Course Readings

Week 1, August 19 -- Introduction and Overview

• Dennett, D. Where Am I?

• Ismael, J. T. Excerpt from How Physics Makes Us Free on Dennett's "Where Am I?"

• Wallace, D. F. Good Old Neon

• Paul, S. K. What Should 'Imposter Syndrome' Be?


Week 2, August 26 -- Human Minds: Some Foundations

• Descartes, R. Meditations

• Background Material: Discussion of Descartes' Meditations

• Lande, K. Do You Compute?

• Griffiths, P. Ethology, Sociobiology and Evolutionary Psychology

Week 3, September 2 -- The World Beyond Your Head: Culture and Community

• Heyes, C. Cognitive Gadgets

• Kelly, D. and Hoburg, P. A Tale of Two Processes: On Joseph Henrich’s The Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter,'

• Ross, D. The Elephant as a Person

• Donald, M. The Slow Process

• Clark, A. and Chalmers, D. The Extended Mind


Week 4, September 9 -- Personal Identity and Memory

• Background Material: Locke's Problem of Personal Identity and Continuity

• Hayasaki, D. The Strange Case of the Woman Who Can't Remember Her Past—Or Imagine Her Future

• Stanley, M. Henne, P. & De Brigard, F. Remembering Moral and Immoral Actions in Constructing the Self

• Appiah, K. A. The Ethics of Identity (Chapters 1 & parts of Chapter 3)

• Mill, J. S. Of Individuality (Part 3 & 4 of On Liberty)


Week 5, September 16 -- Socializing Identities

• Lindemann, H. Holding and Letting Go: The Social Practice of Personal Identities (Chapters 1 & 7)

• Birhane, A. Descartes was wrong: 'a person is a person through other persons'

• Aviv, R. How a Young Woman Lost Her Identity

• Witt, C. Gender Essences

• Davidson, L. and Kelly, D. Minding the Gap: Bias, Soft Structures, and the Double Life of Social Norms (Excerpts)

• Mallon, R. and Kelly, D. Making Race Out Of Nothing: Psychologically Constrained Social Roles


Week 6, September 23 -- Selves, Identities, and Narratives

• Dennett, D. The Self as the Center of Narrative Gravity

• Hume, D. Treatise of Human Nature, Book 1, Part iv, Section 6

• Humphreys N. and Dennett, D. Speaking for Ourselves

• McAdams, D. "First we invented stories, then they changed us": The Evolution of Narrative Identity

• Deresiewicz, W. How the Novel Made the Modern World

• Elderon, S. The Shaping of Storied Selves in David Foster Wallace’s The Pale King


Week 7, September 30 -- Jaynes and the Outside In Hypothesis: Selves and Identities as Culturally Transmitted Social Technologies (Or: The Surprisingly Recent Emergence of Interiority)

• Jaynes, J. The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (Afterward)

• Dennett, D. Julian Jaynes Software Archeology

• Penaluna, R. Consciousness Began When the Gods Stopped Speaking: Julian Jaynes and Neuroscience

• Simon, E. God Created Consciousness in Fiction: The Bible and the Rise of Interiority

• Guerrero, J. Maybe We're All Targeted Individuals (Social Media, Surveillance, and Mental Disorder)


No Class Thursday 10/3 -- Out of Town

No Class Tuesday 10/8 -- Fall Break


Week 8, October 7 -- The Outside In Hypothesis Continued

• Luhrmann, T. Knowing God

        • Frankel, J. Hallucinations Are Everywhere

        • Luhrmann, T. The Violence In Our Heads


Week 9, October 14 -- Modern Individualism Comes to The West

• Morris, C. The Discovery of the Individual: 1050 -1200 (Preface and Chapter 1)

• Siedentop, L. Inventing the Individual: The Origins of Western Liberalism (Preface and Chapter 1)

• Emerson, R. W. Self-Reliance

        • Background Material Individualism, Personality Traits, and WEIRDness

        • Luhrmann, T. Rice People vs. Wheat People: Why Are Some Cultures More Individualistic Than Others?


Week 10, October 21 -- Modern Individualism in Modern Politics (and Self-Care?)

