Author: K. Joanna S. Forstrom
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1441173242
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 249
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Book Description
One of the most influential debates in John Locke's work is the problem of personal identity over time. This problem is that of how a person at one time is the same person later in time, and so can be held responsible for past actions. The time of most concern for Locke is that of the general resurrection promised in the New Testament. Given the turbulence of the Reformation and the formation of new approaches to the Bible, many philosophers and scientists paid careful attention to emerging orthodoxies or heterodoxies about death. Here K. Joanna S. Forstrom examines the interrelated positions of Rene Descartes, Thomas Hobbes, Henry More and Robert Boyle in their individual contexts and in Locke's treatment of them. She argues that, in this way, we can better understand Locke and his position on personal identity and immortality. Once his unique take is understood and grounded in his own theological convictions (or lack thereof), we can better evaluate Locke and defend him against classic objections to his thought.
Author: Geoffrey Madell
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317584139
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 269
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Book Description
In this volume, Geoffrey Madell develops a revised account of the self, making a compelling case for why the "simple" or "anti-criterial" view of personal identity warrants a robust defense. Madell critiques recent discussions of the self for focusing on features which are common to all selves, and which therefore fail to capture the uniqueness of each self. In establishing his own view of personal identity, Madell proposes (a) that there is always a gap between ‘A is f and g’ and ‘I am f and g’; (b), that a complete description of the world offered without recourse to indexicals will fail to account for the contingent truth that I am one of the persons described; and (c), that an account of conscious perspectives on the world must take into account what it means for an apparently arbitrary one of these perspectives to be mine. Engaging with contemporary positions on the first person, embodiment, psychological continuity, and other ongoing arguments, Madell contends that there can be no such thing as a criterion of personal identity through time, that no bodily or psychological continuity approach to the issue can succeed, and that personal identity through time must be absolute, not a matter of degree. Madell’s view that the nature of the self is substantively different from that of objects in the world will generate significant discussion and debate among philosophers of mind.
Author: Derek Parfit
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191622443
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 880
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Book Description
This book challenges, with several powerful arguments, some of our deepest beliefs about rationality, morality, and personal identity. The author claims that we have a false view of our own nature; that it is often rational to act against our own best interests; that most of us have moral views that are directly self-defeating; and that, when we consider future generations the conclusions will often be disturbing. He concludes that moral non-religious moral philosophy is a young subject, with a promising but unpredictable future.
Author: Galen Strawson
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691161003
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 279
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Book Description
John Locke's theory of personal identity underlies all modern discussion of the nature of persons and selves—yet it is widely thought to be wrong. In this book, Galen Strawson argues that in fact it is Locke’s critics who are wrong, and that the famous objections to his theory are invalid. Indeed, far from refuting Locke, they illustrate his fundamental point. Strawson argues that the root error is to take Locke’s use of the word "person" as merely a term for a standard persisting thing, like "human being." In actuality, Locke uses "person" primarily as a forensic or legal term geared specifically to questions about praise and blame, punishment and reward. This point is familiar to some philosophers, but its full consequences have not been worked out, partly because of a further error about what Locke means by the word "conscious." When Locke claims that your personal identity is a matter of the actions that you are conscious of, he means the actions that you experience as your own in some fundamental and immediate manner. Clearly and vigorously argued, this is an important contribution both to the history of philosophy and to the contemporary philosophy of personal identity.
Author: Logi Gunnarsson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135212813
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 421
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Book Description
As witnessed by recent films such as Fight Club and Identity, our culture is obsessed with multiple personality—a phenomenon raising intriguing questions about personal identity. This study offers both a full-fledged philosophical theory of personal identity and a systematic account of multiple personality. Gunnarsson combines the methods of analytic philosophy with close hermeneutic and phenomenological readings of cases from different fields, focusing on psychiatric and psychological treatises, self-help books, biographies, and fiction. He develops an original account of personal identity (the authorial correlate theory) and offers a provocative interpretation of multiple personality: in brief, "multiples" are right about the metaphysics but wrong about the facts.
Author: David Shoemaker
Publisher: Broadview Press
ISBN: 1551118823
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 304
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Book Description
The relationship between personal identity and ethics remains on of the most intriguing yet vexing issues in philosophy. It is commonplace to hold that moral responsibility for past actions requires that the responsible agent is in some respect identical to the agent who performed the action. Is this true? On the other hand, can ethics constrain our account of personal identity? Do the practical requirements of moral theory commit us to the view that persons do remain identical over time? For example, does the moral status of abortion or stem cell research depend on whether personal identity is based on psychological or biological properties? Or is it the case that personal identity is not, in fact, relevant to ethics? Personal Identity and Ethics provides the first comprehensive examination of these issues. Topics include personal identity and prudential rationality; personal identity’s significance for moral responsibility and ethical theory; and the practical consequences of accounts of personal identity for issues such as abortion, stem cell research, cloning, advance directives, population ethics, multiple personality disorder, and the definition of death.
Author: Harold W. Noonan
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134482132
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 248
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Book Description
A comprehensive introduction to the nature of the self and its relation to the body, this title places the problem of personal identity in the context of more general puzzles about identity, and discusses the major related theories.
Author: John Perry
Publisher: Hackett Publishing
ISBN: 1603846417
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 59
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Book Description
Perry's excellent dialogue makes a complicated topic stimulating and accessible without any sacrifice of scholarly accuracy or thoroughness. Professionals will appreciate the work's command of the issues and depth of argument, while students will find that it excites interest and imagination. --David M. Rosenthal, CUNY, Lehman College
Author: Annalisa Coliva
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199590656
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 297
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Book Description
Investigates philosophical issues to do with the self and self-knowledge. It focuses on two main problems: how to account for I-thoughts and the consequences that doing so would have for our notion of the self; and how to explain subjects' ability to know the kind of psychological states they enjoy.
Author: Antonia Fitzpatrick
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198790856
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 214
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Book Description
This is a study of the union of matter and the soul in the human being in the thought of the Dominican Thomas Aquinas. At first glance this issue might appear arcane, but it was at the centre of polemic with heresy in the thirteenth century and at the centre of the development of medieval thought more broadly. The book argues that theological issues, especially the need for an identical body to be resurrected at the end of time, but also considerations about Christ's crucifixion and saints' relics, were central to Aquinas's account of how human beings are constituted. The book explores in particular how theological questions and concerns shaped Aquinas's thought on individuality and personal and bodily identity over time, his embryology and understanding of heredity, his work on nutrition and bodily growth, and his fundamental conception of matter itself. It demonstrates, up-close, how Aquinas used his peripatetic sources, Aristotle and (especially) Averroes, to frame and further his own thinking in these areas. The book also indicates how Aquinas's thought on bodily identity became pivotal to university debates and relations between the rival mendicant orders in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, and that quarrels surrounding these issues persisted into the fifteenth century. Not only is this a study of the interface between theology, biology, and physics in Aquinas's mind; it also fundamentally revises the view of Aquinas that is generally accepted. Aquinas is famous for holding that the one and only substantial (or nature-determining) form in a human being is the soul, and most scholars have therefore thought that he located the identity of the individual in their soul. This book restores the body through a thorough and critical examination of the range of Aquinas's works.
