An extended-self, games and conflict resolution today

Wed 18 November 2015

Mill Lane Lecture Rooms

Conflicts amongst individuals and collectivities— not to mention those within ourselves frequently expressed in terms of bodily stress— appear to be increasing in number and scale in our largely digitalized, networking society. The global economy and the earth’s environment, as well as all types of policymaking and planning, are challenged by such conflicts at a greatly accelerated rate. Most such conflicts are clearly the result of accumulated decisions undertaken on the part of individuals. In modern Western society, the self or ego is regarded as an indivisible entity. However, in the East perceptions of self may well diverge from this Western norm.

In this talk, evaluating various self-concepts, an extended-self will be posited and conflicts between selves described as a two-stage game contributing to the process of its formation. This extended-self comes into being only under certain conditions, one of which is that the cost of communication between any two selves needs to be minimal. Despite the fact that acceptable solutions of two agents in ordinal competitive games may not be optimal for both, an extended-self is able to strive for an optimal solution. Taking into account the importance of reducing communication costs between competing selves in order best to arrive at a viable extended-self, the requisite process of resolving internal conflict at all levels, namely the reduction of attrition and its accompanying stress, may well be achieved via bodily communication with organs in a self. External conflicts among selves may also be solved by synchronized collective art making, as for example in the creation of certain types of public art.

Biography:
Professor Emeritus and Fellow, CSWC, Tokyo Institute of Technology
The ecological and environmental economist Noboru Hidano is well known for his book The Economic Valuation of the Environment and Public Policy: A Hedonic Approach (Edward Elgar, 2002), a leading text in the hedonic valuation approach as pursued in public policy and environmental assessment. Professor Hidano has also advocated the notion of “extended self-concept’’, based upon the Eastern idea of self as set forth in a paper “Extended Self, Game, and Conflict’’ in Annals of the International Society of Dynamic Games (2006) and an article “Public Space in the City from the Viewpoints of Extended Self-Concept: A Fragment of Happiness’’ in Publicness from the perspective of city, Public Philosophy (Tokyo University Press, 2004). He seeks to integrate science, engineering, and art education in the overall search for contentment on behalf of the individual and society, based on his half-century of experience in interdisciplinary education and research.

Professor Hidano graduated from the Department of Social Engineering at Tokyo Tech, Japan’s foremost sci-tech university. Established in 1966, this department was one of the earliest to adopt an interdisciplinary approach, one comprising economics, psychology, engineering, and city planning. He received a doctorate from Tokyo Tech. After moved to Tokyo University as associate professor and he was appointed full professor at the Department of Social Engineering at Tokyo Institute of Technology in 1991. He is the recipient of several prizes including the prestigious Japan Science and Technology Prize.

Cost: Free