems but immanently appropriate, resist, and transform them. (shrink)

Given the recent interest in the subjective or phenomenal dimension of consciousness it is no wonder that many authors have once more started to speak of the need for pheno- menological considerations. Often however the term ‘phenomenology’ is being used simply as a synonym for ‘folk psychology', and in our article we argue that it would be far more fruitful to turn to the argumentation to be found within the continental tradition inaugurated by Husserl. In order to exemplify this claim, (...) we criticize Rosenthal's higher-order thought theory as well as Strawson's recent contribution in this journal, and argue that a phenomenological analysis of the nature of self-awareness can provide us with a more sophisticated and accurate model for understanding both phenomenal consciousness and the notion of self. (shrink)

Narcissism is considered a generally undesirable trait in the workplace, but is this the whole story? In grandiose narcissism, two dimensions (narcissistic rivalry and narcissistic admiration) are recognized corresponding to self-protecting and self-enhancing regulatory processes separately. Applying the self-regulation theory and the conservation of resources theory, we investigated the distinct outcomes and influencing mechanisms of the two dimensions in an organizational context using multilevel structural equation modeling. Whereas previous literature has found narcissism to be mainly related (...) to negative outcomes in the workplace, our dimensional framework indicates that grandiose narcissism may have a Janus face—i.e., a dark side of unethical behaviors and a light side of prosocial behaviors. From a sample of 646 frontline employees in a Chinese call center, we found that while employee narcissistic rivalry was positively related to customer-directed sabotage through the mediation of emotional exhaustion, narcissistic admiration was positively related to organizational citizenship behavior toward customers (OCB-C) through the mediation of self-perceived status. In addition to the internal self-regulation of these two narcissism dimensions, political skill provides an external self-regulation that moderates the mediating effect of self-perceived status at the first stage—that is, the positive relationship between narcissistic admiration and self-perceived status is stronger when political skill is high rather than low. Our post hoc analyses further reveal that narcissistic rivalry is negatively related to OCB-C through the mediation of self-perceived status. Theoretical contributions and practical implications are discussed. (shrink)

In recent years there has been a general attempt – inspired by P. F. Strawson – to naturalise Kant's notion of the transcendental self. The argument being that self-consciousness should refer to neither a kind of noumenal nor mental self but that the self-conscious subject must conceive of itself as an embodied entity, a person among persons that regards itself as an element of the objective order of the world. While Kant does not make room for (...) the notion of an embodied transcendental self, this is where we need to go as our bodily awareness is central both for self-knowledge and the possibility of cognition and thus a transcendental condition for knowledge claims. In this paper I should like to single out Quassim Cassam's work Self and World to see whether such a position is tenable. Cassam's main claim is that we can only become aware of ourselves as subjects if we are at the very same time aware of ourselves as objects located in the spatio-temporal world. We could not be self-conscious and ascribe experiences to ourselves unless we are also aware of ourselves as a physical object among other physical objects in the world. The central claim is that when we self-refer we do not refer to two distinct entities, one possessing only mental, and the other possessing only physical features, rather we refer to a subject that is both mental and physical at the very same time. Awareness of ourselves qua subject is just awareness of ourselves qua object. This paper will focus on this claim alone and will ask whether it is tenable. The answer will be negative. Drawing on the work of Edmund Husserl, I shall argue that there is an inherent flaw in Cassam's position which he has inherited from Gareth Evans’ depiction of the self. The contention will be that our awareness of ourselves qua subject is not compatible with the awareness of ourselves qua object. (shrink)