NEH Summer Institute Program
NEH Summer Institute: Self-Knowledge: Program
Program
Please note: access to the readings is restricted to participants only. For a program with links to the readings follow this link or click on READINGS in the navigation menu.
Each week, morning sessions will begin at 9:30, and afternoon sessions at 2:00. Morning sessions will run 9:30-10:45, with a 30 minute break, and then 11:15 to 12:30. Afternoon sessions will run 2:00-3:15, with a 30 minute break, and then 3:45-5:00, Monday through Wednesday, and with only one afternoon session scheduled for Thursday.
All sessions will be designated “read paper in advance,” at which the presenter will summarize the main ideas for 20 minutes or so, and then discussion will follow for the remainder of the time. A general discussion is scheduled for Friday, June 1, from 2:30-4:00.
PROGRAM
Sunday 5/20/18
5:30 Welcome Party at the Blacklock House (see Google Maps link).
Week One (May 21-May 25):
Monday (5/21/18):
9:00 Introduction and Overview
9:30 Coseru, “Précis of Self-Knowledge: Sense, Self-Awareness, and Subjectivity”
11:15 Carpenter, “Plato: The Value of Self-Knowledge”
2:00 Avramides, “The Self and Others”
3:45 Nichols, “The Episodic Sense of Self”
Tuesday (5/22/18):
9:30 Garfield, “Givenness and Primal Confusion”
11:15 Kellner, “Arguing About the Self in Eight Century South Asia: Śāntarakṣita and Kamalaśīla against the Nyāya Ātman”
2:00 Bilgrami, “Agency, Normativity, and Self-Knowledge”
3:45 Chakrabarti, “'How Could I Have Done this?'–After-Cognition, Self-Luminosity and the Spiritual Significance of Repentant Self-Awareness in Nyāya and Advaita.”
6:30 Party at Duke and Barbara Hagerty.
Wednesday (5/23/18):
9:30 Thompson, “Mindfulness and Conceptual Versus Nonconceptual Forms of Self-Awareness”
11:15 Reddy, “Engagement and Awareness of Self”
2:00 Siderits, “Self-Knowledge and Non-self I: Non-Self'”
3:45 Dreyfus, “Self-Awareness, Introspection, and Mindfulness”
Thursday (5/24/18):
9:30 Hough, “A Relation That Relates Itself to Itself’”: the Kierkegaardian Human as a Self-Disclosing Structure”
11:15 Siegel, “Inference and Self-Awareness”
2:00 Zahavi, “Plural Self-Knowledge I: Self and Person as Different Targets and Loci of Self-Knowledge"
3:45 Reddy, "Resistance, Play and Faking: The Self in Action"
Friday (5/25/18):
9:30 Avramides, “Self, Others, and Persons”
11:15 Zahavi, “Plural Self-Knowledge II: How to Understand the Self-Knowledge of a We”
Saturday 5/26/18
6:30 Party at Sheridan & Christian's place.
Sunday 5/27/18
6:30–8:30 Sunset Sail on the Schooner Pride.
Week Two (May 28-June 1)
Monday (5/28/18):
9:30 Coseru, “Consciousness, Emergentism, and Privileged Self-Knowledge”
11:15 Montague. “What Kind of Awareness is Awareness of Awareness?”
2:00 Gopnik, “The Child’s Developing Concept of Mind”
3:45 Carpenter, “Thou art the man: Owning and Owning Up’ OR ‘Knowing Your Actions as Your Own"
Tuesday (5/29/18):
9:30 Garfield, TBA
11:15 Dreyfus, “Self and Self-Knowledge”
2:00 Kellner, Reflexive Awareness, Subjectivity and Infallibility in Buddhist Epistemological Discourse
3:45 Bilgrami, “Intentionality, Normativity, and Self-Knowledge”
Wednesday (5/30/18):
9:30 Thompson, TBA
11:45 Gopnik, “Who Am I? Memory, Self, and the Babbling Stream”
2:00 Hough, “Nietzsche’s Awkward Sea Creatures, or: How Selves Became Self-Knowing”
3:45 Siderits, “Self-Knowledge and Non-self II: Self-Knowledge”
6:00 Party at Robert Lange Studios.
Thursday (5/31/18):
9:30 Montague, “Cognitive Phenomenology: What is Given in Conscious Thought?”
