DownloadThe Portobello Bookshop Gift Guide 2024

The Self

Naturalism, Consciousness, and the First-Person Stance

Jonardon Ganeri author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Oxford University Press

Published:12th Mar '15

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

This paperback is available in another edition too:

The Self cover

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.

Ganeri's book is truly impressive in its scope and sophistication. * Lynne Rudder Baker, University of Massachusetts at Amherst *
one of the key aims of the comparative philosophical enterprise is to think about familiar problems in a new light, and this aim is admirably fulfilled by Ganeri's book ... It is no exaggeration to say that this book marks the beginning of a completely new phase in the study of Indian philosophy, one in which a firm grasp of the historical material forms the basis for going beyond pure exegesis, opening up the way for doing philosophy with ancient sources. * Jan Westerhoff, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews *

  • Winner of Shortlisted for the John N. Findlay Book Prize in Metaphysics by the Metaphysical Society of America.

ISBN: 9780198709398

Dimensions: 232mm x 177mm x 21mm

Weight: 586g

388 pages