This integrative volume brings together leading social scientists to present diverse perspectives on the emergence, development, and practical role of self-awareness. Shedding light on the fundamental question of how human beings come to understand who we are--in relation to ourselves, to others, and to the broader world--the book does justice to the complexity of its subject while remaining accessible to readers in a wide range of disciplines. Chapters cover such topics as developmental and evolutionary aspects of self-awareness; the self, consciousness, and theory of mind; and connections between self-awareness and social, affective, academic, and neuropsychological functioning.

Self-Awareness and The Elusive Subject explores the puzzling fact that we are certain of the existence of a subject of experience despite its being objectively and subjectively elusive. It is objectively elusive in that, like phenomenal states, it cannot be found from the third-person perspective. It is subjectively elusive because it also cannot be found in introspection. On the one hand, then, the author agrees with the Buddhists and philosophers like Hume and Sartre that the self cannot be found in experience. He sides with Descartes', on the other hand, arguing the subject of experience exists and that we have certainty of the cogito. Along the way the book considers the claim that phenomenal states have “subjective character” or “mineness” and argues instead that they are phenomenally anonymous. Howell concludes with a deflationary account of pre-reflective self-consciousness and provides an account of basic self-awareness according to which we are most fundamentally aware of ourselves indirectly as the subject of our conscious states.

There is a tendency, in contemporary epistemology, to treat 'perceptual knowledge' and 'self-knowledge' as labels for different and largely unconnected sets of philosophical problems. The project of this volume is to bring out how much is to be gained from treating the two topics as, on the contrary, intimately connected. One set of questions that comes into view when we do concerns the sense in which perceptual knowledge, as understood from the first-person perspective, seem to be 'direct'. In a famous passage, Austin contrasted reliance on what we call 'evidence' with the way perceptual experience 'settles' questions. How should we understand the difference? In what sense is perceptual knowledge 'direct', in contradistinction to evidence-based, inferential knowledge? A connected set of issues has to do with the relationship between the epistemic authority of perception and self-consciousness. Is the way perceptual experience 'settles' questions inherently manifest to the perceiver? Is a perceiver's awareness of (e.g.) seeing that p to be explained by reference to the very capacities at work in seeing that p? Or does it reflect the operation of some kind of second-order perceptual capacity? Consideration of these matters, in turn, prompts questions about the nature of the first-person perspective. 'I can see that p' is a first-person self-ascription. But does it express the distinctively immediate kind of knowledge commonly labelled first-person self-knowledge? How would an affirmative answer to this question bear on a philosophical understanding of the 'first-person perspective'? These are rough indications of some of the ways in which reflection on the relationship between perceptual knowledge and self-awareness promises to shed valuable light on both topics.

Consciousness is undoubtedly one of the last remaining scientific mysteries and hence one of the greatest contemporary scientific challenges. How does the brain's activity result in the rich phenomenology that characterizes our waking life? Are animals conscious? Why did consciousness evolve? How does science proceed to answer such questions? Can we define what consciousness is? Can we measure it? Can we use experimental results to further our understanding of disorders of consciousness, such as those seen in schizophrenia, delirium, or altered states of consciousness? These questions are at the heart of contemporary research in the domain. Answering them requires a fundamentally interdisciplinary approach that engages not only philosophers, but also neuroscientists and psychologists in a joint effort to develop novel approaches that reflect both the stunning recent advances in imaging methods as well as the continuing refinement of our concepts of consciousness. In this light, the Oxford Companion to Consciousness is the most complete authoritative survey of contemporary research on consciousness. Five years in the making and including over 250 concise entries written by leaders in the field, the volume covers both fundamental knowledge as well as more recent advances in this rapidly changing domain. Structured as an easy-to-use dictionary and extensively cross-referenced, the Companion offers contributions from philosophy of mind to neuroscience, from experimental psychology to clinical findings, so reflecting the profoundly interdisciplinary nature of the domain. Particular care has been taken to ensure that each of the entries is accessible to the general reader and that the overall volume represents a comprehensive snapshot of the contemporary study of consciousness. The result is a unique compendium that will prove indispensable to anyone interested in consciousness, from beginning students wishing to clarify a concept to professional consciousness researchers looking for the best characterization of a particular phenomenon.

