Introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 May 2021
Summary
I begin with some disclaimers. A famous painting by René Magritte shows a pipe yet is mischievously titled (in French) “This is not a pipe.” (Magritte was a communist and a consistently humorous contrarian; I am just a contrarian and rarely humorous here.) The present book has the word “me” in the title and a good part of the text, and it has the word “self” and its various hyphenated combinations on almost every page, yet (no mischief intended) it is not actually, not centrally and not elaborately a book about the self, at least not in the analytic sense explored by philosophers or the empirical sense explored by neuroscientists, psychologists and social scientists. Nor, despite many and often detailed discussions of memory, particularly autobiographical memory, should the book be taken as a fresh contribution to memory research; the memory part is just a prop – albeit an important one – for the overall argument of the book. Nor, finally, despite its subtitle and frequent references and at times extended discussions, is the book really and centrally an analytically detailed and lavishly illustrated account of self-reflection as a mental practice – that is, an account of when and how people self-reflect, through what conceptual and linguistic means, in what concrete contexts, for what specific reasons and in pursuit of what particular goals.
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- Why Me?The Sociocultural Evolution of a Self-Reflective Mind, pp. 1 - 8Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2021