Self-Awareness and the Elusive Subject (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780192849236)

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.

Author: Robert J. Howell
ISBN-10: 0192849239
ISBN-13: 9780192849236
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Language: English
Published: 07/06/2023
Pages: 192
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 0.75lbs
Size: 8.20h x 5.60w x 1.00d