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Naturalism and the first-person perspective / Lynne Rudder Baker.
- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Baker, Lynne Rudder, 1944-2017, author.
- Language:
- English
- Subjects (All):
- Naturalism.
- Self (Philosophy).
- Perspective (Philosophy).
- Genre:
- Electronic books.
- Physical Description:
- 1 online resource (xxiv, 248 pages)
- Place of Publication:
- New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2013]
- Language Note:
- English
- Summary:
- This text investigates the limits of scientific naturalism. It has three goals: to show that no wholly impersonal account of reality can be adequate to all phenomena; to formulate a non-Cartesian account of the first-person perspective; to develop a 'near-naturalism' that accommodates the world of our encounters and interactions. Science 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-personperspective 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: the capacity to conceive of oneself as oneself, in the first person. By developing an account ofpersonal identity, Baker argues that her theory is coherent, and she shows various ways in which first-person perspectives contribute to reality.
- Notes:
- Includes bibliographical references and index.
- Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph
- ISBN:
- 0-19-991473-7
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