• Sandel, M. The Procedural Republic and the Unencumbered Self

• Romeo, N. Against Individualism: Rebirth of the Body Politic

• Taylor, C. The Politics of Recognition

• Kisner, J. The Politics of Conspicuous Displays of Self-Care

• Schull, N. Data for Life: Wearable Technology and the Design of Self Care

• Penny, L. Life-Hacks of the Poor and Aimless

• Schwartz, A. Improving Ourselves to Death: What the self-help gurus and their critics reveal about our times

• Schulz, K. The Self in Self-Help


Week 11, October 28 -- Interlude! The View from Biology, Vampires, and New Year's Resolutions

• Skillings, D. Life Is Not Easily Bounded: What is a Biological Individual?

• Dupre, J. Metaphysics of Metamorphosis

• Haskell, D. G. Life Is The Network, Not The Self

• Krakauer, D.,  Bertschinger, N.,  Olbrich, E., Ay, N. and Flack, J. C. The Information Theory of Individuality

• Paul, L. A. Becoming A Vampire and Other Transformative Experiences

• Chang, R. On New Year's Resolutions: Resolving to Create a New You


Week 12,  November 4 -- Multifaceted Identities and Their Guiding Values

• Trilling, L. Sincerity and Authenticity (Chapter 1)

• Lovelock, D. The Makeover Trap: What Lies Behind the Urge to Find an Authentic Self?

• Eriksson, J. Straight Talk: Conceptions of Sincerity in Speech

• Riggle, N. High Five! The Ethics of Awesomeness

• Callcut, D. What Are We: Authenticity, Paul Gauguin, and the Midlife Crisis


Week 13 November 11-- Multifaceted Identities and Their Challenges, Part I: Juggling Identities

• Morton, J. Cultural Code-Switching: Straddling the Achievement Gap

• West, A., Zhang, R.,Yampolsky, M., and Sasaki, J. The Potential Cost of Cultural Fit: Frame Switching Undermines Perceptions of Authenticity in Western Contexts

• Tolentino, J. The I in the Internet

• Newman, S. Possessed by a Mask

• Egan, J. Black Box

• Renner, N. How Social Media Shapes Our Identity

Week 14, November 18 -- Multifaceted Identities and Their Challenges, Part II From College to The Workplace

• Woodhead, L. Generation Z and Modular Belonging

• Katz, L. How Gen Z Is Different, According to Social Scientists

• Thompson, D. Workism Is Making Americans Miserable

• Tolentino, J. The Gig Economy Celebrates Working Yourself to Death

• Taggart, J. If Work Dominated Your Every Moment Would Life Be Worth Living?


Week 15, November 25 -- Individualism, Multifaceted Identities, and Technology

• Elliott, C. Enhancement Technologies and the Modern Self

• Kadlac, A. The Challenge of Authenticity: Enhancement and Accurate Self-Presentation

No Class Thursday 11/28 -- Thanksgiving Break)


Week 16, December 2 -- Love and Selfies in our Time (of Hyper-Individualism)

• Khazan, O. We Expect Too Much From Our Romantic Partners: Interview with Eli Finkel about his book The All-or-Nothing Marriage

• Beck, J. Love in the Time of Individualism

• Danaher, J.  Nyholm, S. & Earp, B. The Quantified Relationship

• Gottlieb, A. How We Got to Be So Self-Absorbed: The Long Story: Review of Will Storr's Selfie How We Became So Self-Obsessed and What It’s Doing to Us

• Illing, S. How the West Became a Self-Obsessed Culture: Interview with Will Storr about Selfie

• Schull, N. Self In The Loop: Bits, Patterns, and Pathways In the Quantified Self


Had we but world enough, and time --  Scientific Selves, The Value of Education, and The Fragile Rationality of Choosing Who You Want to Be

• Tekin, S. Self-Evident: Selves are Real and Science Can Study Them

• Ismael, J. Why Study the Humanities?

• Wallace, D. F. Kenyon Address (This is Water)

• Callard, A. The Problem of Self-Creation (From Aspiration: The Agency of Becoming)

• Ullman-Margalit, E. Big Decisions: Opting, Converting, Drifting


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Comments, suggestions, clever derision, and unqualified flattery all welcome at drkelly@purdue.edu.