For early civilizations, consciousness and the sense of self were experienced as located in the center of the body, most often near to or within the physical heart. Enlightenment was understood as the
Oshana (philosophy, U. of Florida) does not attempt a precise taxonomy of autonomy in its many guises, but offers an admittedly worldly, naturalistic interpretation that is significantly different fro
Over the centuries, the idea of the self has both fascinated and confounded philosophers. From the ancient Greeks,who problematized issues of identity and self-awareness, to Locke and Hume, who popul
People in the ancient world thought of vision as both an ethical tool and a tactile sense, akin to touch. Gazing upon someone—or oneself—was treated as a path to philosophical self-knowledge, but the
This book traces the development of theories of the self and personal identity from the ancient Greeks to the present day. From Plato and Aristotle to Freud and Foucault, Raymond Martin and John Barre
Christopher Gill offers a new analysis of what is innovative in Hellenistic--especially Stoic and Epicurean--philosophical thinking about selfhood and personality. His wide-ranging discussion of Stoic
Ignorance and Imagination advances a novel way to resolve the central philosophical problem about the mind: how it is that consciousness or experience fits into a larger naturalistic picture of the wo
Admitting that scholars studying consciousness is a little like fish studying water, political philosopher Marciniak investigates where it came from and when people first noticed it. He begins by revi
David Rosenthal is one of the leading contributors to the philosophical study of consciousness. This volume gathers together his work on the subject from the past two decades, and represents the defin
What is a self? Does it exist in reality or is it a mere social construct -- or is it perhaps a neurologically induced illusion? The legitimacy of the concept of the self has been questioned by both n
Most of us think we are individuals first and foremost who then come together to form relationships. De Quincey shows that relationship comes first,Aythat our individual sense of self actually arises
In Consciousness and Persons: Unity and Identity, Michael Tye takes on the thorny issue of the unity of consciousness and answers these important questions: What exactly is the unity of consciousness
For courses in Introductory Philosophy and Philosophy of Man and Human Nature. The vitally important concept of the "person" is featured in this anthology of readings from the history of Western
The Persistence of Subjectivity examines several approaches to, and critiques of, the core notion in the self-understanding and legitimation of the modern, 'bourgeois' form of life: the free, reflective, self-determining subject. Since it is a relatively recent historical development that human beings think of themselves as individual centers of agency, and that one's entitlement to such a self-determining life is absolutely valuable, the issue at stake also involves the question of the historical location of philosophy. What might it mean to take seriously Hegel's claim that philosophical reflection is always reflection on the historical 'actuality' of its own age? Discussing Heidegger, Gadamer, Adorno, Leo Strauss, Manfred Frank, and John McDowell, Robert Pippin attempts to understand how subjectivity arises in contemporary institutional practices such as medicine, as well as in other contexts such as modernism in the visual arts and in the novels of Marcel Proust.
What is the self? The question has preoccupied people in many times and places, but nowhere more than in the modern West, where it has spawned debates that still resound today. In this 2005 book, Jerrold Seigel provides an original and penetrating narrative of how major Western European thinkers and writers have confronted the self since the time of Descartes, Leibniz, and Locke. From an approach that is at once theoretical and contextual, he examines the way figures in Britain, France, and Germany have understood whether and how far individuals can achieve coherence and consistency in the face of the inner tensions and external pressures that threaten to divide or overwhelm them. He makes clear that recent 'postmodernist' accounts of the self belong firmly to the tradition of Western thinking they have sought to supersede, and provides an open-ended and persuasive alternative to claims that the modern self is typically egocentric or disengaged.
In Frank Jackson's famous thought experiment, Mary is confined to a black-and-whiteroom and educated through black-and-white books and lectures on a black-and-white television. Inthis way, she learns
The essays reflect the interests of the Center for Subjectivity Research and seek to address the following issue: To what extent can the current discussion of consciousness in mainstream cognitive sci
Where does consciousness exist? In the mind? In the external world? On Consciousness features the most up-to-date considerations of the subject by the internationally renowned philosopher Ted Honderic
