Images and Constructs: Can the Neural Correlates of Self be revealed through Radiological Analysis?

International Journal of Psychological Research 6:117-132 (2013)
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Abstract

In this paper I argue that radiological attempts to elucidate the properties of self -- an endeavor currently popular in the social neurosciences -- are fraught with conceptual difficulties. I first discuss several philosophical criteria that increase the chances we are posing the “right” questions to nature. I then discuss whether these criteria are met when empirical efforts are directed at one of the central constructs in the social sciences – the human self. In particular, I consider whether recent attempts to map the neural correlates of self and its assumed properties using brain scanning technology satisfy the conceptual conditions minimally required to ask well-formed, theoretically satisfying questions of nature. I conclude that much theoretical work remains to be done.

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Stanley Bernard Klein
University of California at Santa Barbara

Citations of this work

What memory is.Stan Klein - 2015 - WIREs Cognitive Science 6 (1):1-38.

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References found in this work

Explaining the brain: mechanisms and the mosaic unity of neuroscience.Carl F. Craver - 2007 - New York : Oxford University Press,: Oxford University Press, Clarendon Press.
The problems of philosophy.Bertrand Russell - 1912 - New York: Barnes & Noble.
Self-awareness and alterity: a phenomenological investigation.Dan Zahavi - 1999 - Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press.

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