The overall message of this book is the inadequacy of physicalism, even in its mildest non-reductionist guises, as a basis for a scientifically and philosophically acceptable account of human beings, as subjects of experience, thought and action. The book is organized in the following way. Chapter 1 is mainly a matter of scene-setting. Then, in chapter 2, I defend a substantival theory of the self as an enduring and irreducible entity, essentially a self-conscious subject of thought and experience and source of intentional action. This theory is unashamedly committed to a dualism of self and body, though emphatically not one along traditional ‘Cartesian’ lines, for I do not represent the self as being an essentially immaterial thing existing in some mysterious union with physical substance. Chapter 3 takes up the physicalist challenge to any robust form of psychophysical dualism and attempts to show how an attribution of independent causal powers to the mental states of human subjects is not only consistent with a naturalistic and scientific world-view, but also a great deal more plausible than various physicalist alternatives, whether reductionist, nonreductionist or eliminativist. Finally, chapters 4, 5, 6 and 7 examine in more detail the nature of the central capacities of the self – for perception, action, thought and self-knowledge – and once again the underlying theme is that a naturalistic approach can and must accord an indispensable and independent explanatory role to the conscious states, both experiential and volitional, of human subjects.

Some of the book's material has appeared in earlier versions elsewhere.