What is "self"?

According to "An Invitation to Social Construction" written by Kenneth J. Gergen, the idea of "self" or "individual" originated in the philosophy of Enlightenment in 17 and 18 centuries. "self" or "individual" is in our each inner world, that is, mind. And out of this world, the physical world expands being opposed to the inner world. This ontology based on dualism seems to be very natural to us. However, should we think how our minds can give effects on our physical bodies? We can move our bodies' parts as we want to do. So what is the mechanism between mind and body? Once upon a time, although Rene Descartes thought such converting mind to body took place in our pineal bodies, the present brain science deny his hypothesis. But right from the beginning, Descartes did not explain the causal relationship between mind and body, and the explanation have not been proposed yet.
To avoid this dilemma of dualismic ontology, monism, that is the idea that there is only one world, only our mind world. According to this idea, only certain things are our experiences (this is the same idea of Descartes), and we live in our each complete closed private world, furthermore, the idea of existing the other people is a phantasy built by our minds. Investigating this idea, we arrived at solipsism, and this idea has no falsifiability.
The substitute for solipsism is materialism which is another monism. This idea affects on today's great development of science and technology. We have only one physical world constructed by materials, and our minds are only materialistic processes in our physical brains. However, what is "material"? The fact of existing materials is based on only our cognition. That is to say, materialism is equal to solipsism.
I wonder how we should think about "self" or "individual"?

Understand "Comet in Moominland"

Today, I held 2nd class of moomin seminar. At first I explained the outline of "Comet in Moominland" which was the next work to "Smalltroll and big flood". Next, the 21 students were divided into 5 groups and tackled the three tasks: the first was making questions on this work by using Monju, who was a Buddhist saint of wisdom, method, the second was categorizing the questions into two levels and the last was drawing a mind-map based on the categorized questions. It is very difficult that a beginner draw a proper mind-map because he/she is difficult to classify their idea into appropriate levels. So my three process method affords easy mind-map drawing to a beginner. By the way, my students must choice a question, explain the reason and answer the question by themselves till the next class.

Comet in Moominland

This work was rewritten twice. The original title was "Kometjakten(Comet search)" in 1946, the second was "Mumintrollet på kometjakt(Moomintroll's comet search)" in 1956 and the final version was "Kometen kommer(Comet came)" in 1968. The deferences between the original and the final are belows:

1. the animal which Sniff managed to be attached was changed from monkey to cat
2. the number of sections was reduced
3. some omens of coming comet were deleted
4. the date when moomins visited the astronomical observatory was changed from 2nd August from 3rd August

I wonder why Tove modify such alternations? Tove said it was very important that all of things were fitted. I should consider the whole stories of Moomin to solve this secret. At first, I looked up the year when the stories were published and republished:

1945 Smatrollen och den stora oversvamningen (small troll and big flood) published
1946 Kometjakten (Comet search: "Comet in Moominland") published
1948 Trollkarlens hatt（Wiard's hat: "Finn family in Moomintroll") published
1950 Muminpappans bravader (Moominpapa's exploit: Moominpapa's memoir" published
1954 Farlig midsommar (Dangerous midsummer: "Moominsummer madness" published
1956 Mumintrollet på kometjakt (Moomintroll's comet search: revised from "Kometjakten") published
1957 Trollvinter (Trollwinter: "Moominland midwinter") published
1962 Det osynliga barnet och andra beråtterlser (Invisible child and other stories: "Tales from moominvalley") published
1965 Pappan och havet (Papa and sea: "Moominpapa at sea" published
1968 Kometen kommer (Comet came: "Comet in Moominland") published
1968 Muminpappans memoarer ("Moominpapa's memoir" published
1970 Sent i november (late November: "Moominvalley in november") published

the day for my daughter's school visitation

Last Saturday, 16 April, I and my wife went to our daughter's elementary school. Although our son, who is now in second grade in junior high school, was used to hate we visiting his elementary school, she wants us to visit her school. Anyway, we observed her science class on burning. In the black board, four figure of a burning candle and a bottle without bottom on a table were drawn. The first showed that the bottle covered the candle without no opening between the bottle's bottom section and the surface of table, and a lid was put on the bottle. The second explained that although the relation between the bottle and the table was same as the first, a lid was not put on the bottle. In the third and the fourth, there was an opening between the bottle's bottom section and the surface of table, and in the third a lid was put on but in the fourth was not. For each figure, her teacher asked his students, "Which do you think the candle continue to burn or go out?". And he actually performed each experiment in the front of his students.
When our daughter came back to home, I asked her, "What have you learned from the lecture?". "I learned that a material could not burn without making way for air, she said. Then I continued to ask her, "If only you want to make a path for air, is it enough to make an opening between the bottle and the surface of table like the third figure?". "I don't know, I learned only about a path for air", she answered. I thought that her teacher planed the four experiments for his students understanding that burning consumed oxygen and emit carbon dioxide, and carbon dioxide was heavier than oxygen. I thought her teacher should make his students consider why the both upper and bottom openings were needed to burning the candle in the bottle. In Finland, I wonder what kind of lecture is performed on this content.

Socio-constructive Science&Technology I

Today, I held 2nd time master course class. In this class, we discuss what scientific knowledge is. Today, we continued to argue some instances on scientific knowledge from las week. Last week, we took up Dr. Ichikawa's discovery and Dr. Millikan's experiment. The former is on inducing cancer artificially in 1915. In this research theme, Dr. Fibiger in Denmark received Norvel Prize in 1926 by proving the relation between parasites and tumors in 1907. However, the later days his discovery was proved to be wrong, and Dr. Ichikawa's was right. In those days, Fibiger was already an authority of pathological anatomy, on the contrary Ichikawa was a novice scientist. Furthermore, some of the Novel Prize Selection committee had discrimination against un-European people. Based on this instance, we discussed on justice of scientific knowledge. On the other side, Millikan discovered the charge on a single electron by oil dropping experience. However, he reported 58 data out of 170, which suited his prediction. On this example we argued what a scientific experiment is. Then today we adopted robotomy and the theory how an airplane can fly. Lobotomy is a neurosurgical procedure for separating the prefrontal lobe from the anterior lobes. Although this operation had conducted to treat sever mental illnesses, there were sever side effects. In spite of these effects, Dr. Monis who was the pioneer of this procedure was given the Nobel Prize in 1949. We discussed the difficulties on experiments of human. Next we examined the difference between science and technology based on the fact that the flight theory have not uncleared yet. Today's last theme was the idea of logical positivism, which is an idea for definition of scientific knowledge, that is, a scientific knowledge is created by induction from some observable phenomena. We considered the problems of this idea.

The 1st Moomin class in 2011 filled with so many students

Yesterday, my class of the liberal arts started. The class name is "Welcome to Moomin world!". Although this class's capacity is 23 students, more than 80 students gathered the 1st class! My pleasure! But I'm very sorry the students attending my class will be determined by lot.
By the way, I introduced them the first work of the Moomin story: "Little trolls and big flood". The author Tove Jansson wrote this happy end story to conceal her great worry for World War II behind it. However, I think this story doesn't end happily, rather starts an unstable family relation. The reason is that the moomin family starts to live in a blue house which was build by Moominpapa. In this story, blue is symbol of female, so the blue house symbolizes Moominmama. In the blue house, a male power is oppressed, I think.
In my class, my students will dig to the bottom of the moomin story. And I hope they find their way to live better through the story.