my mind on books

Subjective Consciousness: A Self-Representational Theory by Uriah Kriegel (Oxford University Press, 2009)

(link for UK)

Product description from the publisher:

Some mental events are conscious, some are unconscious. What is the difference between the two? Uriah Kriegel offers an answer. His aim is a comprehensive theory of the features that all and only conscious mental events have. The key idea is that consciousness arises when self-awareness and world-awareness are integrated in the right way. Conscious mental events differ from unconscious ones in that, whatever else they may represent, they always also represent themselves, and do so in a very specific way. Subjective Consciousness is a fascinating new move forward towards a full understanding of the mind.

Kriegel is an Associate Director of the Center for Consciousness Studies, where plans for the 2010 Toward a Science of Consciousness conference are underway…

See also: Author’s website

Here are some recent & forthcoming books on the philosophy of the self:

Philosophy of Personal Identity and Multiple Personality (Routledge Studies in Contemporary Philosophy) by Logi Gunnarsson
Product description from the publisher:

As witnessed by recent films such as Fight Club and Identity, our culture is obsessed with multiple personality—a phenomenon raising intriguing questions about personal identity. This study offers both a full-fledged philosophical theory of personal identity and a systematic account of multiple personality. Gunnarsson combines the methods of analytic philosophy with close hermeneutic and phenomenological readings of cases from different fields, focusing on psychiatric and psychological treatises, self-help books, biographies, and fiction. He develops an original account of personal identity (the authorial correlate theory) and offers a provocative interpretation of multiple personality: in brief, “multiples” are right about the metaphysics but wrong about the facts.

Rethinking the Western Understanding of the Self by Ulrich Steinvorth

Product Description
In this book, Ulrich Steinvorth offers a fresh analysis and critique of rationality as a defining element in Western thinking. Criticizing revelation, tradition, and collectivism, Western thinking champions rationality, human rights, and individualism, and culminates in a unique understanding of the self. The prevailing understanding of the self was formed by the Lockean conception and utilitarianism. Compatible with classical physics, it does not, however, explain the cataclysms that occurred in the twentieth century. Steinvorth argues that Descartes’ understanding of the self offers a more plausible and realistic alternative. When freed from the dualism in which Descartes conceived it, such a conceptualization enables us to distinguish between self and subject. Moreover, it enables us to understand why individualism – one of the hallmarks of modernity in the West – became a universal ideal to be granted to every member of society; how acceptance of this notion could peak in the seventeenth century; and why it is now in decline, though not irreversibly so. Most importantly, as Steinvorth demonstrates, the Cartesian concept of the self presents a way of saving modernity from the dangers that it now encounters.

Who One Is: Book 1: Meontology of the “I”: A Transcendental Phenomenology by James G. Hart

coming in Sept 2009

The Impertinent Self: A Heroic History of Modernity (Cultural Memory in the Present) by Josef Früchtl (tr Sarah Kirkby)

Product Description
The Impertinent Self provides a philosophical and cultural theory of modernity by constructing a parallel between the philosophical self and the hero figure found in certain cinematic genres. Früchtl argues that modernity is not unified and should be conceived as a phenomenon consisting of three strata: the classical, the agonist, and the hybrid. He demonstrates this by following a dual trajectory: the shift in the concept of the self from German idealism to Romanticism and so-called postmodernism, and the evolution of the hero figure in the Western and in crime and science fiction movies. Früchtl takes a clear position within the ongoing discussion in the humanities and social sciences about modernity, a discussion that, in light of the work of Foucault, Lyotard, and Habermas, has too often neglected the importance of Romanticism. Similarly, he embraces the role of film and popular culture in modern society.

coming in Oct 2009

Personal Identity and Fractured Selves: Perspectives from Philosophy, Ethics, and Neuroscience
From the publisher’s description:

This book brings together some of the best minds in neurology and philosophy to discuss the concept of personal identity and the moral dimensions of treating brain disease and injury. The contributors engage a crucial question: When an individual’s personality changes radically because of disease or injury, should this changed individual be treated as the same person?

