The Situated Self

Overview

Physics reveals a world composed events arranged in a fixed configuration, like locations on a map. But where are we ourselves, the creatures who construct the map, to be found in the world it presents? Where, in this seamless fabric presented by physics do we find the fleeting, centered world of experience, rich in color, sound, and sentiment, that we know from the inside?

The question of the relationship between the world of physics and the world as seen through human eyes is one of the deepest, and most difficult in philosophy. The difficulty has many aspects. The world of physics is fixed and eternal; the world of experience is transient and changing. The world of physics is structure described in mathematical terms; the world of experience is rich with qualitative properties that can't be captured in mathematical description. The world of physics has no built-in perspective; the world of experience is always experience to a particular someone, from a standpoint in space and time. The problem spans metaphysics, philosophy of mind, philosophy of science and ethics, and expresses itself in the wider culture in the perceived clash between humanist and scientific views of the self.

This book displays in a new way the common structure of these different aspects of the problem. An account of the structure of self-locating knowledge serves as the keystone for a broad vision of the place of the self in the physical universe. The vision preserves the completeness and closure of physical description, while leaving room for features of ourselves and our subjective views of the world that are at once real and incommunicable.

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Author Information

Bio of J T Ismael

J. T. Ismael is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Arizona, and Senior Researcher at the Centre for Time at the University of Sydney. Dr. Ismael has taught at Stanford University, held fellowships from the Mellon Foundation and the National Humanities Center in North Carolina, and holds a Queen Elizabeth II research grant from the ARC.

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Additional Info

Imprint

Oxford University Press, Incorporated

Filesize

2.46 MB

Number of Pages

272

eBook ISBN

9780195346619