Emergentism revisited

The “explanatory gap” is proposed to be the “hard problem” of\ud consciousness research and has generated a great deal of recent\ud debate.\ud Arguments brought forward to reveal this gap include the\ud conceivability of zombies or the “super-neuroscientist” Mary. These\ud are supposed to show that the facts of consciousness are not a priori\ud entailed by the microphysical facts.\ud Similar arguments were already proposed by emergence theories in\ud the context of the debate between mechanism and vitalism.\ud According to synchronic emergentism, the property of a system is\ud emergent, when it cannot - in principle - be deduced from a complete\ud description of the system’s components.\ud Here, I argue that apart from phenomenal properties there are many\ud other properties that, even though they are clearly physical, are not\ud reductively explainable either. The explanatory gap of consciousness\ud is therefore only a part of a much more general problem

Self-face perception: individual differences and discrepancies associated with mental self-face representation, attractiveness and self-esteem

Self-face perception plays an important role in self-consciousness and personal identity as well as in social exchanges and well-being. Despite its significance, little is known about how individuals represent their faces internally. This study explored mechanisms of self-face perception in three experiments. First, participants chose from two images (self-face image vs. self-image with manipulated facial features) which one was their veridical image and which one they liked most. Afterwards, participants could (digitally) manipulate their facial features to increase their attractiveness (either to themselves or to an imagined other/s). Results showed that self-face recognition was better when veridical faces were paired with 'clones' with larger facial features or when all facial features were enlarged concurrently. Moreover, up to half of the participants preferred smaller noses and larger eyes and manipulated their self-images accordingly. State (but not trait) self-esteem was inversely correlated with eye, mouth and nose size manipulations made to increase one's attractiveness. The results indicate that a certain tolerance for error in self-face recognition might be required to maintain a consistent facial identity during one's lifespan. The discovered preference for neotenous features and discrepancies between one's perceived and one's veridical face and their link to state self-esteem are discussed

Self-consciousness and intersubjectivity

This paper distinguishes between implicit self-related information and explicit self-representation and argues that the latter is required for self-consciousness. It is further argued that self-consciousness requires an awareness of other minds and that this awareness develops over the course of an increasingly complex perspectival differentiation, during which information about self and other that is implicit in early forms of social interaction becomes redescribed into an explicit format

A philosophical perspective on the relation between cortical midline structures and the self

In recent years there has been increasing evidence that an area in the brain called the cortical midline structures (CMSs) is implicated in what has been termed self-related processing. This article will discuss recent evidence for the relation between CMS and self-consciousness in light of several important philosophical distinctions. First, we should distinguish between being a self (i.e., being a subject of conscious experience) and being aware of being a self (i.e., being able to think about oneself as such). While the former consists in having a first-person perspective on the world, the latter requires the ability to explicitly represent one's own perspective as such. Further, we should distinguish between being aware of oneself "as subject" and being aware of oneself "as object." The focus of existing studies investigating the relation between CMS and self has been predominantly on the ability to think about oneself (and in particular thinking of oneself "as object"), while the more basic aspects involved in being a self have been neglected. However, it is important to widen the scope of the cognitive neuroscience to include the latter, not least because this might have important implications for a better understanding of disorders of the self, such as those involved in schizophrenia. In order to do so, cognitive neuroscience should work together with philosophy, including phenomenology. Second, we need to distinguish between personal and subpersonal level explanations. It will be argued that although it is important to respect this distinction, in principle, some subpersonal facts can enter into constitutive conditions of personal-level phenomena. However, in order for this to be possible, one needs both careful conceptual analysis and knowledge about relevant cognitive mechanisms

Book review: A flawed challenge worth pondering

Review of Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False by Thomas Nagel Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2012. 140 pp. ISBN 9780199919758

Concepts or metacognition – what is the issue: commentary on Stephane Savanah’s “the concept possession hypothesis of self-consciousness”

The author claims that concept possession is not only necessary but also sufficient for self-consciousness, where self-consciousness is understood as the awareness of oneself as a self. Further, he links concept possession to intelligent behavior. His ultimate aim is to provide a framework for the study of self-consciousness in infants and non-human animals. I argue that the claim that all concepts are necessarily related to the self-concept remains unconvincing and suggest that what might be at issue here are not so much conceptual but rather metacognitive abilities

Kristina Musholt Self-consciousness and intersubjectivity Article (Accepted version) (Refereed) Self-consciousness and intersubjectivity 1

Abstract This paper distinguishes between implicit self-related information and explicit selfrepresentation and argues that the latter is required for self-consciousness. It is further argued that self-consciousness requires an awareness of other minds and that this awareness develops over the course of an increasingly complex perspectival differentiation, during which information about self and other that is implicit in early forms of social interaction becomes redescribed into an explicit format

Book review: The things we do and why we do them

Review of The Things We Do and Why We Do Them By Constantine Sandis, Palgrave Macmillan, 248pp, ISBN 978023052212