11:45 Chakrabarti, “Triple Awareness, Action in Perception and Vibrant Self-Sentience: Self-Awareness from Prābhākara Mīmāṃsā to Kashmir Shaivism, via Alva Noe”
2:00 Nichols, “Death and the Self”
Friday (6/01/18):
9:30 – 12:30 Participants Presentations
2:30-4:00 Round Table Discussion and Award Presentations
5:30 PM Farewell Party at the Blacklock House
+ REFERENCE WORKS
A good place to start for general background on key figures and texts in Indian and Buddhist philosophy that address the problem of self-knowledge are the Oxford Handbook of Indian Philosophy (J. Ganeri, ed., 2017, especially the chapters on Vasubandhu, Buddhaghosa, Dignāga, Dharmakīrti, Śāntarakṣita, Kamalaśīla, Utpaladeva and Abhinavagupta), the Blackwell Companion to Buddhist Philosophy (S. Emmanuel, ed., 2013, the chapters in the Epistemology, Philosophy of Mind, and Buddhist Meditation), and the Buddhist Philosophy: Essential Readings anthology (W. Edelglass and J. Garfield, eds., 2009, the chapters on Epistemology, and Philosophy of Mind and the Person). For background readings in phenomenology and analytic philosophy of mind that address the problem of self-knowledge, a good place to start are the papers in T. Bayne and M. Montague (eds.) Cognitive Phenomenology (2011), A. Hatzimoysis (ed.), Self-Knowledge (2011), and U. Renz (ed.), Self-Knowledge, A History (2017).
The Stanford Enclyclopedia of Philosophy has several comprehensive entries on topics that are relevant to the theme of the institute: Mind in Indian Buddhist Philosophy, Perceptual Experience and Concepts, Self-Knowledge, Externalism and Self-Knowledge, Phenomenological Approaches to Self-Consciousness, Existentialism, Epistemic Self-Doubt, Self-Consciousness, Self-Deception, Introspection, Plato on Knowledge in the Theaetetus, Kant, Immanuel: view of mind and consciousness of self, Vasubandhu, and Dharmakīrti.
Participants may also wish to consult The Cambridge Handbook of Consciousness (Moscovitch, Thompson and Zelazo 2007), The Oxford Companion to Consciousness (Bayne, Cleeremans and Wilken 2009), The Handbook of Phenomenology and Cognitive Science (Schmicking and Gallagher, 2010), The Oxford Handbook of The Self (Gallagher, 2011), and the The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Phenomenology (Zahavi, ed., 2012).
+ BACKGROUND READINGS
The list below includes all the background readings for the specific topics/papers in the program. All the readings will be available to participants as pdf downloads.
Arnold, D. 2010. "Self-Awareness (svasaṃvitti) and Related Doctrines of Buddhists Following Dignāga: Philosophical Characterizations of Some of the Main Issues," Journal of Indian Philosophy 38:323–378.
Avramides, A. 2015. "On Seeing That Others Have Thoughts and Feelings", Journal of Consciousness Studies, Vol. 22, No 1-2:
Avramides, A. 2001. Other Minds, London: Routledge, Chapter 9 ("The Conceptual Problem of Other Minds").
Bilgrami, A. 2010. Symposium on Self-Knowledge and Resentment. Précis and critical responses from C. Normore and T. Baldwin. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 81 (3): 749-808.
Carpenter, A. 2015. “Persons Keeping Their Karma Together: The Reasons for the Pudgalavāda in Early Buddhism.” In K. Tanaka, Y Deguchi, J.L. Garfield, and G. Priest, eds. The Moon Points Back, New York: Oxford University Press, 2015, 1–44.
Chakrabarti, A. 2011. "Troubles with a Second Self: The Problem of Other Minds in 11th Century Indian and 20th Century Western Philosophy." Argument 1 (1): 23–35.
Coseru, C. 2012. Perceiving Reality: Consciousness, Intentionality, and Cognition in Buddhist Philosophy. New York: Oxford University Press, Chapter 8 ("Perception, Self-Awareness, and Intentionality").
Coseru, C. "Whose Consciousness: Reflexivity and the Problem of Self-Knowledge." In Buddhist Philosophy of Consciousness, edited by M. Siderits, K. Ching, and J. Spackman.
Dreyfus, G. 2011. "Self and Subjectivity: A Middle Way Approach." In Mark Siderits, Evan Thompson & Dan Zahavi (eds.), Self, No Self?: Perspectives From Analytical, Phenomenological, and Indian Traditions. Oxford University Press.
Ganeri, J. 2012. The Self: Naturalism, Consciousness, and the First-Person Stance, Oxford: Oxford University Press, Chapters 8 & 9.
