Love and Selfhood

After years of neurohype and a neuroskeptic backlash, this book provides a systematic analysis of the contributions to self-understanding cognitive neuroscience (CNS) and philosophy can make.

The stories of five people in search of self-understanding serve as touchstone throughout the book. Their identities are tied up with what they love. The book provides in-depth analyses of CNS of love and CNS of self-reflection. It critically discusses philosophers who focus on the relation between love, self-understanding and selfhood, such as Harry Frankfurt, Susan Wolf, Charles Taylor and Søren Kierkegaard. It also builds an argument about CNS' contributions to self-understanding more broadly, and how different these are from philosophy's contributions.

The book develops conceptual review as a philosophical method for improving the validity and comparability of CNS studies. It integrates CNS insights into its philosophical view on love and selfhood where applicable. This book thus argues and exemplifies that philosophy and CNS can work together.

Provides a systematic analysis of the contributions of cognitive neuroscience (CNS) and philosophy to self-understanding. Offers in-depth analysis of CNS of love, CNS of self-reflection and of the philosophy of love and selfhood, e.g. Frankfurt, Wolf, Taylor, Kierkegaard Develops a new method of doing philosophy of cognitive neuroscience, called conceptual review

Autorentext

Annemarie van Stee is lecturer in philosophy at Radboud University, Nijmegen, the Netherlands.

Inhalt

1. Existential Self-Understanding, Cognitive Neuroscience, and Philosophy: An Introduction.- 2. Cognitive Neuroscience of Love.- 3. Cognitive Neuroscience of Self-Reflection.- 4. Philosophers of Existential Selfhood.- 5. Conceptual Review: Philosophy for Cognitive Neuroscience.- 6. Cognitive Neuroscience's Contributions to Self-Understanding.- 7. Understanding Existential Self-Understanding.- 8. Conclusion: Coexistence and Collaboration BetweenCognitive Neuroscience and Philosophy.- Appendix A: Participants and Tasks in CNS of Love.- Appendix B: Participants and Tasks in CNS of Self-Reflection