Macquarie University

Brain, Self and World - PHL801

Recent research in the neurosciences has profound implications for our understanding of psychological capacities such as: conceptions of agency and volition, emotion and empathy, moral judgement and memory. These capacities are all foundational for our understanding of the self. However, philosophical and psychological accounts of selfhood and agency often appeal to the social embedding of an agent and, therefore, include social and normative factors not usually found in neuroscientific accounts of brain structure and function. This unit explores the ways in which we might think of the brain as embodied and embedded in a social environment and the potential implications of embodiment and embedding for neuroscience. It will also evaluate the evidence and arguments for the claim that a neuroscientific image of humans may extensively revise and perhaps even replace our ordinary self-conceptions. The most important aim of the unit is to provide an account of the self in neural, bodily and social terms.