When you look into the mirror at your face, you are both the person who is lokking and that which is being looked at. In a less tangible or concrete way, when you yhink about the kind of person you are. or something you have done, you are both the person doing the thinking and what is being thought about. In other words, you are both subject and object. We use the personal pronoun "I" to refer us as subject and we use "me" to refer us as object. While other animal species have consciousness, only humans have self-consiousness. The term "self-conscious" is often used to mean embarrasment or shyness and certainly we do feel like this in stiuations where we are made to feel object-like, or exposed in some way. for example if get on the bus in the morning to discover we are wearing odd socks or have our sweater on back-to-front. But this is a secondary meaning- the primary meaning refers to this unique relationship where by the same person the same self is both subject and the object, knower and known, thinker and thought about, seer and seen etc. Dobzhansky, an eminent geneticist, claims that self-awereness is a fundamental
characteristic and evolutionary novelty of human as a species.
Kaynak: Psychology The Science of Mind and Behaviour
belgesi-1168