ABSTRACT
The phenomenological and ontological status and nature of the self are controversial issues that are currently debated in a variety of different fields, including philosophy of mind, social theory, cultural studies, psychiatry, developmental psychology, and cognitive neuroscience. The scientific community is rather split on the issue concerning the scientific and philosophical legitimacy of the notion of self. There is currently no consensus about whether the self has an experiential reality or whether it is nothing but a theoretical fiction. Interdisciplinary approaches that focus on more than a single aspect or dimension of the complex problems of self are more likely to mitigate problems of intertheoretical coherency. A variety of approaches, including phenomenology, the neuroscience of motor action, animal studies, and developmental psychology, are needed to understand aspects of self-experience, self-recognition, agency, and social interaction, and how such things contribute to the generation of self-identity.
