Between Ourselves: Second Person Issues in the Study of Consciousness

The first volume in this series ("The View from Within", edited by Francisco Varela and Jonathan Shear) was a study of first-person approaches to the study of consciousness. Second-person 'I-You' relations are central to human life yet have been neglected in consciousness research. This book puts that right, and goes further by including descriptions of animal 'person-to-person' interactions from primatologists Barbara Smuts and Sue Savage-Rumbaugh. Other contributions are drawn from fields as diverse as Japanese philosophy and Buddhist studies, neurophysiology, phenomenology and neuropsychology - including clinical studies on autism and face-recognition disorders.

Table of Contents:
Editor's Introduction Evan Thompson , Empathy and Consciousness Beyond Theory of Mind Vittorio Gallese, The 'Shared Manifold' Hypothesis: From Mirror Neurons to Empathy Jonathan Cole, Empathy Needs a Face Iso Kern and Eduard Marbach, Understanding the Representational Mind: A Prerequisite for Intersubjectivity Shaun Gallagher, The Practice of Mind: Theory, Simulation or Interaction Victoria McGeer, Psycho-Practice, Psycho-Theory, and the Contrastive Case of Autism: How Practices of Mind Become Second Nature Dimensions of Intersubjective Experience J. Allan Cheyne, The Ominous Numinous: Sensed Presence and 'Other' Hallucinations Dan Zahavi, Beyond Empathy: Phenomenological Approaches to Intersubjectivity Natalie Depraz, The Husserlian Theory of Intersubjectivity as Alterology: Emergent Theories and Wisdom Traditions in the Light of Genetic Phenomenology Anthony Steinbock, Interpersonal Attention Through Exemplarity Ethics and the Co-Emergence of Self and Other Yoko Arisaka, The Ontological Co-Emergence of 'Self and Other' in Japanese Philosophy B. Alan Wallace, Intersubjectivity in Indo-Tibetan Buddhism Annabella Pitkin, Scandalous Ethics: Infinite Presence with Suffering Intersubjectivity and Illness Experience S. Kay Toombs, The Role of Empathy in Clinical Practice Francisco J. Varela, Intimate Distances: Fragments for a Phenomenology of Organ Transplantation Interspecies Subjectivity Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, William M. Fields and J. Taglialatila, Language, Speech, Tools and Writing: A Cultural Imperative Barbara Smuts, Encounters with Animal Minds Index

About the Author :
Evan Thompson is associate professor in the department of philosophy at York University, Ontario. He is the author of Colour Vision and The Embodied Mind (with Francisco Varela and Eleanor Rosch). Forthcoming books include The Philosophy of Perception: Selected Readings (MIT Press) and Why the Mind Isn't in the Head (Harvard).

Review :
"I highly recommend the collection... should be looked at by anyone who wants to think about what form a phenomenological contribution to some of the problems studied by cognitive scientists might take." -- Bill Wringe Human Nature Review "Interdisciplinary research on empathy is important both for theoretical understanding of intersubjectivity and to meet practical goals such as better physician-patient relationships. Between Ourselves has made solid strides in both of these directions." -- Allison Barnes Philosophical Psychology