Cognitive Neuroscience and the Human Self

Cognitive neuroscience is the branch of neuroscience that focuses on questions about how memory, perception, reasoning, and so on, arise from the operation of neural circuits. Cognitive neuroscience would contribute to issues about knowledge and values if it could explicate ways in which the structure of the brain constrains what and how we can know. In this chapter I describe how the self can be conceptualized within this approach. I argue that cognitive neuroscience provides a framework for conceptualizing what we mean when we speak of the self, and what would be necessary for the self to change. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.