The self as tension of wholeness and emptiness

Abstract

The article provides a framework of the Self, understood as a dynamic semiotic system in constant evolutive tension rather than a system in equilibrium adapting to the environmental changing conditions. The aim of the whole special issue is indeed to provide new hints for the reflection about the relationship between Self and semiosis, from both the theoretical and philosophical points of view. The articles of Salvatore, Luleci and Silva Filho & Dazzani, discuss the relationship between the Self and the ideas of context, agency, belief and action as co-constitutive of the subject. The Self, as high level semiotic instance, is the process that results of and regulates the uniqueness of the experience in irreversible time. The continuity of the stream of Self and the culturally codified ways of producing signs about the experience in the world are also discussed. The articles of de Souza, de Mattos & Chavez, Fivush, Simao & Sampaio, instead, discuss the process of semiosis in different periods of the lifespan. Guimaraes, questions the generalization of Self across cultures, presenting the notion of “multiple selves”.