Notion Of Personal Identity Research Articles

Doing and Allowing Harm

Is there a morally relevant distinction between cases in which the agent harms someone and cases in which she merely allows someone to be harmed? Holding that such distinction exists and is morally relevant has implications on both theoretical and practical grounds. In my paper, I discuss one of the most conspicuous defences of the existence of the distinction between doing and allowing harm (from now on, DAH). I argue that – provided that it be possible to establish such a distinction – what really matters is whether and how this distinction would be morally relevant. The moral relevance of such distinction is, in fact, much controversial. The main reason why the DAH should be morally relevant is that it legitimizes the agents’ authority over their own resources. I address two main issues: the problem of injustice within the DAH and the conservative account of personal identity held by the advocates of DAH. Regarding the problem of injustice, I argue that when confronted with a practical problem such as the obligation to give money to charity, the DAH seems to imply that those in miserable conditions deserve it. Such a position seems to be untenable from both an ethical and a metaphysical point of view. I then discuss the notion of personal identity that would benefit from the DAH in the light of some psychoanalytic concepts. The fact of legitimizing the agents’ ownership of their own resources does matters because it allows them to fulfil those projects that constitute their Ego-Ideal. In other words, the DAH encourages the agents to become the person they already aspire to be. Such perspective delineates a particularly conservatory way of thinking about ethics which may be rejected for several reasons. One could, for instance, argue that ethics should encourage agents not to stick to their old identity but rather to question it and adapt it when new problems arise.

Leibniz y el personalismo: de la mónada a la lógica de la alteridad

Frente aquellas lecturas de Leibniz que definen las mónadas como entidades aisladas y carentes de toda posible relación, la presente investigación pretende analizar la ontología monadológica leibniziana y su teoría de la expresión a fin de mostrar que, detrás de su noción de identidad personal, subyace una lógica de la alteridad capaz de dialogar con el personalismo contemporáneo. Esta lógica de la alteridad, si nuestra lectura de Leibniz es correcta, se hace patente en los espíritus, cuya naturaleza expresiva establece no solo un enlace sistemático con la totalidad de seres que componen el mundo, sino que también una noción de identidad personal en el que la alteridad adquiere un carácter prescriptivo: situarnos en el lugar del otro para comprender sus necesidades y, a través de esto, reconocer nuestro puesto en el cosmos. Para lograr todo esto realizaremos cuatro cosas: en primer lugar, analizaremos a profundidad la aplicación de su teoría de la expresión a la ontología monadológica y su notio completa; en segundo lugar, veremos qué implicaciones tienen ambas en el caso específico de los espíritus, enfatizando la naturaleza comunitaria de estas mónadas racionales; en tercer lugar, reconstruiremos la teoría leibniziana de la identidad personal; para, en último lugar, contrastar con algunas de las principales tesis personalistas.

Personal identity is social identity

The question of the identity or persistence of the self through time may be interesting for philosophers, but it is hardly a burning question for most individuals. On the other hand, the question of who I am, what or who I take myself to be, can be a vital, even burning question for most of us at some time in our lives. This is the notion of personal identity I take up in this paper. It is an identity that is not pre-given a priori but is always in some sense an open question, never completely decided. Here the narrative conception of self is relevant, since it is often a question of what story or kind of story my identity instantiates. This notion of personal identity is inherently temporal, but not in the sense of temporal persistence but of temporal coherence of past, present and future. And here the question of personal identity is inevitably social, since it is largely a question of what group I identify myself with, what social role I take myself to embody. And what complications occur when I identify myself with more than one group? Here many social conflicts and also intrapersonal conflicts have their source. My topic thus turns on ideas of personal identity that are reflected in the popular expressions “identity crisis” and “identity politics.”

