Map of Selves

<p><em>A Map of Selves</em> defines a concept of selfhood radically different from the Cartesian neo-Humean materialist and animalist concepts which now dominate analytical philosophy of mind. A self as this book defines it is an enduring substance with a quality which is its constant possession which it does not share with any other substance and which is often remembered by it as its own. The author maintains that <i>we </i>are selves as so defined. He criticises the panpsychist theory that material objects are composed of selves analogous to ours and argues further for the existence of at least one transcendent self whose activity explains both our own existence and the existence of the natural world. He ends by considering whether things would be worse for us if selves as the book defines them did not exist and we were as some philosophers suppose we are just brains or sequences of mental events or hylemorphic structures or subjects which last no longer than the specious present. </p><p>Nathan’s carefully argued and original book will be of interest to researchers in metaphysics and philosophical psychology and to their students. </p>