No Self to be Found - by James Giles (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

This book is a exploration of the notion of personal identity. Here it is shown how the various attempts to give an account of personal identity are all based on false assumptions and so inevitably run aground. One of the first Western thinkers to realize this was David Hume, the 18th century empiricist philosopher who argued that self was a fiction. A new interpretation of Hume's no-self theory is put forward by arguing for an eliminative rather than a reductive point of view of personal identity, and by approaching the problem in terms of phenomenology, Buddhist critiques of the notion of the self, and the idea of a constructed self-image. No Self to Be Found explores the problem of personal identity from the most basic level by raising the question of the existence of personal identity itself.

Review Quotes

"James Giles' work is a clear, well-informed investigation of the psychological subject in the analytic style. It aims to correct some misleading assumptions that have distorted discussion of personal identity by philosophers and psychologists for centuries." --John Pickering, Warwick University, Self and Identity

"Giles has a gift of being able to express in an accessible manner very complex and at times technical arguments. He provides one of the best summaries of the literature of self and identity that I have seen recently. He wages his counter-arguments andlodges his criticisms of the positions with skill and insight. This is a book well worth taking seriously, if only as a test of any argument that proposes to defend a notion of the self and a meaningful personal identity. This book would be useful in graduate seminars in philosophical psychology, and it would be accessible to advanced undergraduates." --James B. Sauer, St. Mary's University (San Antonio), The Personalist Forum

"Giles has a gift of being able to express in an accessible manner very complex and at times technical arguments. He provides one of the best summaries of the literature of self and identity that I have seen recently. He wages his counter-arguments and lodges his criticisms of the positions with skill and insight. This is a book well worth taking seriously, if only as a test of any argument that proposes to defend a notion of the self and a meaningful personal identity. This book would be useful in graduate seminars in philosophical psychology, and it would be accessible to advanced undergraduates." --James B. Sauer, St. Mary's University (San Antonio), The Personalist Forum

"James Giles' work is a clear, well-informed investigation of the psychological subject in the analytic style. It aims to correct some misleading assumptions that have distorted discussion of personal identity by philosophers and psychologists for centuries." --John Pickering, Warwick University, Self and Identity

About the Author

James Giles, PhD, is a Panel Tutor in Philosophy at the University of Cambridge Institute for continuing Education. He has also taught at Universities in Australia, Canada, the UK, Denmark, Hawaii, and Guam. His published works include The Way of Awareness in Daoist Philosophy, Sexual Attraction: The Psychology of Allure, The Nature of Sexual Desire, and A Study in Phenomenalism.