The Bodily Self: Selected Essays - Hardcover

Bermúdez, José Luis

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0262037505 ISBN 13: 9780262037501

Publisher: MIT Press, 2018

Synopsis

Essays on the role of the body in self-consciousness, showing that full-fledged, linguistic self-consciousness is built on a rich foundation of primitive, nonconceptual self-consciousness. These essays explore how the rich and sophisticated forms of self-consciousness with which we are most familiar-as philosophers, psychologists, and as ordinary, reflective individuals-depend on a complex underpinning that has been largely invisible to students of the self and self-consciousness. Jose Luis Bermudez, extending the insights of his groundbreaking 1998 book, The Paradox of Self-Consciousness, argues that full-fledged, linguistic self-consciousness is built on a rich foundation of primitive, nonconceptual self-consciousness, and that these more primitive forms of self-consciousness persist in ways that frame self-conscious thought. They extend throughout the animal kingdom, and some are present in newborn human infants. Bermudez makes the case that these primitive forms of self-awareness can indeed be described as forms of self-consciousness, arguing that they share certain structural and epistemological features with full-fledged, linguistic self-consciousness. He offers accounts of certain important classes of states of nonconceptual content, including the self-specifying dimension of visual perception and the content of bodily awareness, considering how they represent the self. And he explores the general role of nonconceptual self-consciousness in our cognitive and affective lives, examining in several essays the relation between nonconceptual awareness of our bodies and what has been called our "sense of ownership" for our own bodies.

About this title

About the Author:

Jose Luis Bermudez is Professor of Philosophy at Texas A&M University. He is the coeditor of The Body and the Self (MIT Press) and the author of The Paradox of Self-Consciousness (MIT Press) and several other books, including most recently Understanding "I": Language and Thought.

About this edition

• Publisher: MIT Press
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 0262037505
• ISBN 13: 9780262037501
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 312