A Glance at the Sense of Identity. From a Linguistically-Turned Constructivist Perspective

The overall purpose of the paper is rather theoretical: it is an attempt to develop an approach to the problem of the sense of identity based on Ernst von Glasersfeld's version of radical constructivism as well as on Richard Rorty's philosophy of language and knowledge. The authors will put forward a claim - and try to substantiate it - that such an approach may be formulated when von Glasersfeld's notion of compatibility and Rorty's concept of final vocabulary are viewed as complementing each other. It will also be shown how this approach differs from other, most prominent, approaches to the question of identity and how it may enable a researcher to talk about contingency in the processes from which individual senses of identity happen to emerge. (Author abstract)