JeeLoo Liu - Consciousness and the Self: New Essays

JEELOO LIU and JOHN PERRY

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, So Paulo, Delhi, Tokyo, Mexico City

Cambridge University Press

The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge cb2 8ru, UK

www.cambridge.org

Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781107000759

This book emerged from the 39th annual philosophy symposium on the same topic, Consciousness and the Self , at California State University, Fullerton, in April 2009. The symposium speakers included Alex Byrne, David Chalmers, Fred Dretske, John Perry, Jesse Prinz, Eric Schwitzgebel, and Sydney Shoemaker. The symposium was a huge success, and all speakers except for Chalmers agreed to put their papers together in a book. On this basis, I invited several other philosophers working on the issue of self-awareness and self-knowledge to join the collection: Owen Flanagan (Duke University), Uriah Kriegel (University of Arizona), Lucy OBrien (University College London, UK), and David Rosenthal (CUNY Graduate Center). My deepest gratitude goes to all the authors who contributed their newest work written just for this collection. They have all been very supportive of this book project and have taught me a great deal through their talks, writings, and personal communications. Even though David Chalmers is not among the contributing authors, I would like to say that the whole symposium as well as this book would not have materialized if it were not for his brilliant insights and helpful input in the whole process.

I want to thank my colleagues at CSUF Philosophy Department for their support during the symposium. My Consciousness and the Self seminar students in Spring 2009 were an amazing bunch. They were undergraduate students who had not studied much analytic philosophy before taking my seminar, but they made a tremendous effort in learning and thinking with me and with the speakers. Several of them served as speakers or commentators at the symposium and their performance was highly impressive. I would like to acknowledge these students for their dedication to learning and their achievements: Brent Boos, Pamela Chui, Kelsey Fernandez, Nathan Lujan, Alis Rabet, Jonathan Stracker, Mimi Vong, and Sandra Woloschuk.

I am deeply indebted to my co-editor, John Perry, who has been a mentor to me ever since we first met in 2002 at the Creighton Club, a long-standing upstate New York philosophical association. Working with him on this book has been a great learning experience for me and I am honored to have had the chance to edit this book with him.

Finally, I would like to thank my beloved husband Michael Cranston, and our wonderful sons, Collin and Dillon, for always being patient with me when I was glued to my computer working away in the evenings.

JEELOO LIU

I am very grateful for the opportunity to help JeeLoo Liu in converting the symposium she organized into a book. I have thoroughly enjoyed our collaboration, and learned a great deal from paying close attention to the papers by the other authors. We both thank Hilary Gaskin and Cambridge University Press for their support.

JOHN PERRY

Alex Byrne

Fred Dretske

Owen Flanagan

Uriah Kriegel

JeeLoo Liu

Lucy OBrien

John Perry

Jesse Prinz

David Rosenthal

Eric Schwitzgebel

Sydney Shoemaker