Titles featured in previous posts:

The Ego Tunnel by Thomas Metzinger

Virtual Selves, Real Persons by Richard S Hallam

Me (Art of Living) by Mel Thompson

Relational Being by Kenneth Gergen

Social psychologist Kenneth J. Gergen, author of The Saturated Self,
has a new book out from Oxford University Press: Relational Being: Beyond Self and Community.

Product description from the publisher:

This book builds on two current developments in psychology scholarship and practice. The first centers on broad discontent with the individualist tradition in which the rational agent, or autonomous self, is considered the fundamental atom of social life. Critique of individualism spring not only from psychologists working in the academy, but also from communities of therapy and counseling. The second, and related development from which this work builds, is the search for alternatives to individualist understanding. Thus, therapists such as Steve Mitchell, along with feminists at the Stone Center, expand the psychoanalytic tradition to include a relational orientation to therapy.
The present volume will give voice to the critique of individualism, but its major thrust is to develop and illustrate a far more radical and potentially exciting landscape of relational thought and practice than now exists. Most existing attempts to build a relational foundation remain committed to a residual form of individualist psychology. The present work carves out a space of understanding in which relational process stands prior to the very concept of the individual. More broadly, the book attempts to develop a thoroughgoing relational account of human activity. In doing so, Gergen reconstitutes ‘the mind’ as a manifestation of relationships and bears out these ideas in a range of everyday professional practices, including family therapy, collaborative classrooms, and organizational psychology.

Me (Art of Living Series) by Mel Thompson (Acumen, 2009)

Product description from the publisher:

‘Who am I?’ In a world where randomness and chance make life transient and unpredictable, religion, psychology and philosophy have all tried, in their different ways, to answer this question and to give meaning and coherence to the human person. How we should construct a meaningful ‘me’ – and to make sense of one’s life – is the question at the heart of Mel Thompson’s illuminating book. Although Thompson begins by exploring the workings of the brain, he shows that if we are to consider the nature of the self, it is not enough to argue about such things as how mind relates to matter, or whether neuroscience can fully explain consciousness. Such an approach fails to do justice to the self that we experience and the selves that we encounter around us. We need to engage with the more personal, existential questions: how do I make sense of my life? And am I responsible for the person I have become? Thompson investigates the gap between what we are and what others perceive us to be to ascertain whether we are genuinely knowable entities. He explores the central dilemma of how one can have a fixed idea of ‘me’ to shape and direct one’s life when, in a world of constant change, events will rob us of that fixed idea at any moment. Perhaps we would be better to let go of the need for ‘me’, asks Thompson, but would a self-less life be possible, or desirable? Drawing on the writings of literature, philosophy, religion and science, as well as personal reflection and anecdote, Thompson has written an engaging and thought-provoking work that recaptures the notion of ‘me’ from the neuroscientists and situates it at the heart of finding a place in the world.

See also: review in The Guardian

Author’s website

Virtual Selves, Real Persons: A Dialogue across Disciplines by Richard S. Hallam (Columbia University Press, 2009)

Product description from the publisher:

How do we know and understand who we really are as human beings? The concept of ‘the self’ is central to many strands of psychology and philosophy. This book tackles the problem of how to define persons and selves and discusses the ways in which different disciplines, such as biology, sociology and philosophy, have dealt with this topic. Richard S. Hallam examines the notion that the idea of the self as some sort of entity is a human construction and, in effect, a virtual reality. At the same time, this virtual self is intimately related to the reality of ourselves as biological organisms. Aiming to integrate a constructionist understanding of self with the universalizing assumptions that are needed in natural science approaches, this text is unique in its attempt to create a dialogue across academic disciplines, while retaining a consistent perspective on the problem of relating nature to culture.

An excerpt is available from the publisher’s website.