Description
Book SynopsisScience and its philosophical companion, Naturalism, represent reality in wholly nonpersonal terms. How, if at all, can a nonpersonal scheme accommodate the first-person perspective that we all enjoy? In this volume, Lynne Rudder Baker explores that question by considering both reductive and eliminative approaches to the first-person perspective. After finding both approaches wanting, she mounts an original constructive argument to show that a nonCartesian first-person perspective belongs in the basic inventory of what exists. That is, the world that contains us persons is irreducibly personal.After arguing for the irreducibilty and ineliminability of the first-person perspective, Baker develops a theory of this perspective. The first-person perspective has two stages, rudimentary and robust. Human infants and nonhuman animals with consciousness and intentionality have rudimentary first-person perspectives. In learning a language, a person acquires a robust first-person perspective: th
Trade ReviewHer [Baker's] book is characteristically thought provoking and provides us with a distinctive and, in many ways, attractive account of reality and our place in it. * Stephen Kearns, Oxford Journals Clippings: Analysis *
Bakers book is a fine defence of a view worth taking seriously. It is a delight to read and is peppered with interesting arguments throughout. Just as David Chalmers enjoined us two decades ago to take phenomenal consciousness seriously, Baker wisely advises us to face up to the problem of self-consciousness. * Jacob Berger, Mind *
As shown by Lynne Baker in her profound new book, scientific naturalism comes in different versions, depending on how its advocates respond to some crucial open issues...Baker sets a series of ambitious goals for her book. * Philosophical Review *
Table of ContentsIntroduction: What is the Problem? ; The Claim of Naturalism ; A Challenge to Naturalism ; What is at Stake ; An Overview ; Part I: The Core Argument ; Ch. 1. Varieties of Naturalism ; What Counts As 'Science'? ; Reductive Naturalism ; Nonreductive Naturalism ; Disenchantment and Optimism ; Ch. 2. On Naturalizing the First-Person Perspective ; What is Naturalization? ; The Robust First-Person Perspective ; The Rudimentary First-Person Perspective ; Ch. 3. Reductive Approaches to the First-Person Perspective ; John Perry on an Epistemic Account of the Self ; David Lewis on De Se Belief ; A Comment on John Searle ; Can Cognitive Science Save the Day? ; Ch. 4. Eliminative Approaches to the First-Person Perspective ; Daniel Dennett on Consciousness ; Thomas Metzinger on a Self-Model Theory ; My Recommendation ; Ch. 5. Arguments Against First-Person Naturalization ; From First-Person Concepts to First-Person Properties ; A Linguistic Argument: A Complete Ontology Must Include First-Person Properties ; A Metaphysical Argument Against Ontological Naturalism ; Part II: An Account of the First-Person Perspective ; Ch. 6. From the Rudimentary to the Robust Stage of the First-Person Perspective ; The First-Person Perspective: Consciousness and Self-Consciousness ; Language and the Acquisition of Concepts ; How to Acquire a Self-Concept ; Human Persons: Wrap Up ; Ch. 7. Is the Idea of the First-Person Perspective Coherent? ; Personal Identity: A First-Personal Approach ; Objections and Replies ; Mark Johnston on the Self as Illusory ; Johnston's Critique Side-Stepped ; Ch. 8. A Metaphysical Framework for The First-Person Perspective ; First-Person Properties ; Dispositional Properties ; Haecceitistic Implications ; Ch. 9. Agents, Artifacts, Moral Responsibility: Some Contributions of the First-person Perspective ; Personhood ; Agency ; Artifacts ; Moral Responsibility ; Ch. 10. Natural Reality ; Near-Naturalism ; Property-Constitution and Causation ; Emergentism and Downward Causation ; How Naturalistic is Near-Naturalism? ; Index
