Download or read book Consciousness and Personal Identity An Investigation written by Seth Carter and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2017-08-07 with total page 23 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Essay from the year 2017 in the subject Philosophy - Practical (Ethics, Aesthetics, Culture, Nature, Right, ...), grade: 3.34, Indiana University (College of Arts and Sciences - Philosophy Department), course: PHIL-P300 Philosophical Writing Methods, language: English, abstract: The Philosophy of Personal Identity which bears a rich tradition dating back to some of the seminal psychological theory of identity forwarded by John Locke. In this essay, I propose a new variation of an imperfect psychological criterion of personal identity that attempts to precisely answer the question, "What is necessary and sufficient for a person to be the same person over time?" Though various experts in this field such as Derek Parfit have forwarded skepticism and outright rejection of conventional theories of personal identity, this paper appeals to metaphysical notions of immanent causality in an effort to respond to Parfit and formulate a framework of identity that explains and satisfies what are often closely held intuitions on personhood.
Download or read book Locke on Personal Identity written by Galen Strawson and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2014-07-21 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Personal Identity and Self Consciousness written by Brian Garrett and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2002-01-31 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Personal Identity and Self-Consciousness is about persons and personal identity. What are we? And why does personal identity matter? Brian Garrett, using jargon-free language, addresses questions in the metaphysics of personal identity, questions in value theory, and discusses questions about the first person singular. Brian Garrett makes an important contribution to the philosophy of personal identity and mind, and to epistemology.
Download or read book Personal Identity and Self Consciousness written by Brian Garrett and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2002-01-31 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Personal Identity and Self-Consciousness is about persons and personal identity. What are we? And why does personal identity matter? Brian Garrett, using jargon-free language, addresses questions in the metaphysics of personal identity, questions in value theory, and discusses questions about the first person singular. Brian Garrett makes an important contribution to the philosophy of personal identity and mind, and to epistemology.
Download or read book Personal Identity written by John Perry and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1975 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume brings together the vital contributions of distinguished past and contemporary philosophers to the important topic of personal identity. The first part sets forth the attempts by John Locke, Anthony Quinton, and H. P. Grice to analyze personal identity in terms of memory. The eleven other selections are largely critical of this approach and provide alternative perspectives. Part II contains classic contributions by Joseph Butler, Thomas Reid, and Sydney S. Shoemaker, and a new paper by John Perry--"Personal Identity, Memory, and the Problem of Circularity"--in which he defends some of the central features of the Locke-Grice-Quinton approach. Part III contains three sections from David Hume's Treatise of Human Nature: "Our idea of Identity," "Of Personal Identity," and an appendix which the editor has entitled "Second Thoughts." In the fourth part of the volume, Bernard Williams discusses "The Self and the Future," and Derek Parfit contributes his view of "Personal Identity." A recurring theme throughout the work is the possibility of "body transfer"--of a single person having, at different times, different bodies. In the final section of the volume ("Brian Bisection and the Unity of Consciousness"), Thomas Nagel examines the philosophical implications of recent scientific research on split-brain patients' he discusses the possibility, entertained by some researchers, that such cases involve two persons simultaneously inhabiting a single body. In his long introduction to this unique anthology on a topic of prime interest to the philosophical community, Mr. Perry scrutinizes the differing approaches and vocabularies of the various authors. The editor also includes "Suggestions for Further Reading."
Download or read book Self consciousness written by Sebastian Rödl and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rödl's thesis is that self-knowledge is not empirical; it does not spring from sensory affection. Rather, self-knowledge is knowledge from spontaneity; its object and its source are the subject's own activity, in the primary instance its acts of thinking, both theoretical and practical thinking, belief and action.
Download or read book The Phenomenal Self written by Barry Dainton and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2008-03-13 with total page 461 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Phenomenal continuity seems to provide a more reliable guide to our persistence than any other form of continuity. The Phenomenal Self is a full-scale defence and elaboration of this premise."--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book Reasons and Persons written by Derek Parfit and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 1986-01-23 with total page 560 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book The Early Modern Subject written by Udo Thiel and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011-09-29 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Early Modern Subject explores the understanding of self-consciousness and personal identity—two fundamental features of human subjectivity—as it developed in early modern philosophy. Udo Thiel presents a critical evaluation of these features as they were conceived in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He explains the arguments of thinkers such as Descartes, Locke, Leibniz, Wolff, and Hume, as well as their early critics, followers, and other philosophical contemporaries, and situates them within their historical contexts. Interest in the issues of self-consciousness and personal identity is in many ways characteristic and even central to early modern thought, but Thiel argues here that this is an interest that continues to this day, in a form still strongly influenced by the conceptual frameworks of early modern thought. In this book he attempts to broaden the scope of the treatment of these issues considerably, covering more than a hundred years of philosophical debate in France, Britain, and Germany while remaining attentive to the details of the arguments under scrutiny and discussing alternative interpretations in many cases.
