SELF P

What is it to occupy a first-person stance? Is the first-personal idea one has of oneself in conflict with the idea of oneself as a physical being? How if there is a conflict is it to be resolved? The Self recommends a new way to approach those questions finding inspiration in theories about consciousness and mind in first millennial India. These philosophers do not regard the first-person stance as in conflict with the natural--their idea of nature is not that of scientific naturalism but rather a liberal naturalism non-exclusive of the normative. Jonardon Ganeri explores a wide range of ideas about the self: reflexive self-representation mental files and quasi-subject analyses of subjective consciousness; the theory of emergence as transformation; embodiment and the idea of a bodily self; the centrality of the emotions to the unity of self. Buddhism''s claim that there is no self too readily assumes an account of what a self must be. Ganeri argues instead that the self is a negotiation between self-presentation and normative avowal a transaction grounded in unconscious mind. Immersion participation and coordination are jointly constitutive of self the first-person stance at once lived engaged and underwritten. And all is in harmony with the idea of the natural.