Ulric Neisser - Five Kinds of Self-Knowledge (A Developmental Stage Model)

Back in November, I posted an article from The Mouse Trap on Ulric Neisser's "Five Kinds of Self-Knowledge."

Here is the Abstract, which outlines the five basic selves, which mostly correspond, it seems, to the first five stages of Spiral Dynamics and/or Wilberian integral:

Self-knowledge is based on several different forms of information, so distinct that each one essentially establishes a different 'self.' The ecological self is the self as directly perceived with respect to the immediate physical environment; the interpersonal self, also directly perceived, is established by species-specific signals of emotional rapport and communication; the extended self is based on memory and anticipation; the private self appears when we discover that our conscious experiences are exclusively our own; the conceptual self or 'self-concept' draws its meaning from a network of socially-based assumptions and theories about human nature in general and ourselves in particular. Although these selves are rarely experienced as distinct (because they are held together by specific forms of stimulus information), they differ in their developmental histories, in the accuracy with which we can know them, in the pathologies to which they are subject, and generally in what they contribute to human experience.

It's a cool variation on the stage models of consciousness most integral folks already know about, but it looks specifically at self-knowledge as a line of development. Unfortunately, Neisser stops with the "The conceptual self," quoting from The Mouse Trap post:

Each of us has a concept of him/herself as a particular person in a familiar world. These self-concepts originate in social life, and so they vary widely across different societies and cultures. A few concepts of my own can serve as convenient examples: I am an American, a husband, and a professor. I assume that I have certain social obligations and political rights; that I have a liver and a spleen and a distinctive pattern of nuclear DNA; that I am a fast reader, poor at remembering names, and neither handsome nor ugly; that in general I do not think enough about the future consequences of my actions. Everyone could make such a list, and no two lists would be the same. Even the relevant dimensions need not be the same: a member of the Lohorung Rai in East Nepal would include the state of his Niwa (Hardman, 1981), and a medieval Englishman the state of his soul.
In the face of this complexity, it is useful to begin by considering concepts and categories of other kinds. What do we mean, for example, when we say that something is a ‘dog’? The so-called classical theory of concepts, which would claim that the class dog is defined by certain necessary and sufficient features, no longer seem adequate: it is too difficult to think of really definitive features, and those that do come to mind (e.g. ‘has four legs’) are just as hard to define as dog itself (Murphy & Medin, 1985). The classical theory also fails to explain the typicality effects discovered by Eleanor Rosch (1978); in most categories, some members function as ‘prototypes’ while others are more marginal. But category membership cannot just be a matter of similarity to the prototype either: besides the difficulty of defining ’similarity’, such a definition would miss the point that many categories, including dog, are conceptually all-or-none. (Any given animal either is or isn’t a dog.) These difficulties are resolved by realising that concepts do not stand alone: each is defined with reference to a network of others, i.e. to a theory.
Many linguists, philosophers, and psychologists have made this point (e.g. Lakoff, 1987; McCauley, 1987; Medin & Wattenmaker, 1987). To call something a dog is to assign it to a place in our theory of animals in general and dogs in particular, i.e. to assert that it occupies space, has internal organs, must eat or starve to death, is likely to behave in certain ways, is bigger than a mouse and smaller than an elephant, should be treated in a particular manner appropriate to dogs, had two parents who were dogs and will (if it becomes a parent) have puppies, etc. These beliefs are components (not all equally central) of our implicit theory of doghood—of what George Lakoff (1987) would call an ‘idealised cognitive model’. Children have such models quite early, at least where animals are concerned (Carey, 1985).

I love the references to Lakoff and am a firm believer in his other theory of conceptual metaphors. Next he talks about paranoia and how that may be a result of too much theorizing. This is fortunate reference I have found because just the other day CMB, a reader of this blog pointed that paranoia is hard to explain if we treat autism and schizophrenia as opposites and grant a role for opposing effects of Oxytocin. My reply was that oxytocin may be more a social hormone than a trust hormone and paranoia is more a excessive theorizing about others defect than a suspicion deficit.

These principles apply equally to the concept of self. My notion of what I am, like your notion of what you are, reflects a cognitive model embeded in a theoretical network. It too is based primarily on what I have been told, not only in the form of general cultural assumptions but also of communications addressed to me in particular. Like other concepts it tends to govern what I notice; in this case, what I notice about myself. Like other theories, it is not necessarily correct; all of us know people whose self-theories seem off the mark in certain respects. Nevertheless most self-theories do work fairly well, at least in areas where they make predictions about real experience. (Where this is not the case—e.g. in paranoia—we tend to classify them as pathological.) When Epstein (1973) proposed that psychologists should think of the self as a theory rather than as an independently-existing entity, he was talking about the conceptual self.

Next closely followed are references to Carol Dweck- another psychologist I just adore.

Although the self-concept can usefully be regarded as a single cognitive model, it usually comprises several more or less distinct sub-theories. Three of these deserve specific mention, although they cannot be considered in detail here. Role theories, which have been much studied by sociologists, are our own notions of how we fit into society: of what we should do and how we should be treated. They originate, I think, in children’s understanding of the scripts in which they participate; hence they are in place very early. Internal models, in contrast, concern or bodies and our minds. In modern Western culture, self-theories of the body (like my firm belief that I have an internal organ called the liver18) are mostly based on biology and medicine. Theories of the mind, in contrast, are the province of psychology, philosophy, and religion. Children are presented with these theories by the people around them, and do their best to interpret their own lives in terms of what they have been told. When and what they are told depends, of course, on the particular culture in which they are growing up.
Trait attributions are an important class of self-theories that straddle the boundary between social roles and internal models. We may believe, for example, that we are clever or stupid, handsome or ugly, fortunate or unlucky. Although these dimensions are essentially conventional—not all cultures classify along the same dimensions, or value them to the same extent—they can be of considerable importance. In this vein, Carol Dweck (1986) has shown that children’s beliefs about intelligence affect their actual performance in school. Those who believe that intelligence is a fixed quantity (and that they themselves are stupid) learn much less from school experience than those who have a self-concept that allows for intellectual growth and development. Although such attributions are acquired early, they are not impervious to change.

And thus he concludes talking about some tantalizing tangential thoughts on the perceived and felt unity of self, how we know our neighbors as ourselves , the ‘doer’ as opposed to ‘knower’ and admiring or despising oneself - all perhaps food for the next three stages (relational, reflexive/recursive/generative and integrative) of self.

Sandeep Gautam (author of The Mouse Trap) acknowledges that there are at least three higher stages in that last paragraph, which is important - Neisser does not explore these higher stages of self-knowledge, which is too bad because I think he might have something important to add.

I had to rely on the blog post from The Mouse Trap, which is quite good, because it is a pay-per-view article. $51 to read an old article! Criminal.

Tags: Psychology, self concept, awareness, consciousness, Ulric Neisser, Five Kinds of Self-Knowledge, Developmental Stage Model, The Mouse Trap, Sandeep Gautam, ecological self, interpersonal self, extended self, private self, conceptual self