Human life depends on building and defending a subjective identity, which is foundational for psychological well-being and mental health, as important as biological needs or social competition. Drawing on contemporary cognitive sciences rather than neo-Cartesian philosophy, the authors examine how cognitive, emotional, and affective elements intertwine to construct subjective identity, focusing on the role of Theory-of-Mind abilities. They suggest that at every stage of self-construction, individuals engage in largely innate processes of understanding others, and that mature self-awareness is secondary to knowledge of others, serving primarily as an evolutionarily refined defense mechanism.
The authors argue for a reformist agenda in cognitive science that retains computational models while incorporating insights from 4E cognition (embodied, embedded, extended, enactive). They advocate liberalizing the computational-representational framework to address classical cognitive science's anti-biologism and radical internalism. The paper examines two open questions: combining mechanistic-computational with dynamical explanations, and revising the notion of representation, particularly in light of Andy Clark's radical predictive processing. The authors are sympathetic to reform but acknowledge its difficulty, focusing on these issues without presenting empirical findings.