The Metaphysics of Self and World
The Metaphysics of Self and World

Author: Elie Maynard Adams

Publisher: Temple University Press

Published: 1991

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 9780877227847

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A great fissure occurred in Western civilization in the early modern period with the divorce between the humanities and the sciences and the rise of scientific naturalism. The Metaphysics of Self and World is a philosophical exploration of the relationship between the individual, the culture, and the world. It is, in the author's words, "a philosophy of the humanities, a philosophy of humanity, and a philosophy of social reality." It explores the implications of a world-view that would integrate the perspective of the sciences with humanistic ways of thought. E.M. Adams claims that we do violence to ourselves as human beings by trying to fit into the world as delineated in scientific categories. Rejecting cultural subjectivism and scientific naturalism, he argues for the irreducibility and validity of the categories of the humanities and for a fully developed humanistic philosophy of self and world. In generating this world-view, he utilizes the humanities as a source of culture therapy in order to close the fissure in Western civilization. Author note: E. M. Adams is Kenan Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus, at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He has written numerous books and articles, and a festschrift celebrating his work, Mind, Value, and Culture: Essays in Honor of E. M. Adams (edited by David Weissbord), was published in 1989.

Self and World
Self and World

Author: Quassim Cassam

Publisher: Clarendon Press

Published: 1997-02-20

Total Pages: 217

ISBN-13: 0191518921

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Self and World is an exploration of the nature of self-awareness. Quassim Cassam challenges the widespread and influential view that we cannot be introspectively aware of ourselves as objects in the world. In opposition to the views of many empiricist and idealist philosophers, including Hume, Kant, and Wittgenstein, he argues that the self is not systematically elusive from the perspective of self-consciousness, and that consciousness of our thoughts and experiences requires a sense of our thinking, experiencing selves as shaped, located, and solid physical objects in a world of such objects. Awareness of oneself as a physical object involves forms of bodily self-awareness whose importance has seldom been properly acknowledged in philosophical accounts of the self and self-awareness. The conception of self-awareness defended in this book helps to undermine the idealist thesis that the self does not belong to the world, and also the claim that the existence of subjects or persons is only a derivative feature of reality. In the final part of the book, Cassam argues that the existence of persons is a substantial fact about the world, and that it is not possible to give a complete description of reality without claiming that persons exist. This clear, original, and challenging treatment of one of the deepest of intellectual problems will demand the attention of all philosophers and cognitive scientists who are concerned with the self.

The Mirror of the World
The Mirror of the World

Author: Christopher Peacocke

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2014-02

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13: 0199699569

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Christopher Peacocke presents a new theory of subjects of consciousness, together with a theory of the nature of first person representation. He identifies three sorts of self-consciousness—perspectival, reflective, and interpersonal—and argues that they are key to explaining features of our knowledge, social relations, and emotional lives.

Self Definition
Self Definition

Author: Teodros Kiros

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2019-10-10

Total Pages: 141

ISBN-13: 1793605955

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Self Definition argues that sex, gender, and race are constructions by the ineffable self as it seeks to define its possibilities free of domination. The self’s embodiments are themselves performances of self definition. Teodros Kiros supports his argument by a careful reading of the literature from both the Global South and Global North that spans figures, works, and eras from antiquity to our late modern present. These readings demonstrate that race, gender, and sex are performed in the Global South radically differently from in the Global North. These three notions as markers of identity are fluid, open, and expansive, and Kiros brilliantly shows this through inquiry into thought rooted in Egypt, Ethiopia, India, and China. By the time that the Global North forges possibilities of the self in the modern period, race, gender, and sex become fixed. Biology and anatomy become understood as destinies, and the possibilities of the self are deeply constrained. This book approaches case studies of key figures and movements chronologically and thematically, and in doing so Kiros highlights the tensions between the openness of the Global South and the rigidity of the Global North through which human possibilities as exercises of self-definition become clear under conditions of freedom. Our views of self definition will forever be transformed after reading this important text.

