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: Andrea Sauchelli
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317288548
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 260
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Book Description
'Soul', 'self', ‘substance’ and 'person' are just four of the terms often used to refer to the human individual. Cutting across metaphysics, ethics, and religion the nature of personal identity is a fundamental and long-standing puzzle in philosophy. Personal Identity and Applied Ethics introduces and examines different conceptions of the self, our nature, and personal identity and considers the implications of these for applied ethics. A key feature of the book is that it discusses a range of different approaches to personal identity; philosophical, religious and cross-cultural, including perspectives from non-Western traditions. Within this comparative framework, Andrea Sauchelli examines the following topics: Early views of the soul in Plato, Christianity and Descartes The Buddhist 'no-self' views and the self as a fiction Confucian ideas of our nature and the importance of self-cultivation as constitutive of the self Locke's theory of personal identity as continuity of consciousness and memory and objections by Butler and Reid as well as contemporary critics The theory of 'animalism' and arguments concerning embodied theories of personal identity Practical and narrative theories of personal identity and moral agency Personal identity and issues in applied ethics, including abortion, organ transplantation, and the idea of life after death Implications of life-extending technologies for personal identity. Throughout the book Sauchelli also considers the views of important recent philosophers such as Sydney Shoemaker, Bernard Williams, Derek Parfit, Marya Schechtman and Christine Korsgaard, placing these in helpful historical context. Chapter summaries, a glossary of key terms, and suggestions for further reading make this a refreshing, approachable introduction to personal identity and applied ethics. It is an ideal text for courses on personal identity that consider both western and non-western approaches and that apply theories of personal identity to ethical problems. It will also be of interest to those in related subjects such as religious studies and history of ideas.
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: Kwame Anthony Appiah
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 069125477X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 392
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Book Description
A bold vision of liberal humanism for navigating today’s complex world of growing identity politics and rising nationalism Collective identities such as race, nationality, religion, gender, and sexuality clamor for recognition and respect, sometimes at the expense of other things we value. To what extent do they constrain our freedom, and to what extent do they enable our individuality? Is diversity of value in itself? Has the rhetoric of human rights been overstretched? Kwame Anthony Appiah draws on thinkers through the ages and across the globe to explore such questions, developing an account of ethics that connects moral obligations with collective allegiances and that takes aim at clichés and received ideas about identity. This classic book takes seriously both the claims of individuality—the task of making a life—and the claims of identity, these large and often abstract social categories through which we define ourselves.
Author: Richard Prust
Publisher: Vernon Press
ISBN: 1622737474
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 131
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Book Description
Many questions about moral and legal judgments hinge on how we understand the identity of the agents. The intractability of many of these questions stems, this book argues, from ignoring how we actually connect actions with agents. When making everyday judgments about the morality or legality of actions, we do not use Aristotelian logic but what is termed “character logic”. The difference is crucial because implicit in character logic is an understanding of personal identity that is both coherent and intuitively familiar. A person, as we conceptualize him in moral and legal contexts, is a character of resolve. By unpacking what it means to be a character of resolve, this book reveals what underwrites our most fundamental beliefs about a person’s rights and responsibilities. It also provides a new and useful perspective on a variety of issues about rights and responsibilities that perennially occupy philosophers. This book discusses the following: • How we can make better sense of “human rights” if we think of them as “personal rights”. • How the right to be civilly disobedient, in contrast with ordinary law-breaking, can be justified as a personal right. • What basis we have for holding that someone’s responsibility is diminished. • How it makes sense to hold someone responsible for acting irresponsibly. • How it makes sense to distinguish a juvenile offender from someone who should be tried in criminal court. • What kind of correction we should expect from our correctional institutions and how we should design them to achieve that. By making explicit the axioms of character logic and exploring their origins and justification, the book provides a conceptually powerful tool for interpreting the protocols of a person-respecting society.
Author: Michael Quante
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319568698
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 262
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Book Description
This book brings together the debate concerning personal identity (in metaphysics) and central topics in biomedical ethics (conception of birth and death; autonomy, living wills and paternalism). Based on a metaphysical account of personal identity in the sense of persistence and conditions for human beings, conceptions for beginning of life, and death are developed. Based on a biographical account of personality, normative questions concerning autonomy, euthanasia, living wills and medical paternalism are dealt with. By these means the book shows that “personal identity” has different meanings which have to be distinguished so that human persistence and personality can be used to deal with central questions in biomedical ethics.