Download or read book Identity Consciousness and Value written by Peter Unger and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1990-07-12 with total page 359 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The topic of personal identity has prompted some of the liveliest and most interesting debates in recent philosophy. In a fascinating new contribution to the discussion, Peter Unger presents a psychologically aimed, but physically based, account of our identity over time. While supporting the account, he explains why many influential contemporary philosophers have underrated the importance of physical continuity to our survival, casting a new light on the work of Lewis, Nagel, Nozick, Parfit, Perry, Shoemaker, and others. Deriving from his discussion of our identity itself, Unger produces a novel but commonsensical theory of the relations between identity and some of our deepest concerns. In a conservative but flexible spirit, he explores the implications of his theory for questions of value and of the good life.
Download or read book Subjective Consciousness written by Uriah Kriegel and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2009-08-06 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Uriah Kriegel develops an objective theory of what it is for a mental state to be conscious. The key idea is that consciousness arises when self-awareness and world-awareness are integrated in the right way. Conscious mental states differ from unconscious ones in that, whatever else they represent, they represent themselves in a very specific way.
Download or read book Locke written by Michael Ayers and published by Routledge. This book was released on 1993-12-02 with total page 708 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Locke was originally published in two volumes, Epistemology and Ontology. This paperback edition has within its covers the full text of both volumes.
Download or read book Locke on Personal Identity written by Galen Strawson and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2011-10-09 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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 his new 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" only in the ordinary way, 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. In these terms, your personal identity is roughly a matter of those of your past actions that you are still responsible for because you are still "conscious" of them in Locke's special sense of that word. Clearly and vigorously argued, this is an important contribution both to the history of philosophy and to the contemporary philosophy of personal identity.
Download or read book Identity A Very Short Introduction written by Florian Coulmas and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-02-15 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Identity has become one of the most widely used terms today, appearing in many different contexts. Anything and everything has an identity, and identity crises have become almost equally pervasive. Yet 'identity' is extremely versatile, meaning different things to different people and in different scientific disciplines. To many its meaning seems self-evident, since its various uses share common features, so often the term is used without a definition of what, exactly, is meant by it. This provokes the core question: What exactly is identity? In this Very Short Introduction Florian Coulmas provides a survey of the many faces of the concept of identity, and discusses its significance and varied meanings in the fields of philosophy, sociology, and psychology, as well as politics and law. Tracing our concern with identity to its deep roots in Europe's intellectual history, individualism, and the felt need to draw borderlines, Coulmas identifies the most important features used to mark off individual and collective identities, and demonstrates why they are deemed important. He concludes with a glimpse at the many ways in which literature has engaged with problems of identity throughout history. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
Download or read book Real People written by Kathleen V. Wilkes and published by Oxford University Press on Demand. This book was released on 1993 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the scope and limits of the concept of person-a vexed question in contemporary philosophy. The author begins by questioning the methodology of thought-experimentation, arguing that it engenders inconclusive and unconvincing results, and that truth is stranger than fiction. She then examines an assortment of real-life conditions, including infancy, insanity and dementia, dissociated states, and split brains. The popular faith in continuity of consciousness, and the unityof the person is subjected to sustained criticism. The author concludes with a look at different views of the person found in Homer, Aristotle, the post-Cartesians, and contemporary cognitive science.
Download or read book Real People written by Kathleen V. Wilkes and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1988 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A study of the scope and limits of the concept of a person, covering methodology of thought-experimentation, real-life conditions such as infancy, insanity and dementia, and looking at different views of the person found in Homer, Aristotle, the post-Cartesians and contemporary cognitive science.
Download or read book Waking Dreaming Being written by Evan Thompson and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2014-11-18 with total page 497 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A renowned philosopher of the mind, also known for his groundbreaking work on Buddhism and cognitive science, Evan Thompson combines the latest neuroscience research on sleep, dreaming, and meditation with Indian and Western philosophy of mind, casting new light on the self and its relation to the brain. Thompson shows how the self is a changing process, not a static thing. When we are awake we identify with our body, but if we let our mind wander or daydream, we project a mentally imagined self into the remembered past or anticipated future. As we fall asleep, the impression of being a bounded self distinct from the world dissolves, but the self reappears in the dream state. If we have a lucid dream, we no longer identify only with the self within the dream. Our sense of self now includes our dreaming self, the "I" as dreamer. Finally, as we meditate—either in the waking state or in a lucid dream—we can observe whatever images or thoughts arise and how we tend to identify with them as "me." We can also experience sheer awareness itself, distinct from the changing contents that make up our image of the self. Contemplative traditions say that we can learn to let go of the self, so that when we die we can witness its dissolution with equanimity. Thompson weaves together neuroscience, philosophy, and personal narrative to depict these transformations, adding uncommon depth to life's profound questions. Contemplative experience comes to illuminate scientific findings, and scientific evidence enriches the vast knowledge acquired by contemplatives.
