Self, No Self?

Mark Siderits is Professor of Philosophy at Seoul National University. He received his BA from University of Hawaii and his Ph.D. from Yale University. His work is situated in the intersection between analytic metaphysics and classical Indian philosophy. He is the author of Indian Philosophy of Language (Kluwer, 1991), Personal Identity and Buddhist Philosophy: Empty Persons (Ashgate, 2003), and Buddhism as Philosophy (Hackett, 2007). Evan Thompson is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto. He received his B.A. from Amherst College in Asian Studies and his Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Toronto. He is the author of Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind (Harvard University Press, 2007) and Colour Vision: A Study in Cognitive Science and the Philosophy of Perception (Routledge Press, 1995). He is also co-author of The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience (MIT Press, 1991).Dan Zahavi is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Center for Subjectivity Research at the University of Copenhagen. He obtained his Ph.D. from Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in 1994 and his Dr. Phil. (Habilitation) from the University of Copenhagen in 1999. He is currently co-editor in chief of the journal Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences. In his systematic work, Zahavi has mainly been investigating the nature of selfhood, self-consciousness, and intersubjectivity. Previous publications include Husserl und die transzendentale Intersubjektivität (Kluwer, 1996), Self-awareness and alterity (Northwestern University Press, 1999), Husserls Phenomenology (Stanford University Press, 2001), Subjectivity and Selfhood (MIT Press, 2005), and as co-author The Phenomenological Mind (Routledge, 2008).

Self, No-Self? is a welcome product of a rare endeavor: the attempt to bring insights from diverse schools of thought to bear on a question of deep philosophical interest... Drawing upon considerations from various schools of Buddhism, Indian Philosophy, phenomenology, analytic philosophy, and cognitive science, the papers in Self, No-Self? cannot fail to advance both the reader's understanding of the issues at play and her grasp of the history of the non-Western approaches to those issues. Although the self is the main focus of this collection, students of the nature and structure of consciousness will find much food for thought... It is a virtue of this collection that it draws attention to the connection between the study of the self and subjectivity and the issues of the nature of consciousness...

• 1. Introduction ; 2. The Who and How of Experience ; 3. The Experiential Self: objections and clarifications ; 4. Nirvana and Ownerless consciousness ; 5. Self and Subjectivity: A Middle Way Approach ; 6. Self-No-Self? Memory and Reflexive Awareness ; 7. Subjectivity, Selfhood and the Use of the Word 'I' ; 8. 'I am of the nature of Seeing': Phenomenological Reflections on the Indian Notion of Witness-Consciousness ; 9. Situating the Elusive Self of Advaita Vedanta ; 10. Enacting the Self: Buddhist and Enactivist Approaches to the Emergence of the Self ; 11. Radical self-awareness ; 12. Buddhas as Zombies: A Buddhist Reduction of Subjectivity ; Notes on Contributors ; Index