The concept of the self has made it possible to think of the organism under the category of identity in order to account for the unity and effectiveness of the system of defense of its integrity. The dualism of self and non-self posits that an organism defends itself by an immune reaction against an external element ("non-self") while sparing the entities recognized as its own ("self").
Projects
The "self/non-self" model is based on the reasoning by analogy long decried by epistemologists, as well as the use of metaphors borrowed from social life, which lead to thinking of the body's self-normativity on the model of a community of competing pathogens (pathogens tolerated by the "self" as endogenous entities) but sufficiently unified to fight against potentially aggressive external agents.