I, avatar: Towards an extended theory of selfhood in immersive VR

In this paper, I argue that virtual manifestations of selfhood in VR environments have a transformative effect on the users, which in turn has spillover effects in the physical world. I will argue in favor of extending our notion of personal identity as to include VR avatars as negotiable bodies that constitute a genuine part of who we are. Recent research in VR shows that users can experience the Proteus Effect and other lasting psychological changes after being immersed in VR. An extended theory of the self, modeled after the extended mind thesis advanced by Clark and Chalmers (1998), can offer a deeper understanding of how and why immersive virtual experiences have such a transformative effect on users. The early VR scholars had a similar intuition- that “VR is a medium for the extension of body and mind” (Biocca and Delaney 1995), acting like a genuine “reality engine” (Biocca and Levy 1995).

Scientific claims are constitutive of common sense about health

AbstractEndorsing the view that commonsense conceptions are shaped by scientific claims provides an explanation for why microbiota-gut-brain (MGB) research might become incorporated into commonsense notions of health. But scientific claims also shape notions of personal identity, which accounts for why they can become entrenched in common sense even after they have been refuted by science.

Dementia, Advance Directives, and Discontinuity of Personality.

We argue that an advance directive (AD) is not invalidated by personality changes in dementia, as is claimed by Rebecca Dresser. The claim is that a new person results under such personality changes, and that the former person cannot write an AD for the new person. After stating the argument against ADs in cases of dementia, we provide a detailed examination of empirical studies of personality changes in dementia. This evidence, though not strong due mainly to low sample sizes and different notions of personal identity, does not support Dresser's position. Given the weakness in the empirical evidence, we turn to a philosophical defense of ADs based on a social contract view supporting the current interests of those writing ADs. Additionally, we argue that personality change is not equivalent to change in personal identity, as would be required by the argument against ADs in cases of dementia.

Distributed selves: personal identity and extended memory systems

This paper explores the implications of extended and distributed cognition theory for our notions of personal identity. On an extended and distributed approach to cognition, external information is under certain conditions constitutive of memory. On a narrative approach to personal identity, autobiographical memory is constitutive of our diachronic self. In this paper, I bring these two approaches together and argue that external information can be constitutive of one’s autobiographical memory and thus also of one’s diachronic self. To develop this claim, I draw on recent empirical work in human-computer interaction, looking at lifelogging technologies in both healthcare and everyday contexts. I argue that personal identity can neither be reduced to psychological structures instantiated by the brain nor by biological structures instantiated by the organism, but should be seen as an environmentally-distributed and relational construct. In other words, the complex web of cognitive relations we develop and maintain with other people and technological artifacts partly determines our self. This view has conceptual, methodological, and normative implications: we should broaden our concepts of the self as to include social and artifactual structures, focus on external memory systems in the (empirical) study of personal identity, and not interfere with people’s distributed minds and selves.

The Self as Narrative in Hume

In this paper, I return to the well-known apparent inconsistencies in Hume’s treatment of personal identity in the three books of A Treatise of Human Nature , and try to defend a Humean narrative interpretation of the self. I argue that in Book 1 of the Treatise Hume is answering (to use Marya Schechtman’s expressions in The Constitution of Selves ) a ‘reidentification’ question concerning personal identity, which is different from the ‘characterization’ question of Books 2 and 3. That is, I maintain that whereas in Book 1 Hume is using his philosophical empiricism to provide his own version of the problem of how to recognize persons as the same at different times, in Books 2 and 3 he is presenting selves from a different, both sentimental and ethical standpoint, as the focus of people’s concerns. I start by discussing Hume’s notion of personal identity as presented in Book 1 and in the Appendix. I then specify the narrative conception of the self Hume relies on when dealing with passions and morality as the self-consciousness persons develop as bearers of characters of or about which they can be morally proud or humble. I finally conclude by distinguishing Hume’s narrative self from the idea of “the unity of human life” that Alasdair MacIntyre puts forward in After Virtue .

It Takes a Phase Transition

The author uses the debate over vaccines, and the recent passage of legislation in California that ended exemption from vaccines for reasons of personal belief, to explore how to change opinions on controversial topics. Research on the information deficit model, the affective tipping point, and notions of personal identity are discussed.

