Preface
Introduction
PART I: The background
1. The nature-nurture debate
Personality traits â" Cognitive abilities â" Epigenetic factors â" Gene regulation â" New terms of debate â" Neural plasticity â" Embodied development
2. Inheritance systems
Evo-Devo â" Homological thinking â" Niche construction â" Sociocultural learning â" Cooperative behavior â" Gene-culture coevolution â" Interacting dimensions â" Novel behavior
PART II: The metatheory
3. Self-organization
Order of a complex sort â" Hierarchical model â" Emergentism - Strong versus weak emergence â" Levels of description â" Autopoiesis â" Structure and organization - Diachronic emergence
4. The invisible self
Science and common sense â" The self that wonât go away â" Psychological connectedness â" Field theory â" Boundary conditions â" Social dimensions - The self as a self-organizing system â" Some propositions
5. Mapping the field
Brain-body schemas â" Spatial extensions â" Unity of perception and action â" Social cues â" Self-agency â" Mirror images â" Emotional signals â" Self-regulation of emotions
6. The evolving self
Metamorphosis - Memory and consciousness â" Knowing and feeling â" The three-stage self â" The core-self across species - Evolutionary continuity â" Subjective experience â" The cultural ratchet
7. Tacit nexus
Overlapping brain functions â" Stringing things together â" Rapid sequencing â"Practical intelligence - Dexterous hands - Science and praxis â" Artifactual knowledge
PART III: The self in the world
8. Technically extended selves
Natureâs home builders â" Animal tool use â" Knowledge in common â" Cumulative technology - Artificial versus natural selection â" Self-producing technologies â" Promethean gifts
9. Self-images
Good impressions â" Bodily idioms â" Reciprocal perspectives - Home-making as self-actualization - Attachments to things â" Material culture matters - Fashion conscious - Automania
10. Self and group identity
Tribal ties â" Discomfort with inconsistent beliefs - Self and the out-group other â" Group dynamics â" Sectarian conflict â" Effects of spatial segregation
11. Occupational identity
Creation of a modern workforce â" Class division and unionization - Fordism â" Automation â" The vanishing workplace â" The encroachment of AI â" Social groups most affected
12. Selves online
Cultivating the narcissistic personality â" Bidirectional media - Hooked on the Internet â" Games designed to keep players playing - The networked self â" Promoting the self
13. Transformations
Turning points â" Perpetual connectivity â" Treating people as objects â" Cultural shift â" The threat to critical thinking - Rewiring the brain â" Augmented reality
14. Loss of the private self
A cautionary tale of the digital age â" Mining the data â" Engineering social change â" Winning tactics - Selves for sale â" The fightback
Part IV: Summation
15. Instinctive and fuzzy selves
Resistance to change - Not just a collection of neurons â" Relations of degree â" Techno-cultural coevolution - The profligate species â" Existential crisis
Pandemic postscript
Notes and references
Bibliography
Index