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