Garfield, J. 2014. Engaging Buddhism: Why It Matters to Philosophy. New York: Oxford University Press, Chapters 5 ("Consciousness") & 6 ("Phenomenology").
Gopnik, A. 1993. "How we know our minds: The illusion of first-person knowledge of intentionality," Behavioral and Brain Sciences 16 (1): 1–14.
Gopnik. Alison. 2009. The Philosophical Baby. New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, Chapter 5 ("Who Am I? Memory, Self, and the Babbling Stream").
Hough, S. 2012. Mirror's Fathom. Mercer University Press.
Hough, S. 2014. Kierkegaard's Dancing Tax Collector: Faith, Finitude, and Silence, Oxford: Oxford University Press, Chapter 1 ("First Movement: The Aduton of Selfhood").
Matthew Kapstein: "Śāntarakṣita’s Tattvasaṃgraha: A Buddhist Critique of the Nyāya View of the Self." In: Edelglass, William & Jay L. Garfield (eds.): Buddhist Philosophy. Essential Readings. Oxford, etc. 2009: Oxford University Press, 320-333.
Kellner, B. 2010. Self-Awareness (Svasaṃvedana) in Dignāga's Pramāṇasamuccaya and-Vṛtti: A Close Reading." Journal of Indian Philosophy 38 (3): 203–231.
Kellner, B. 2011. "Self-awareness (Svasaṃvedana) and infinite regresses: A comparison of arguments by Dignāga and Dharmakīrti," Journal of Indian Philosophy, 39 (4‒5): 411–426.
Matilal, B. K. 1986. Perception: An Essay on Classical Indian eories of Knowledge. Oxford: Oxford University Press, Chapter 5.
McCabe, M. M. 2017. "Looking Inside Charmides’ Cloak: Seeing Others and Oneself in Plato’s Charmides", in Dominic Scott, ed., Maieusis: Essays on Ancient Philosophy in Honour of Myles Burnyeat. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1-19.
Montague, M. 2016. The Given: Experience and its Content. New York: Oxford University Press. Chapter 8 ("Cognitive Phenomenology: What Is Given in Conscious Thought").
Montague, M. 2017. "What Kind of Awareness is Awareness of Awareness?" Grazer Philosophische Studien 94: 359–380.
Moore, C. 2015. Socrates and Self-Knowledge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Ch. 5.
Nichols, S. 2015. Bound: Essays on Free Will and Responsibility. New York: Oxford University Press, Chapter 1 ("The Folk Psychology of Agency").
Reddy, V. 2007. "Getting back to the rough ground: deception and ‘social living’," Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society 362: 621–637.
Reddy, V., and Uithol, S. 2015. "Engagement: Looking beyond the mirror to understand action understanding," British Journal of DevelopmentalPsychology. DOI:10.1111/bjdp.12106.
Saha, S. 1997. "Translation and Elucidation of Definitions of Svaprakāśatva in Citsukha's Tattvapradīpikā," Journal of Indian Philosophy and Religion 2:88–142.
Siderits, M. 2011. "Buddhas as Zombies: A Buddhist Reduction of Subjectivity," In Mark Siderits, Evan Thompson & Dan Zahavi (eds.), Self, No Self?: Perspectives From Analytical, Phenomenological, and Indian Traditions. Oxford University Press.
Siderits, M. 2015. Personal Identity and Buddhist Philosophy. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2nd edition, Chapter 9.
Siegel, S. "Inference without reckoning," In Reasoning: Essays on Theoretical and Practical Thinking, edited by M. Balcerak-Jackson and B. Balcerak-Jackson. Oxford University Press.
Thompson, E. 2017. “Looping Effects and the Cognitive Science of Mindfulness Meditation,” in Meditation, Buddhism, and Science, edited by David McMahan and Erik Braun, New York Oxford University Press.
Thompson, E. “What’s in a Concept? Conceptualizing the (Not-Non)Conceptual and the (Not-Non)Nonconceptual in Buddhist Philosophy and Cognitive Science,” forthcoming.
Zahavi, D. Zahavi, D., 2005. Subjectivity and Selfhood: Investigating the First-Person Perspective, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, Chapter 1 ("Self-Awareness and Phenomenal Consciousness").
Zahavi, D. 2016. "Second-Person Engagement, Self-Alienation, and Group- Identification," Topoi, DOI 10.1007/s11245-016-9444-6.