When Should Genome Researchers Disclose Misattributed Parentage?

Researchers need a decision-making framework about disclosing a finding of misattributed parentage that accounts for nonclinical factors like the effects of personal identity and familial relationships.

David Hume’s Notion of Personal Identity: Implications for Identity Construction and Affective Communal Living in Africana Societies

David Hume’s Notion of Personal Identity: Implications for Identity Construction and Affective Communal Living in Africana Societies

The Phenomenal Separateness of Self: Udayana on Body and Agency

Classical Indian debates about ātman—self—concern a minimal or core entity rather than richer notions of personal identity. These debates recognise that there is phenomenal unity across time; but is a core self required to explain it? Contemporary phenomenologists foreground the importance of a phenomenally unitary self, and Udayana's position is interpreted in this context as a classical Indian approach to this issue. Udayana seems to dismiss the body as the candidate for phenomenal identity in a way similar to some Western philosophers. He also provides some inkling of how alternative ways of defending phenomenal unity without self fail. A criticism of some Western phenomenological theories of self is that they do not explain how unity is provided by the ‘mineness’ of cognition. Udayana's suggestion that a sort of agency provides such an explanation can be developed as an original argument for a phenomenally unitary self.

Freud's philosophical path

Despite an early interest, Freud explicitly rejected philosophy, because of its “speculative” character. He struggled with balancing the intellectual appeal of philosophy with the certainty he hoped to find in positivist science. Putting aside the scientific status of Freud's work, the author re-examines Freud's attitude towards philosophy. Failing to recognize the assumptions of his investigations, Freud segregated psychoanalysis from philosophy on the charge that philosophers equated mind with consciousness, putatively propounded unfounded speculations, and assumed false conclusions about comprehensiveness. However, Freud never completely abandoned his initial philosophical proclivities. His own contributions to cultural history, social philosophy, notions of personal identity, and the humanistic thrust of psychoanalysis, demonstrate that he continued to address his earliest interests in philosophical questions. The author elucidates the philosophical complexity of psychoanalysis and concludes that a reconsideration of Freud's self-appraisal of his intellectual commitments is warranted.

Personal Identity, Projects, and Morality in Bernard Williams' Earlier Writings

This paper probes any possible relation between Bernard Williams’ writings on personal identity and his positive views on morality. Williams is silent about such a relation. However, one can be established. Focussing mainly on his earlier writings, this paper reveals a thread weaving together Williams’ views on personal identity, projects, and morality. Moral philosophy may only concern itself with a finite, embodied, historically-placed, or empirically-compelled agent. This paper traces Williams’ journey into the world of morality from his reflections on the self or personal identity, assuming that his positive views on morality are ultimately traceable to his notion of personal identity.