Author: Debra J. H. Matthews
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 0801895286
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 297
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Book Description
In this anthology, noted neurologists and philosophers explore the concept of personal identity and the ethics of treating brain disease and injury. When an individual’s personality changes radically because of disease or injury, should this changed individual be treated as the same person? Personal Identity and Fractured Selves explores this important question from a variety of perspectives. Its contents represent the first formal collaboration between the Brain Sciences Institute and the Berman Institute of Bioethics, both at the Johns Hopkins University. Rapid advances in brain science are expanding knowledge of human memory, emotion, and cognition and pointing the way toward new approaches for the prevention and treatment of devastating illnesses and disabilities. Through case studies of Alzheimer disease, frontotemporal dementia, deep brain stimulation, and steroid psychosis, the contributors highlight relevant ethical and social concerns that clinicians, researchers, and ethicists are likely to encounter. Contributors: Samuel Barondes, M.D., University of California, San Francisco; David M. Blass, M.D., Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine; Patrick Duggan, A.B., Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics; Ruth R. Faden, Ph.D., M.P.H., Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics; Michael S. Gazzaniga, Ph.D., University of California, Santa Barbara; Guy M. McKhann, M.D., Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine; John Perry, Ph.D., Stanford University; Carol Rovane, Ph.D., Columbia University; Alan Regenberg, M.Be., Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics; Marya Schechtman, Ph.D., University of Illinois at Chicago; Maura Tumulty, Ph.D., Colgate University
Author: Owen Flanagan
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262560740
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 508
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Book Description
Many philosophers believe that normative ethics is in principle independent of psychology. By contrast, the authors of these essays explore the interconnections between psychology and moral theory. They investigate the psychological constraints on realizable ethical ideals and articulate the psychological assumptions behind traditional ethics. They also examine the ways in which the basic architecture of the mind, core emotions, patterns of individual development, social psychology, and the limits on human capacities for rational deliberation affect morality.
Author: A.W. Musschenga
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9401599548
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 338
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Book Description
The subject of personal and moral identity is at the centre of interest, not only of academic research within disciplines such as philosophy and psychology, but also of everyday thinking. This is why the Neth erlands School for Research in Practical Philosophy and the Institute for Ethics of the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam took the initiative to bring together scholars from various disciplines, interested in the subject. The expert-seminar on 'Personal and Moral Identity' took place from 12-14 January 1999. Financial contributions from the Vrije Universiteit, the Dutch Scientific Organisation (NWO) and the Royal Dutch Academy for the Sciences (KNA W) made the event possible. The chapters in this book either go back to papers presented at the seminar or were written afterwards by participants, inspired by the discussions that took place during the seminar. We are very grateful to Dr. Hendrik Hutter for his assistance in editing the texts and making the manuscript camera-ready. December 2001, The Editors. 1 Introduction Albert W. Musschenga Although scholars studying the identity of persons usually address diverging issues and have different research agendas, there is a grow ing awareness that one may benefit from insights and results present in other disciplines dealing with that subject. This explains the enthu siastic responses to the invitation of the Netherlands School for Research in Practical Philosophy and the Institute for Ethics of the Vrije Universiteit to participate in a seminar on 'Personal and Moral Identity'.
Author: A. van den Beld
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9401723613
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 358
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Book Description
Ton van den Beld This book is one of the results of the international conference on Moral Responsibility and Ontology, which was held at Utrecht University in 1 June 1998. It contains a selection of the revised versions of the papers discussed at the conference. The theme is in need of some clarification. In the first place, 'responsi bility' is an ambiguous term. Although addition of the adjective 'moral' reduces the variety of its meanings (for example, moral responsibility cannot be confused with causal responsibility), different interpretations are still possible. Thus, the care of dependent children is a parental moral responsibility. That is, parents have the moral obligation to care for their children. It is their moral task, or role, to do so. If they fail to fulfil this obligation, they might be morally responsible for the result of this failure. Here, another meaning of 'moral responsibility' is involved: the children's misery might be imputed to their parents. They may be liable to blame. Moral responsibility in this sense is what the conference was and this book is about. It is about the conditions which must be met for a person to be justly held responsible for his or her moral faults and failures.
