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.Book Features: A refreshingly original exploration of one of the most puzzling aspects of human existence The first book to draw together the Indian philosophical tradition with current philosophical work on the self Introduces a wide range of Buddhist and other theories from first-millennium India Lively and lucid accessible to a broad interdisciplinary readershipTable of Contents: Introduction Part I: Naturalism and the Self Historical Prelude: Varieties of Naturalism Conceptions of Self: An Analytical Taxonomy Experiment Imagination & the Self Part II: Mind and Body Emergence Transformation Persistence The Self as Bodily Part III. Immersion & Subjectivity The Composition of Consciousness Self-consciousness Reflexivism Sentience Other Minds Part IV: Participation & the First-Person Stance The Mind-Body Problem Attention Monitoring & the Unconscious Mind The Emotions Unity The Distinctness of Selves Conclusion: A Theory of Self Bibliography Index