In this seminar we will consider current theorizing about self and consciousness from a multidisciplinary perspective including psychology, philosophy and neuroscience. A special focus of the seminar will be on showing that various psychopathologies can provide insight into how consciousness and self are structured experientially and constructed cognitively and neurologically. Split-brains, multiple personality, and schizophrenia are among the psychopathologies directly affecting the structure of self-consciousness that we will consider. However, other psychopathologies, such as autism, Alzheimers, manic-depressive disorder, and various neurological and memory disorders, less directly involving self-consciousness, will also be considered. The class is open to graduate students throughout Dalhousie University, but should be of special interest to those in psychology, neuroscience, and philosophy. Please contact me if you are interested in taking the course.

Graduate students taking the course for credit will be graded based on the following requirements:

Class participation (30 pts.): Students are expected to attend every class and to arrive on time. At minimum, they are also expected to make some verbal contribution at every class to each of the readings, but their overall contribution both in quality and quantity will be the main basis of this grade.

Thoughts on reading (10 pts.): For each class students are expected to hand in by the end of class a one page summary of thoughts they had about the readings for that class, thereby showing that they have done the readings for that class and have thought about them. Each summary is worth one point.

Class presentation and leading discussion (25 pts.): Each student taking the class for credit will be required to help select readings for a particular class at which they will lead the discussion. They are also expected to set the context for the reading with an introductory (or distributed) presentation.

Final paper (35 pts.): A minimum 15 page double spaced type-written paper (text only, not cover page or references) on any particular topic or topics of the student's interest directly related to material covered in class. Most likely you will want to choose the topic for which you made a class presentation and led discussion, but you may choose another topic, if approved by the instructor. This paper is due near the end of the exam period.
 
 

1. September 10   Overview of the course. No readings.

2. September 17: Philosophical contributions to cognitive science of self
Shaun Gallagher (2000). "Philosophical conceptions of the self: implications for cognitive science," Trends in  Cognitive Science 4 (1):14-21.
Thomas Metzinger (2000) "The subjectivity of subjective experience: A representationalist analysis of the first-person perspective." In T. Metzinger (ed), Neural Correlates of Consciousness: Empirical and Conceptual Questions. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

3. September 24: Damasio’s theory of consciousness, pt. 1
Antonio Damasio (2000) “A neurobiology for consciousness” In T. Metzinger (ed), Neural Correlates of Consciousness: Empirical and Conceptual Questions, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press (112-20).
______________(1999) Chapter 5 “The organism and the object” In: The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness, New York, Harcourt (133-67).

4. October 1: Damasio’s theory of consciousness, pt. 2
Antonio Damasio (1999) Chapter 6 “The making of core consciousness” and Chapter 7 “Extended consciousness” In: The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness, New York, Harcourt (168-233)

5. October 15: (No class on October 8 Thanksgiving holiday): Philosophical views of self
Galen Strawson (1997) "The self," Journal of Consciousness Studies, 4 (5-6): 405-28.
Daniel Dennett (1992) "The self as a center of narrative gravity," In F. Kessel, P. Cole and D. Johnson, eds, Self and Consciousness: Multiple Perspectives, Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

6. October 22 : Multiple Personality Disorder (now DID)
John Barresi (1994) "Morton Prince and B.C.A.: A historical footnote on the confrontation between dissociation theory and Freudian psychology in a case of multiple personality." In R.Klein and B.Doane, Psychological Concepts and
Dissociative Disorders: Reverberation and Implications, Erlbaum.
Nicholas Humphrey and Daniel C. Dennett (1989). "Speaking for Ourselves," Raritan:
A Quarterly Review, IX, 68-98. Reprinted in Daniel Kolak and R. Martin, eds., Self & Identity: Contemporary Philosophical Issues, Macmillan, 1991.

7. October 29: The dual brain
Michael Gazzaniga and Shaun Gallagher (1998) "The Neuronal Platonist,"Special Issue: Models of the Self, Journal of Consciousness Studies 5 ( 5/6): 706-17.
Fredric Schiffer (1998) Of Two Minds: The Revolutionary Science of Dual-Brain Psychology, New York: Free Press, Chapter 2, "A new look at split-brain studies," (17-46) and Chapter 4, "Dual-brain psychology," (77-102).

8. November 5: Schizophrenia and other abnormalities of self-awareness
Christopher Frith, Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, & Daniel M. Wolpert  (2000) "Abnormalities in the awareness and  control of action." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London: Biological Sciences 355(1404), 1771-1788.
 Louis Sass (2000) “'Furtive abductions': Schizophrenia, the lived body, and dispossession of self."  In S. Gallagher and S. Watson (Eds.) Ipseity and Alterity, Special Issue of Arob@se: Journal des lettres et  sciences humaines, vol. 4, no.1-2, 63-73.

9. November 19: Two models of Schizophrenia (No class on Nov. 12, Remembrance day holiday)
Shaun Gallagher  (2000) "Self-Reference and Schizophrenia: A Cognitive Model of Immunity to Error through Misidentification," in Exploring the Self: Philosophical and psychopathological perspectives on self-experience, ed. Dan Zahavi. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Nicolas Georgieff and Marc Jeannerod (1998) “Beyond consciousness of external reality: A ‘who’ system for consciousness of action and self-consciousness,” Consciousness and Cognition 7, 465–477.

10. November 26: Temporally extended self, personal identity and adolescent suicide
Chris Moore and Karen Lemmon (2001) "The nature and utility of the temporally extended self" (pp. 1-5) &
Daniel Povinelli (2001) "The self: Elevated in consciousness and extended in time" (pp. 75-95). In: Chris Moore & Karen Lemmon (eds.), The self in time: Developmental perspectives, Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Earlbaum Associates, Publishers.
Michael Chandler (1994) "Adolescent suicide and the loss of personal continuity" (pp. 371-390). In: Dante Cicchetti & Sheree Toth (eds.), Disorders and dysfunctions of the self (Rochester Symposium on Developmental Psychopathology vol. 5), Rochester: University of Rochester Press.

11. December 3: Self, brain, schizophrenia, and the unity of consciousness
Kai Vogeley, Martin Kurthen, Peter Falkai, Wolfgang Maier   "The Human Self Construct and Prefrontal Cortex in Schizophrenia" & Vittorio Gallese - "Objects, Actions and the Self Model"  in ASSC E-seminar five.
John G. Taylor (1998) "Constructing the Relational Mind", in Psyche.