Download or read book Identity Personhood and the Law written by Charles Foster and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-03-14 with total page 77 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is an examination of how the law understands human identity and the whole notion of ‘human being’. On these two notions the law, usually unconsciously, builds the superstructure of ‘human rights’. It explores how the law understands the concept of a human being, and hence a person who is entitled to human rights. This involves a discussion of the legal treatment of those of so-called "marginal personhood" (e.g. high functioning non-human animals; humans of limited intellectual capacity, and fetuses). It also considers how we understand our identity as people, and hence how we fall into different legal categories: such as gender, religion and so on.The law makes a number of huge assumptions about some fundamental issues of human identity and authenticity – for instance that we can talk meaningfully about the entity that we call ‘our self’. Until now it has rarely, if ever, identified those assumptions, let alone interrogated them. This failure has led to the law being philosophically dubious and sometimes demonstrably unfit for purpose. Its failure is increasingly hard to cover up. What should happen legally, for instance, when a disease such as dementia eliminates or radically transforms all the characteristics that most people regard as foundational to the ‘self’? This book seeks to plug these gaps in the literature.
Download or read book Holding and Letting Go written by Hilde Lindemann and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the social practice of holding each other in our identities, beginning with pregnancy and on through the life span. Lindemann argues that our identities give us our sense of how to act and how to treat others, and that the ways in which we we hold each other in them is of crucial moral importance.
Download or read book Personhood Identity and Care in Advanced Old Age written by Higgs, Paul and published by Policy Press. This book was released on 2016-10-05 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do we sustain agency and identity amidst the frailty of advanced old age? What role does care play in this process? Pushing forward new sociological theory, this book explores the theoretical and practical issues raised by age and infirmity. It begins with a theoretical examination of the fourth age, interrogating notions of agency, identity and personhood, as well as the impact of frailty, abjection and ‘othering’. It then applies this analysis to issues of care. Exploring our collective hopes and fears concerning old age and the ends of people’s lives, this is essential reading on one of the biggest social issues of our time.
Download or read book Persons and Personal Identity written by Amy Kind and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2015-10-02 with total page 118 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As persons, we are importantly different from all other creatures in the universe. But in what, exactly, does this difference consist? What kinds of entities are we, and what makes each of us the same person today that we were yesterday? Could we survive having all of our memories erased and replaced with false ones? What about if our bodies were destroyed and our brains were transplanted into android bodies, or if instead our minds were simply uploaded to computers? In this engaging and accessible introduction to these important philosophical questions, Amy Kind brings together three different areas of research: the nature of personhood, theories of personal identity over time, and the constitution of self-identity. Surveying the key contemporary theories in the philosophical literature, Kind analyzes and assesses their strengths and weaknesses. As she shows, our intuitions on these issues often pull us in different directions, making it difficult to develop an adequate general theory. Throughout her discussion, Kind seamlessly interweaves a vast array of up-to-date examples drawn from both real life and popular fiction, all of which greatly help to elucidate this central topic in metaphysics. A perfect text for readers coming to these issues for the first time, Persons and Personal Identity engages with some of the deepest and most important questions about human nature and our place in the world, making it a vital resource for students and researchers alike.
Download or read book Staying Alive written by Marya Schechtman and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2014-03-14 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Judgments of personal identity stand at the heart of our daily transactions. Family life, friendships, institutions of justice, and systems of compensation all rely on our ability to reidentify people. It is not as obvious as it might at first appear just how to express this relation between facts about personal identity and practical interests in a philosophical account of personal identity. A natural thought is that whatever relation is proposed as the one which constitutes the sameness of a person must be important to us in just the way identity is. This simple understanding of the connection between personal identity and practical concerns has serious difficulties, however. One is that the relations that underlie our practical judgments do not seem suited to providing a metaphysical account of the basic, literal continuation of an entity. Another is that the practical interests we associate with identity are many and varied and it seems impossible that a single relation could simultaneously capture what is necessary and sufficient for all of them. Staying Alive offers a new way of thinking about the relation between personal identity and practical interests which allows us to overcome these difficulties and to offer a view in which the most basic and literal facts about personal identity are inherently connected to practical concerns. This account, the 'Person Life View', sees persons as unified loci of practical interaction, and defines the identity of a person in terms of the unity of a characteristic kind of life made up of dynamic interactions among biological, psychological, and social attributes and functions mediated through social and cultural infrastructure.
Download or read book Picturing Personhood written by Joseph Dumit and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-09-14 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By showing us the human brain at work, PET (positron emission tomography) scans are subtly--and sometimes not so subtly--transforming how we think about our minds. Picturing Personhood follows this remarkable and expensive technology from the laboratory into the world and back. It examines how PET scans are created and how they are being called on to answer myriad questions with far-reaching implications: Is depression an observable brain disease? Are criminals insane? Do men and women think differently? Is rationality a function of the brain? Based on interviews, media analysis, and participant observation at research labs and conferences, Joseph Dumit analyzes how assumptions designed into and read out of the experimental process reinforce specific notions about human nature. Such assumptions can enter the process at any turn, from selecting subjects and mathematical models to deciding which images to publish and how to color them. Once they leave the laboratory, PET scans shape social debates, influence courtroom outcomes, and have positive and negative consequences for people suffering mental illness. Dumit follows this complex story, demonstrating how brain scans, as scientific objects, contribute to our increasing social dependence on scientific authority. The first book to examine the cultural ramifications of brain-imaging technology, Picturing Personhood is an unprecedented study that will influence both cultural studies and the growing field of science and technology studies.
