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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.
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.
Identity and difference (or sameness and otherness) are contrasting but interrelated terms that have played an explicit role in the development of Western philosophy at least since Plato wrote the Sophist. As Plato pointed out then, and Hegel reiterated more recently in his Science of Logic, the proper comprehension of these terms, and particularly of their interrelation, plays a fundamental role in shaping our conception of philosophical reason itself. The contributors in this book examine Hegel's treatment of these terms, and the role they play in structuring his philosophical system as a whole and also in shaping his conception of dialectical reasoning.
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.
Can quantum particles be regarded as individuals, just like books, tables and people? According to the 'received' view - articulated by several physicists in the immediate aftermath of the quantum revolution - quantum physics itself tells us they cannot: quantum particles, unlike their classical counterparts, must be regarded as 'non-individuals' in some sense. However, recent work has indicated that this is not the whole story and that the theory is also consistent with theposition that such particles can be taken to be individuals, albeit at a metaphysical price.Drawing on philosophical accounts of identity and individuality, as well as the histories of both classical and quantum physics, ...
The philosophical problem of identity and the related problem of change go back to the ancient Greek philosophers and fascinated later figures including Leibniz, Locke, and Hume. Heraclitus argued that one could not swim in the same river twice because new waters were ever flowing in. When is a river not the same river? If one removes one plank at a time when is a ship no longer a ship? What is the basic nature of identity and persistence? In this book, André Gallois introduces and assesses the philosophical puzzles posed by things persisting through time. Beginning with essential historical background to the problem he explores the following key topics and debates: mereology and identity, ...
Across his relatively short and eccentric authorial career, Soren Kierkegaard develops a unique, and provocative, account of what it is to become, to be, and to lose a self, backed up by a rich phenomenology of self-experience. Yet Kierkegaard has been almost totally absent from the burgeoning analytic philosophical literature on self-constitution and personal identity. How, then, does Kierkegaard's work appear when viewed in light of current debates about self and identity--and what does Kierkegaard have to teach philosophers grappling with these problems today? The Naked Self explores Kierkegaard's understanding of selfhood by situating his work in relation to central problems in contempor...
Examines the place and role of the identity of indisernibles, which rules out numerically distinct but perfectly similar things, in Leibniz's philosophy.
In the heated debates over identity politics, few theorists have looked carefully at the conceptualizations of identity assumed by all sides. Visible Identities fills this gap. Drawing on both philosophical sources as well as theories and empirical studies in the social sciences, Martín Alcoff makes a strong case that identities are not like special interests, nor are they doomed to oppositional politics, nor do they inevitably lead to conformism, essentialism, or reductive approaches to judging others. Identities are historical formations and their political implications are open to interpretation. But identities such as race and gender also have a powerful visual and material aspect that ...
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 cons...