Research Structure

Key words:
human needs\self-actualization, open source\consumerism, art\robot\artificial life, economy\politics\sociology,

Self (philosophy)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self_(philosophy)
Self is broadly defined as the essential qualities that make a person distinct from all others. The task in philosophy is defining what these qualities are, and there have been a number of different approaches. The “self” is the idea of a unified being which is the source of consciousness. Moreover, this self is the agent responsible for the thoughts and actions of an individual to which they are ascribed. It is a substance, which therefore endures through time; thus, the thoughts and actions at different moments of time may pertain to the same self. As the notion of subject, the “self” has been harshly criticized by Nietzsche at the end of the 19th century, on behalf of what Gilles Deleuze would call a “becoming-other”.[citation needed]

Self as an illusion
In spirituality, and especially nondual, mystical and eastern meditative traditions, the human being is often conceived as being in the illusion of individual existence, and separateness from other aspects of creation. This “sense of doership” or sense of individual existence is that part which believes it is the human being, and believes it must fight for itself in the world, is ultimately unaware and unconscious of its own true nature. The ego is often associated with mind and the sense of time, which compulsively thinks in order to be assured of its future existence, rather than simply knowing its own self and the present.
The spiritual goal of many traditions involves the dissolving of the ego, allowing self-knowledge of one’s own true nature to become experienced and enacted in the world. This is variously known as enlightenment, nirvana, presence, and the “here and now”.

The self: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self_(psychology)
The self is a key construct in several schools of psychology, broadly referring to the cognitive and affective representation of one’s identity. The earliest formulation of the self in modern psychology from the distinction between the self as I, the subjective knower, and the self as Me, the object that is known.[1] Current views of the self in psychology diverge greatly from this early conception, positioning the self as playing an integral part in human motivation, cognition, affect, and social identity.[2] Self following from John Locke has been seen as a product of episodic memory[3] but research upon those with amnesia find they have a coherent sense of self based upon preserved conceptual autobiographical knowledge.[4] It may be the case that we can now usefully attempt to ground experience of self in a neural process with cognitive consequences, which will give us insight into the elements of which the complex multiply situated selves of modern identity are composed.

It is suggested by Kohut that for an individual to talk about, explain, understand or judge oneself is linguistically impossible, since it requires the self to understand its self. This is seen as philosophically invalid, being self-referential, or reification, also known as a circular argument. Thus, if actions arise so that the self attempts self-explanation, confusion may well occur within linguistic mental pathways and processes.

It has been suggested that transitory mental constructions within episodic memory form a self-memory system that grounds the goals of the working self[3]. Research upon those with amnesia has modified this by finding such people can have a coherent sense of self even without supporting episodic memories based upon semantic facts and so conceptual knowledge rather than episodic memory.[4]

Both episodic and semantic memory systems have been proposed to generate a sense of self identity. In this personal episodic memory enables the phenomenological continuity of identity, while personal semantic memory generates the narrative continuity of identity.[14] “The nature of personal narratives depends on highly conceptual and ‘story-like’ information about one’s life, which resides at the general event level of autobiographical memory and is thus unlikely to rely on more event-specific episodic systems.”[14]

ego:

Self-schema:
The term self-schema refers to the beliefs and ideas people have about themselves. These beliefs are used to guide and organize information processing, especially when the information is significant to the self. Self-schemas are important to a person’s overall self-concept.

Once we have developed a schema about ourselves there is a strong tendency for that schema to be maintained by a bias in what we attend to, a bias in what we remember, and a bias in what we are prepared to accept as true about ourselves. In other words our self-schema becomes self-perpetuating. The self-schema is then stored in long-term memory and both facilitates and biases the processing of personally relevant information.

Self-schemas vary from person to person because each individual has very different social and cultural life experiences. A few examples of self-schemas are; exciting/ dull, quiet/ loud, healthy/ sickly, athletic/ nonathletic, lazy/ active, and geek/ jock. If a person has a schema for geek/ jock, for example, he might think of himself as a bit of a computer geek and so he would possess a lot of information about that trait. Because of this he would probably interpret a lot of situations based on their relevance to being a geek.

