Abstract

Recent literature on the development of self in child development and in human social evolution is examined in the light of Gilbert Ryle's critique of the concept of mind. As an alternative to the currently popular theory-of-mind approach, it is proposed that a better conceptual foundation for theories of self can be built around a human capacity for higher-order relational reasoning about categories of human being, loosely 'persons' and their attributes, and a capacity to generate figurative conceptual entities such as mind and self