A team of leading experts explore the nature of thoughts about ourselves, and the distinctively human ability to know the kind of mental states we enjoy. They adopt a range of perspectives--from the normative to the phenomenological, from neo-expressivism to constitutivism--to deepen our understanding of these central aspects of our mentality.

• List of contributors


• Introduction


• Part one: The self and its individuation


• 1: Carol Rovane: Does rationality enforce identity?


• 2: Martine Nida-Rümelin: The conceptual origin of subject body dualism


• 3: Christopher Peacocke: Subjects and consciousness


• 4: John Campbell: Does perception do any work in an understanding of the first person?


• Part two: Consciousness, action awareness and their role in self-knowledge


• 5: Jane Heal: Consciousness and self-awareness


• 6: Conor McHugh: Reasons and self-knowledge


• 7: Lucy O'Brien: Knowledge of actions and tryings


• 8: Christopher Peacocke: Conscious Events and Self-Ascriptions: Comments on Heal and O'Brien


• Part three: Self-knowledge. Robust or fragile?


• 9: Dorit Bar-On: Externalism and skepticism: recognition, expression and self-knowledge


• 10: Annalisa Coliva: One variety of self-knowledge: constitutivism as constructivism


• 11: Paul Snowdon: How to think about phenomenal self-knowledge


• 12: Akeel Bilgrami: The unique status of self-knowledge

Annalisa Coliva is Associate Professor at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia (Italy), and Associate Director of the research centre COGITO. After receiving a BA in Philosophy from the University of Bologna, she obtained a MLitt and a PhD from St Andrews, as well as a PhD from Vercelli. She has been Fulbright and Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at Columbia and Heidelberg respectively, as well as Fellow of the Italian Academy at Columbia University in the city of New York. She has authored seven books, edited four, and published several articles in international journals.