Download or read book Personal Identity and Ethics written by David Shoemaker and published by Broadview Press. This book was released on 2008-10-07 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Revisiting State Personhood and World Politics written by Bianca Naude and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-12-16 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Breathing fresh air into debates surrounding foreign policy and interstate relations, Bianca Naude presents a holistic theory of states as collectives of people that cannot be reduced to their individual constituents. Moving among current research on the ontological status of the state alongside important arguments in support of the state personhood thesis, Naude begins by exploring Freud’s personality theory and the ways in which this theory has evolved over time in response to newer insights from the field of experimental psychology. Recognizing that Freud’s work is in many ways outdated, she considers more recent literature on narcissism as an aspect of self-esteem rather than a form of psychopathology, drawing specifically on Kohut’s expansion of the concept of narcissism as a normal feature of personality development. Using the South African state as a case study, Naude demonstrates the various ways in which the state presents itself to the outside world on the one hand, and how it wishes to see itself on the other. She further considers how narcissistic defenses help protect the state's ego from criticism and self-judgments. Revisiting State Personhood and World Politics will help readers understand how the state sees itself, why or when the state experiences shame, humiliation, guilt or pride, and how it responds to these self-conscious emotions. It will be a valuable resource to researchers and students of International Relations.
Download or read book Locke on Persons and Personal Identity written by Ruth Boeker and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2021-03 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Locke on Persons and Personal Identity offers a fresh perspective on Locke's accounts of personal identity within the context of his broader philosophical ideas and the philosophical debates of his day.
Download or read book African Humanity written by Abimbola Asojo and published by . This book was released on 2021 with total page 552 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "African Humanity: Creativity, Identity and Personhood is a collection of thought-provoking essays from scholars around the world on topics that inform new ways of thinking while engaging critical perspectives about Africa and the African Diaspora. The essays focus on the discourse of creativity, culture, identity and well-being from multiple fields such as design, art, gender studies, education, health and museum studies in pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial Africa and the African Diaspora. This multidisciplinary group of global scholars offer a critical dialogue on topics such as the creative process in Africa and the African Diaspora; gender and creative space; histories of creativity and inventions; globalized modernity and its consequence on cultural performances; politics of creativity; creativity, performance and Nollywood; social, political, and economic ramifications of creativity and design; ethical issues in creativity; and sustainability, well-being and the environment. The book's goal is to offer a comparative critical dialogue for a multidisciplinary academic audience, artists, grassroots activists, diverse communities and interested members of the general public. It has five distinct sections: Gender, Education, and Language; Design and Art in Africa and Its Diaspora; Creativity, Performance and Nollywood; Identity and Institutions of Politics and Living; and Sustainability, Health and the Environment. This book is part of the African World Series, edited by Toyin Falola, Jacob and Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities, University of Texas at Austin"--
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 880 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 Reasons Without Persons written by Brian Hedden and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2015 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Brian Hedden defends a radical view about rationality, personal identity, and time. He argues that what it is rational to do should not depend on your past beliefs or actions, which are not part of your current perspective on the world. His impersonal approach holds that what rationality demands of you is solely determined by your evidence.
Download or read book The Future of the Self written by Jay Friedenberg and published by University of California Press. This book was released on 2020-08-04 with total page 343 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We live in the digital age where our sense of self and identity has moved beyond the body to encompass hardware and software. Cyborgs, online representations in social media, avatars, and virtual reality extend our notion of what it means to be human. This approachable book looks at the progression of self from the biological to the technological using a multidisciplinary approach. It examines the notion of personhood from philosophical, psychological, neuroscience, robotics, and artificial intelligence perspectives, showing how the interface between bodies, brains, and technology can give rise to new forms of human identity. Jay Friedenberg present the content in an organized and easy-to-understand fashion to facilitate learning. A gifted researcher, author, and classroom teacher, he is one of the most influential voices in the field of artificial psychology.
Download or read book Personal Identity the Self and Ethics written by F. Santos and published by Springer. This book was released on 2007-08-16 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Going beyond the controversy surrounding personhood in non-philosophical contexts, this book defends the need for a credible philosophical conception of the person. Engaging with John Locke, Derek Parfit and P.F. Strawson, the authors develop an original philosophical anthropology based on the work of Charles Hartshorne and A.N. Whitehead.
Download or read book Personal Identity in Moral and Legal Reasoning written by Richard Prust and published by Vernon Press. This book was released on 2019-10-31 with total page 131 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Personal Identity written by Georg Gasser and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2012-11-15 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book addresses whether personal identity is analyzable, with innovative discussion of 'complex' and 'simple' theories.
Download or read book Personal Identity and Applied Ethics written by Andrea Sauchelli and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-11-10 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: '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.
