There are a wide variety of theories by those who study how the mind is formed–ranging from neurologists, to bio evolutionists, to cognitive scientists, to sociologists. Recently, these disciplines have turned their focus to the complexities of the relationship between biology and culture. The essays collected here focus on particular facets of the bio-social self: its capacity for self-destructive behavior: its ability to extend beyond the boundaries of our cranium; how it learns; and the pitfalls of framing the bio-social self within narrow disciplinary paradigms.

In “The Bounds of Selfhood,” Justin Luo offers that while embodied cognition theorists like Andy Clark have provided plausible hypotheses for extended cognition and extended mind, we are invited to reconsider our conception of the mind and selfhood beyond the brain tissue. The apparent absurdities and puzzles about extended selfhood might well be a starting point for our refined understanding of ourselves. Andrew Ude’s “The Self Created” is a literature review that surveys theories of internalization and stabilization of social behaviors in converging (and diverging) fields. Jeffrey Vreeland’s, “Our Biology Is Not Our Biography” contends that the existence of an autobiographical–self that is capable of enough agency to believe it can sacrifice its own biological body for higher but selfish purposes undermines theories of mind and consciousness predicated on “an absolutely mindless ignorant mechanical process that generates minds” solely for the preservation of the biological body or the transfer of its selfish genes. With “The Influence of Environment on Drug Use and Drug Dependence in Adolescents,” Ayanna Alexander-Street has created a multimedia presentation surveying recent debate about the roles of biology and environment in studies on drug dependence.