In this paper I am concerned with our conception of ourselves and how best to study the person. I will argue that it is on a non-psychic conception of the person that we can pin our hopes for knowing something interesting and informative about people. Moreover, I suggest a productive route out of the (metaphysical) dualism between bodies and minds—which seems to have always bedevilled the study of people—and into another; that between science and stories. I advocate a continuous interplay between stories and science because, in this way, we are better able to account for and configure who we are and how to live, as I argue in what follows. However, this does not promise a final word on how to study people, nor does it solve inter-theoretic battles between science and stories.
Benjamin, W. (1969). Illuminations: Essays and reflections (H. Arendt, Ed.; H. Zohn, Trans.). New York: Schocken.
2.
Bernstein, R.J. (Ed.). (1985). Habermas and modernity. Cambridge: Polity.
3.
Bernstein, R.J. (1989). Beyond objectivism and relativism. Oxford: Blackwell.
4.
Bickle, J. (1996). New wave psychophysical reductionism and the methodological caveats. Philosophy and Phenomenology, LVI(1), 56–76.
5.
Cadava, E. , Connor, P., & Nancy, J.-L. (Eds.). (1991). Who comes after the subject?London: Routledge.
6.
Chang, J. (1993). Wild swans. London: Flamingo.
7.
Craig, A.P. (1991). The study of change. In H. Van Niekerk (Ed.), Cognitive development in Southern Africa. Pretoria: HSRC.
8.
Craig, A.P. (1995). Psychology’s subject. South African Journal of Psychology, 25(4), 1–8.
9.
Craig, A.P. (1997). Postmodern pluralism and our selves. Theory & Psychology, 7(4), 505–527.
10.
Craig, A.P. (1988). The possibilities for personhood in a context of (hitherto) unknown possibilities. In G. Pattison & S. Shakespeare (Eds.), Kierkegaard: The self in society. London: Macmillan
11.
Churchland, P.M. (1979). Scientific realism and the plasticity of mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
12.
Cupitt, D. (1991). What is a story?London: SCM.
13.
Dawkins, R. (1986). The extended phenotype. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
14.
Dawkins, R. (1989). The selfish gene (new ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
15.
Dawkins, R. (1991). The blind watchmaker. London: Penguin.
16.
Dawkins, R. (1996a). Climbing mount improbable. London: Viking.
17.
Dawkins, R. (1996b). River out of Eden. London: Phoenix.
18.
Dennett, D. (1995). Darwin’s dangerous idea. London: Penguin.
19.
Feuerbach, L. (1972). The fiery brook: Selected writings (Z. Hanfi, Ed. and Trans.). New York: Doubleday.
20.
Gallagher, S. , & Meltzoff, A.N. (1996). The earliest sense of self and others: Merleau-Ponty and recent developmental studies. Philosophical Psychology, 9(2), 211–233.
21.
Geertz, C. (1983). Local knowledge. New York: Basic Books.
22.
Giddens, A. (1990). The consequences of modernity. Oxford: Polity.
23.
Haack, S. (1995). Evidence and inquiry: Towards reconstruction in epistemology. Oxford: Blackwell.
24.
Habermas, J. (1987). The philosophical discourse of modernity (F. Lawrence, Trans.). Oxford: Blackwell.