Schopenhauer on the Character of the World
Schopenhauer on the Character of the World

Author: John E. Atwell

Publisher: University of California Presson Demand

Published: 1995

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 9780520087705

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"I suspect that this will become the book on Schopenhauer's metaphysics for many years to come, and will be required reading for any serious student of Schopenhauer's thought."--David E. Cartwright, University of Wisconsin, Whitewater

The Two Selves
The Two Selves

Author: Stanley B. Klein

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 176

ISBN-13: 0199349967

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Our experience of a unified sense of the self is underwritten by a multiplicity of self-aspects having very different metaphysical commitments. Our experience of unity is provided by a process-which, under certain clinical conditions, is rendered inoperative-that enables a person to experience mental states as personally owned.

The Mirror of the World
The Mirror of the World

Author: Christopher Peacocke

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2014-02-28

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13: 0191502146

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Christopher Peacocke presents a philosophical theory of subjects of consciousness, together with a theory of the nature of first person representation of such a subject of consciousness. He develops a new treatment of subjects, distinct from previous theories, under which subjects were regarded either as constructs from mental events, or fundamentally embodied, or Cartesian egos. In contrast, his theory of the first person integrates with the positive treatment of subjects—and it contributes to the explanation of various distinctive first person phenomena in the theory of thought and knowledge. These are issues on which contributions have been made by some of the greatest philosophers, and Peacocke brings his points to bear on the contributions to these issues made by Hume, Kant, Frege, Wittgenstein, and Strawson. He also relates his position to the recent literature in the philosophy of mind, and then goes on to distinguish and characterize three varieties of self-consciousness. Perspectival self-consciousness involves the subject's capacity to appreciate that she is of the same kind as things given in a third personal way, and attributes the subject to a certain kind of objective thought about herself. Reflective self-consciousness involves awareness of the subject's own mental states, reached in a distinctive way. Interpersonal self-consciousness is awareness that one features, as a subject, in some other person's mental states. These varieties, and the relations and the forms of co-operation between them, are important in explaining features of our knowledge, our social relations, and our emotional lives. The theses of The Mirror of the World are of importance not only for philosophy, but also for psychology, the arts, and anywhere else that the self and self-representation loom large. The Context and Content series is a forum for outstanding original research at the intersection of philosophy, linguistics, and cognitive science. The general editor is François Recanati (Institut Jean-Nicod, Paris).

The Essence of the Self
The Essence of the Self

Author: Geoffrey Madell

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-11-20

Total Pages: 269

ISBN-13: 1317584139

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In this volume, Geoffrey Madell develops a revised account of the self, making a compelling case for why the "simple" or "anti-criterial" view of personal identity warrants a robust defense. Madell critiques recent discussions of the self for focusing on features which are common to all selves, and which therefore fail to capture the uniqueness of each self. In establishing his own view of personal identity, Madell proposes (a) that there is always a gap between ‘A is f and g’ and ‘I am f and g’; (b), that a complete description of the world offered without recourse to indexicals will fail to account for the contingent truth that I am one of the persons described; and (c), that an account of conscious perspectives on the world must take into account what it means for an apparently arbitrary one of these perspectives to be mine. Engaging with contemporary positions on the first person, embodiment, psychological continuity, and other ongoing arguments, Madell contends that there can be no such thing as a criterion of personal identity through time, that no bodily or psychological continuity approach to the issue can succeed, and that personal identity through time must be absolute, not a matter of degree. Madell’s view that the nature of the self is substantively different from that of objects in the world will generate significant discussion and debate among philosophers of mind.

Self, Reason, and Freedom
Self, Reason, and Freedom

Author: Andrea Christofidou

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 277

ISBN-13: 0415501067

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This book sheds new light on the role of freedom in Descartes' thought and defends the theory of an internal relation between freedom and reason in his metaphysics.

The Situated Self
The Situated Self

Author: Jenann Ismael

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2007-01-04

Total Pages: 261

ISBN-13: 0195174364

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This text focuses on the metaphysics and the philosophy of language and mind. It tackles a philosophical question whose origin goes back to Descartes: What am I? The self is not a mere thing among things - but if so, what is it, and what is its relationship to the world?