Abstract

© 2013 The Editors of The Philosophical QuarterlyOpening this book the philosopher might expect a treatise on self‐knowledge. However, despite its title, this is not a book on knowledge of our own minds, or even on self‐consciousness in the usual sense of being conscious of oneself. Rather, it is a book on developmental psychology, spelling out the fascinating details of the development of the human mind with a particular focus on the emergence of human consciousness. The question Radu J. Bogdan raises is why, and how, consciousness develops in human beings. His central hypothesis is that consciousness is a bi‐product of the executive abilities that a small child develops in response to the complex socio‐cultural situation that she finds herself in. The executive abilities, Bogden argues, are assembled by the child's intuitive psychology, or theory of mind, which allows her to interact and coregulate with others. The origins of...