THE IDENTITY OF IDENTITY: MORAL AND LEGAL ASPECTS OF TECHNOLOGICAL SELF-TRANSFORMATION

Technologies are being developed for significantly altering the traits of existing persons (or fetuses or embryos) and of future persons via germ line modification. The availability of such technologies may affect our philosophical, legal, and everyday understandings of several important concepts, including that of personal identity. I consider whether the idea of personal identity requires reconstruction, revision or abandonment in the face of such possibilities of technological intervention into the nature and form of an individual's attributes. This requires an account of the work done by the concept of personal identity, and an explanation of what “conceptual impacts of technology” and “conceptual reconstruction” might mean.Our existing notions of personal identity and related ideas such as personhood and autonomy may seem unable to comfortably accommodate the possibilities of technologically directed trait formation and development. This is a matter of moral and legal importance because the idea of personal identity embeds major values and reflects value-laden beliefs and attitudes. The assumed endurance of identity underlies interpersonal relationships, the assignment of rewards and punishments, and the very idea of what constitutes an autonomous person. Perhaps radical restructuring or even abandonment of concepts are sometimes called for when the world changes drastically, but I suggest that conceptual modification is not “compelled” for personal identity except under extreme circumstances—the remote possibility of rapid human “shape shifting” where physical and mentational attributes can be transformed quickly and continuously.Efforts to enhance human traits, including merit attributes and other resource-attractive characteristics (e.g., intellectual and athletic aptitudes, physical size and appearance), may generate legal problems wherever the persistence of identity is presupposed. Some advance speculation is thus warranted on how trait change generally will be managed within our legal and socioeconomic systems, and more particularly on rights of access to trait-altering technologies. I mention the possible distributive effects of enhancing highly-resource attractive traits, including the strengthening individual powers to acquire still more increments in such traits in a self-reinforcing cycle. A brief review of some constitutional issues bearing on trait change completes the discussion.I conclude that existing and projected technologies do not impel the abandonment or remodeling of the idea of personal identity. We may, however, have to reconsider some uses of this concept in different settings, to rethink our understandings of ideas of merit and desert, and to deal with the distribution of resources that may enlarge and entrench the “distances” between social and economic groups.

Time and Postmodernism

In this essay we discuss changes in the cultural meaning and significance of time in postmodernism. We begin by examining the experience of time and space in the Middle Ages and its radical alteration following the Renaissance. After a relatively brief period of optimism during the Enlightenment regarding the scientific control over time and space, a new crisis beginning in the mid‐nineteenth century emphasized the increasing disjuncture between external, objective notions of time and the way time was experienced subjectively. We argue that the current literature on time and post‐modernity is best understood in this context, where earlier disequilibriating effects brought about by modern technologies are exacerbated by new developments in transportation and communications technology. Here we discuss the particular effects on topics of interest to social scientists such as changes in notions of personal identity and the effacement of historical time. We conclude with a call for more empirically grounded work on questions concerning time in postmodernism. We lament the paucity of concrete data as well as the excess of useless polemics and recommend several researchers already conducting work in this field.

Memory and punishment

I Introduction Lawyers and legal philosophers have both recognized that our prevailing concepts of criminal responsibility and punishment depend upon a particular notion of personal identity, namely our possession of conscious minds to which are ascribed the qualities of unity, continuity through time, and the clear separation of each person from all others and the rest of the world. With the rebirth of interest in the philosophy of mind in the last twenty years, the nature of personal identity has again become philosophically important. The issue has gained philosophical notoriety with the publication in 1984 of Derek Parfit's Reasons and Persons. (1) Parfit's book contains a long and detailed argument that seeks to refute the common view of personal identity, namely, that an individual's identity is a special further fact additional to the sequence of that person's mental states. Although not the first, Parfit's work is one of the most sustained efforts to advocate a reductive theory of mind. Much of our moral practice, and most laws in most major legal systems, treat the individual as the fundamental unit of moral or legal responsibility. Indeed, moral or legal practice that appeals to notions of collective guilt or the punishment of communities is generally to be criticized. Further, individual responsibility is not usually thought to fade or shift with the passage of time. If, however, there are credible arguments for a reductive account of personal identity, then some of the central presumptions of individual responsibility that underpin our moral practice and the criminal law begin to unravel. This paper investigates some of the problems that this recent work creates for criminal law, particularly those concerned with an agent's continuing responsibility through time for criminal acts and specifically, with the role of memory in our assignment of such responsibility. A central argument of this paper is that, at the instant a person commits an immoral or criminal act, neither moral nor criminal responsibility should be assumed for all time. Liability to punishment depends upon the responsibility of the individual for that punishment continuing to be generated afresh throughout the period from commission of the offense to the completion of any sentence. The problem of explaining how moral or criminal responsibility continues through time has been a central focus of the debate regarding the nature of personal identity. Many of those who advocate a reductive theory of mind accept that, with the diminishing psychological connectedness of an offender's later selves from his earlier selves, moral responsibility may diminish. Thus many reductionists consider it true that someone does not deserve to be punished as severely for a crime he committed a long time ago as he does for a recently committed crime. For most mental reductionists, it is the overall qualitative change in a person's character, personality, and memories, that diminishes the extent of the person's responsibility for past acts. Non-reductionists would usually accept that acute mental illness seriously diminishes or terminates liability for punishment. Other than the absence of acute mental illness neither reductionists or non-reductionists have argued that any specific mental state is an essential condition for an offender continuing to be liable to punishment other than an offender's knowing why he is being punished. Contrary to the position adopted by most mental reductionists, I will argue that memories of doing a wrongful act, and of one's self and one's life at the time of doing of the act, are pre-conditions for being held responsible for that wrong, and hence liable for punishment. I argue that loss of memory of these matters relieves a person of moral responsibility for an act, even if he continues to share strong connections with the prior self who committed the wrong. Thus, an offender whose character, personality, and moral beliefs have remained substantially unchanged, and who still has substantial memories of most parts of his prior life, ought not to be liable for punishment if he has suffered a loss of memory with respect to the period of his life during which he committed a particular offense. …

