The Self-Field

Preface

Introduction

PART I: The background

1. The nature-nurture debate

Personality traits – Cognitive abilities – Epigenetic factors – Gene regulation – New terms of debate – Neural plasticity – Embodied development

2. Inheritance systems

Evo-Devo – Homological thinking – Niche construction – Sociocultural learning – Cooperative behavior – Gene-culture coevolution – Interacting dimensions – Novel behavior

PART II: The metatheory

3. Self-organization

Order of a complex sort – Hierarchical model – Emergentism - Strong versus weak emergence – Levels of description – Autopoiesis – Structure and organization - Diachronic emergence

4. The invisible self

Science and common sense – The self that won’t go away – Psychological connectedness – Field theory – Boundary conditions – Social dimensions - The self as a self-organizing system – Some propositions

5. Mapping the field

Brain-body schemas – Spatial extensions – Unity of perception and action – Social cues – Self-agency – Mirror images – Emotional signals – Self-regulation of emotions

6. The evolving self

Metamorphosis - Memory and consciousness – Knowing and feeling – The three-stage self – The core-self across species - Evolutionary continuity – Subjective experience – The cultural ratchet

7. Tacit nexus

Overlapping brain functions – Stringing things together – Rapid sequencing –Practical intelligence - Dexterous hands - Science and praxis – Artifactual knowledge

PART III: The self in the world

8. Technically extended selves

Nature’s home builders – Animal tool use – Knowledge in common – Cumulative technology - Artificial versus natural selection – Self-producing technologies – Promethean gifts

9. Self-images

Good impressions – Bodily idioms – Reciprocal perspectives - Home-making as self-actualization - Attachments to things – Material culture matters - Fashion conscious - Automania

10. Self and group identity

Tribal ties – Discomfort with inconsistent beliefs - Self and the out-group other – Group dynamics – Sectarian conflict – Effects of spatial segregation

11. Occupational identity

Creation of a modern workforce – Class division and unionization - Fordism – Automation – The vanishing workplace – The encroachment of AI – Social groups most affected

12. Selves online

Cultivating the narcissistic personality – Bidirectional media - Hooked on the Internet – Games designed to keep players playing - The networked self – Promoting the self

13. Transformations

Turning points – Perpetual connectivity – Treating people as objects – Cultural shift – The threat to critical thinking - Rewiring the brain – Augmented reality

14. Loss of the private self

A cautionary tale of the digital age – Mining the data – Engineering social change – Winning tactics - Selves for sale – The fightback

Part IV: Summation

15. Instinctive and fuzzy selves

Resistance to change - Not just a collection of neurons – Relations of degree – Techno-cultural coevolution - The profligate species – Existential crisis

Pandemic postscript

Notes and references

Bibliography

Index