Self, Consciousness, and Being: The Transcendent Perspective (Hardback or Cased Book)

The book argues that there is a best design for the human self, making the case in favour of the transcendent self-view - a perspective on the self that transcends ideas and viewpoints generally, seeing and treating them as subordinate facets of a total self that has empty consciousness, the underlying essence of consciousness itself, as its resting focus and core.

The two main claims defended are, first, that it is the one self-view that fully and accurately reflects our true behavioural and experiential nature; second, that making it the basis of the fully developed human self, whilst also maintaining unique personal elements, should be an aim for both the individual and educational professionals.

For the individual, taking this step may be thought of as personal transcendence and may even be given a spiritual slant, but it is best seen as an everyday kind of transcendence that is really nothing special - just a sensible and logical endpoint to human development. An account of how the perspective helps resolve the hard problem of consciousness is also given. Chapter 1 is a full summary of the main points of the book.

Dennis Nicholson first envisaged developing a transcendent perspective on the self during philosophy of science and psychology classes taken at Edinburgh University prior to graduating in 1973. Employed at Strathclyde University in Glasgow in the decades that followed, most recently in a joint role as Director of Research in Information Services and research group leader (CDLR) in the Computer and Information Sciences Department, he continued to explore the ques-tion of the best design for the human self in parallel with his formal work. Ultimately deciding to devote himself full-time to what had become his primary research interest, he left his post to set out the compelling logical and observational case for the transcendent self-view presented in this book. Dennis hails from Dundee on the east coast of Scotland and now lives in Edinburgh.