Personal survival and the closest-continuer theory

Philosophical sophisticates can easily trot out arguments against the likelihood of life after death. Many of these arguments are quite compelling. Indeed, I believe that a couple of them may provide us with exceedingly good evidence that western theism's conception of personal survival of biological death is impossible. One common argumentative strategy for establishing such a substantive philosophical and religious conclusion, however, is deeply flawed. Several contemporary philosophers have offered analyses of the concept of personal identity that suggest the following argument. Personal survival requires strict personal identity between the pre-mortem individual whose survival is in question, and the post-mortem individual whose continued existence would seem to provide the answer. Unfortunately, so this argument goes, the notion of personal identity that is at the heart of this story is logically incoherent. A logically necessary condition for the required strict personal identity is strict bodily identity - physico-spatio-temporal continuity. Biological death is by definition an interruption of bodily continuity, whether or not the interruption is temporary in theories of bodily resurrection, or permanent in theories of disembodied existence. Thus, philosophical analysis of what is meant by the concept of being the same person over time rules out any possibility of personal survival. If life after death is a logical impossibility, this has obvious theological significance. My purpose in this essay is to offer one reason for being highly skeptical about the claim that strict bodily continuity is any kind of logical precondition for personal identity. On methodological grounds I doubt that philosophical proof is ever possible for substantive theses like these. I make no attempt to argue for this general methodological position

The Idea of Individuality: Origins, Meaning, and Political Significance

The contemporary liberal/communitarian debate depicts the self as essentially static and unspontaneous: in the first instance, as a detached agent of choice equipped with de facto unexamined desires; in the second, as (optimally) the embodiment of virtues and narratives imbedded in socially established practices. The notion of individuality, as it developed from Goethe and Mill to the present, suggests a way to rethink this dichotomy. Individuality--as distinguished from individualism--evokes the notion of personal identity constituted both through reflective reexamination of the givens of life and through the continuous integration of diverse traditions and influences into a coherent whole.

On not knowing what or who one is: Reflections on the intelligibility of dualism

Beginning with Descartes' caution not “imprudently” to “take some other object in place of myself”, I consider first the problems of self-identification confronted by variousamnesiacs, both ordinary and Cartesian. Noting thatcogitationes as such do not individuate, I proceed to examine conclusions drawn from certain sorts of “body-switching” thought experiments. This, in turn, gives rise to a general critique of “psychological connectedness” or “unity of consciousness” as a candidate criterion of personal identity. I conclude that our ability to apply any notion of personal identity is parasitic upon the existence of a conceptual apparatus for individuating, identifying, and reidentifying objects. Finally, I argue that, if ‘person’ is a proper sortal predicate to begin with, Descartes'res cogitans cannot be understood as a species of the (metaphysical) genusres, distinct fromres extensa and only problematically in “interaction” with it. Cartesian dualism is a multiply untenable doctrine.