Naturalism and the First-Person Perspective

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 non-Cartesian first-person perspective 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 of personal identity, Baker argues that her theory is coherent, and she shows various ways in which
first-person perspectives contribute to reality.


Author: Lynne Rudder Baker
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 05/16/2013
Pages: 272
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.65lbs
Size: 8.10h x 5.40w x 0.80d
ISBN: 9780199914746

About the Author

Lynne Rudder Baker is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, University of Massachusetts Amherst. Baker has written four books on metaphysics and the philosophy of mind, and has published many articles in philosophy journals such as The Journal of Philosophy, The Philosophical Review, Philosophical
Studies, Noûs, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research and many more.

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