Self and consciousness : multiple perspectives

The human sciences are back to the ineluctable fundamentals, including the foundation issues of consciousness and self. That is the most significant good news to come out of this anthology. No longer is it possible to maintain, as behaviorists did for much of this century, that humans can be understood in grossly simplistic terms. No longer can we say that the brain is nothing but a remarkably clever biological information processor, without addressing two basic puzzles that take us beyond that useful metaphor, namely the question of conscious experience and the many levels of self. Finally, we can no longer reject as utterly "unscientific" the great treasury of ideas about human experience amassed in two millenia of systematic thought in the Asian, Middle Eastern, and European traditions. "This volume contains an array of essays that reflect, and reflect upon, the recent revival of scholarly interest in the self and consciousness. Various relevant issues are addressed in conceptually challenging ways, such as how consciousness and different forms of self-relevant experience develop in infancy and childhood and are related to the acquisition of skill; the role of the self in social development; the phenomenology of being conscious and its metapsychological implications; and the cultural foundations of conceptualizations of consciousness. Written by notable scholars in several areas of psychology, philosophy, cognitive neuroscience, and anthropology, the essays are of interest to readers from a variety of disciplines concerned with central, substantive questions in contemporary social science, and the humanities."--Provided by publisher