The self: From philosophy to cognitive neuroscience

Abstract

Neuroscientists have recently begun to explore topics, such as the nature of the self, that were previously considered problems for philosophy rather than for science. This article aims to provide a starting point for interdisciplinary exchange by reviewing three philosophical debates about the nature of the self in light of contemporary work in cognitive neuroscience. Continental rationalist and British empiricist approaches to the unity of the self are discussed in relation to earlier work on split-brain patients, and to more recent work on “mental time travel” and the default mode network; the phenomenological movement, and the central concept of intentionality, are discussed in relation to interoceptive accounts of emotion and to the mirror neuron system; and ongoing philosophical debates about agency and autonomy are discussed in relation to recent work on action awareness and on insight in clinical populations such as addicts and patients with frontotemporal dementia.