ABSTRACT
This chapter sketches in the bare bones of a working conception of the self. Phenomenological inspection yields references to the self as actor in relation to other actors, as ground against which experience of an external world is figural, as maintaining identity in time, as reflexive object. The author have always thought that proper scientific discourse requires us to use what insights we can glean from what is given phenomenally so as to frame subjective constructs—ones conceptualized from the actor's point of view—that are as firmly grounded in the observer's frame of reference as we can make them. The question is, rather, what inferential conceptual distinctions do we need in the domain vaguely identified by phenomenal experiences of self? One suggests that high momentary self-esteem (presumably a composite dimension of self-perceptions rather than of the enduring self concept, since it is manipulated experimentally) may be an essential condition for the generation of dissonance under certain circumstances.
