Dealing with the self in empirical cognitive science: a case study of four conceptual approaches

Cognitive science has a persistent interest in understanding the self, yet researchers often use the term in different ways and for different explanatory purposes. Drawing on conceptual analyses conducted within the German Research Foundation (DFG) Priority Program The Active Self , this article presents a case study of how concepts of the self are operationalized in interdisciplinary empirical research. Project members were invited to describe the concepts of self guiding their research, and these descriptions were synthesized into a set of recurring conceptual categories. This analysis identified four recurring uses of the concept of self: as a naïve theory, as a placeholder for agent-related implicit knowledge, as phenomenal experience, and as a carrier of psychological function. We argue that these uses should not be understood as competing empirical theories of the same entity. Rather, they differ in the explanatory role assigned to the self, namely as explanandum, explanans, operational placeholder, or phenomenological target. Analysis of these roles reveals conceptual tensions that arise when they are conflated, including reification, category mistakes, and pseudo-mechanistic explanation. We suggest that greater clarity regarding the explanatory function of self concepts can facilitate interdisciplinary communication and theoretical integration. More generally, this case study illustrates how conceptual heterogeneity within collaborative research programs can impede integration when underlying assumptions remain implicit.