The Quasi-Economic Agency of Human Selves

• Main Author: James Grayot
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Association Œconomia 2017-12-01
• Series: Œconomia
• Subjects: selves; multiple-self models; economic agency; social cognition; narrative construction; Ross (Don)
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/oeconomia/2790

According to Don Ross, individual persons are complex aggregations of selves. These selves arise in response to external pressures to regulate individual behaviors and therefore enable the tracking of public norms and conventions. In this paper, I investigate the different roles that selves play in Ross’ broader philosophy of economics and I identify separate projects that arise therein. To this end, I distinguish three different roles for selves, which are evolutionary, narrative, and economic, and I argue that these roles contribute to two distinct, but overlapping, projects. My aim is to show that there is a tension underlying these projects, but that it’s not clear where these tensions arise precisely because of how selves are multiply understood and used to defend these projects. I will argue that, while it is not problematic to conceive of selves according to their different roles, we should not presume that the functions or properties of selves in one role can serve the same purposes for both projects.