Widely regarded as the authoritative reference in the field, this volume comprehensively reviews theory and research on the self. Leading investigators address this essential construct at multiple levels of analysis, from neural pathways to complex social and cultural dynamics. Coverage includes how individuals gain self-awareness, agency, and a sense of identity; self-related motivation and emotion; the role of the self in interpersonal behavior; and self-development across evolutionary time and the lifespan. Connections between self-processes and psychological problems are also addressed. New to This Edition *Incorporates significant theoretical and empirical advances. *Nine entirely new chapters. *Coverage of the social and cognitive neuroscience of self-processes; self-regulation and health; self and emotion; and hypoegoic states, such as mindfulness.

Self-consciousness is a topic of considerable importance to a variety of empirical and theoretical disciplines such as developmental and social psychology, cognitive neuroscience, psychiatry, and philosophy. This volume presents essays on self-consciousness by prominent psychologists, cognitive neurologists, and philosophers. Some of the topics included are the infants’ sense of self and others, theory of mind, phenomenology of embodiment, neural mechanisms of action attribution, and hermeneutics of the self. A number of these essays argue in turn that empirical findings in developmental psychology, phenomenological analyses of embodiment, or studies of pathological self-experiences point to the existence of a type of self-consciousness that does not require any explicit I —thought or self-observation, but is more adequately described as a pre-reflective, embodied form of self-familiarity. The different contributions in the volume amply demonstrate that self-consciousness is a complex multifaceted phenomenon that calls for an integration of different complementary interdisciplinary perspectives. (Series B)

Gestures are fundamental to the way we communicate, yet our understanding of this communicative impulse is clouded by a number of ingrained assumptions. Are gestures merely ornamentation to speech? Are they simply an 'add-on' to spoken language? Why do we gesture? These and other questions are addressed in this fascinating book. McNeill explains that the common view of language and gesture as separate entities is misinformed: language is inseparable from gesture. There is gesture-speech unity. Containing over 100 illustrations, Why We Gesture provides visual evidence to support the book's central argument that gestures orchestrate speech. This compelling book will be welcomed by students and researchers working in linguistics, psychology and communication.

First Published in 2013. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

In the rigorous and highly original Self-Awareness and Alterity, Dan Zahavi provides a sustained argument that phenomenology, especially in its Husserlian version, can make a decisive contribution to discussions of self-awareness. Engaging with debates within both analytic philosophy (Elizabeth Anscombe, John Perry, Sydney Shoemaker, Héctor-Neri Castañeda, David Rosenthal) and contemporary German philosophy (Dieter Henrich, Manfred Frank, Ernst Tugendhat), Zahavi argues that the phenomenological tradition has much more to offer when it comes to the problem of self-awareness than is normally assumed. As a contribution to the current philosophical debate concerning self-awareness, the book presents a comprehensive reconstruction of Husserl’s theory of pre-reflective self-awareness, thereby criticizing a number of prevalent interpretations. In addition, Zahavi also offers a systematic discussion of a number of phenomenological insights related to the issue of self-awareness, including analyses of the temporal, intentional, reflexive, bodily, and social nature of the self. The new edition of this prize-winning book has been updated and revised, and all quotations have been translated into English. It also contains a new preface in which Zahavi traces the developments of the debates around self-awareness over the last twenty years and situates this book in the context of his subsequent work.

There is growing evidence from the science of human behavior that our everyday, folk understanding of ourselves as conscious, rational, responsible agents may be radically mistaken. The science, some argue, recommends a view of conscious agency as merely epiphenomenal: an impotent accompaniment to the whirring unconscious machinery (the inner zombie) that prepares, decides and causes our behavior. The new essays in this volume display and explore this radical claim, revisiting the folk concept of the responsible agent after abandoning the image of a central executive, and "decomposing" the notion of the conscious will into multiple interlocking aspects and functions. Part 1 of this volume provides an overview of the scientific research that has been taken to support "the zombie challenge." In part 2, contributors explore the phenomenology of agency and what it is like to be the author of one's own actions. Part 3 then explores different strategies for using the science and phenomenology of human agency to respond to the zombie challenge. Questions explored include: what distinguishes automatic behavior and voluntary action? What, if anything, does consciousness contribute to the voluntary control of behavior? What does the science of human behavior really tell us about the nature of self-control?