Since it has been defined that most people have multiple schemas does this mean that we all have multiple personalities as well? The answer is no. At least not in the pathological sense. Indeed, for the most part, multiple self-schemas are extremely useful to us in our daily lives. Without our conscious awareness, they help us make rapid decisions and to behave efficiently and appropriately in different situations and with different people. They guide what we attend to, and how we interpret and use incoming information and they activate specific cognitive, verbal, and behavioral action sequences—which in cognitive psychology are called scripts and action plans—that help us meet our goals more efficiently.

Self-image:
http://personas.media.mit.edu/personasWeb.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self_image
A person’s self image is the mental picture, generally of a kind that is quite resistant to change, that depicts not only details that are potentially available to objective investigation by others (height, weight, hair color, sex, I.Q. score, etc.), but also items that have been learned by that person about himself or herself, either from personal experiences or by internalizing the judgments of others. A simple definition of a person’s self image is their answer to this question – “What do you believe people think about you?” A more technical term for self image that is commonly used by social and cognitive psychologists is self-schema. Like any schema, self-schemas store information and influence the way we think and remember. For example, research indicates that information which refers to the self is preferentially encoded and recalled in memory tests, a phenomenon known as “Self-Referential Encoding” (Rogers et al. 1977).
As it is a relative objective measure, it is generally measured against crowd leaders, such as celebrities[1].

http://socialbrain.rsablogs.org.uk/tag/self-expectation-theory/
This affect stems in part from what social psychologists call self-image or self-expectation theory. The idea is that a lot of what we do is motivated by the kind of person we want to be, the kind of social groups we take ourselves to belong to, and the kind of person others think we are.

People will often not do something if it doesn’t chime with their values, or if they feel they will be judged to have behaved badly by people they respect, admire or simply identify with. They will try to make their actions cohere with a self-image and social identity that they project ahead of them.

Or conversely, if people find themselves doing something regularly, they will adjust their values to their behaviour in order to maintain coherence: if I find myself regularly reading trashy magazines, I may well adjust my prior attitude that reading them is a waste of my time. But when I make this adjustment it must fit with the overall coherence of my values and attitudes: I tell myself reading trashy magazines is an acceptable form of relaxation for a busy person like me, as long as it doesn’t take up too much time.

Self-esteemhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-esteem
Self-esteem is a term used in psychology to reflect a person’s overall evaluation or appraisal of his or her own worth. Self-esteem encompasses beliefs (for example, “I am competent” or “I am incompetent”) and emotions such as triumph, despair, pride and shame. A person’s self-esteem may be reflected in their behaviour, such as in assertiveness, shyness, confidence or caution. Self-esteem can apply specifically to a particular dimension (for example, “I believe I am a good writer, and feel proud of that in particular”) or have global extent (for example, “I believe I am a good person, and feel proud of myself in general”).

Psychologists usually regard self-esteem as an enduring personality characteristic (“trait” self-esteem), though normal, short-term variations (“state” self-esteem) also exist.
Synonyms or near-synonyms of self-esteem include: self-worth,[1] self-regard,[2] self-respect,[3][4] self-love (which can express overtones of self-promotion),[5] and self-integrity. Self-esteem is distinct from self-confidence and self-efficacy, which involve beliefs about ability and future performance.

self-concept:
The self-concept is not restricted to the present. It includes past selves and future selves. Future selves or “possible selves” represent individuals’ ideas of what they might become, what they would like to become, and what they are afraid of becoming. They correspond to hopes, fears, standards, goals, and threats. Possible selves may function as incentives for future behavior and they also provide an evaluative and interpretive context for the current view of self.[12]
In philosophy, there is the concept of the ipse identity (“who am I?”) as introduced by Paul Ricoeur.[13]