Questions Of Personal Identity Research Articles

The question of personal identity: Kant and Kantian perspectives

In this paper, we will be examining the question of personal identity in the context of Immanuel Kant?s philosophy, as well as among contemporary Kantian thinkers such as Christine Korsgaard. Our investigation will focus primarily on those aspects of the issue that are relevant to moral philosophy. While some may believe that personal identity is not a primary concern of philosophy, or that it does not merit extensive discussion, we argue that it is indeed a significant philosophical question, particularly in the context of moral philosophy. Our inquiry will begin with Kant?s theoretical philosophy, specifically his transcendental deduction of categories and his treatment of paralogisms, as we aim to gain a deeper understanding of Kant?s views on personal identity. Following our analysis of the relevant parts of Kant?s work, we will then turn to the contemporary Kantian thinker Kristin Korsgaard, who has offered critiques of Derek Parfit?s understanding of personal identity.

Privacy without persons: a Buddhist critique of surveillance capitalism

Much has been written about artificial intelligence (AI) perpetuating social inequity and disenfranchising marginalized groups (Barocas in SSRN J, 2016; Goodman in Law and Ethics of AI, 2017; Buolamwini and Gebru in Conference on Fairness, Accountability and Transparency, 2018). It is a sad irony that virtually all of these critiques are exclusively couched in concepts and theories from the Western philosophical tradition (Algorithm Watch in AI ethics guidelines global inventory, 2021; Goffi in Sapiens, 2021). In particular, Buddhist philosophy is, with a few notable exceptions (Hongladarom in A Buddhist Theory of Privacy, Springer, Singapore, 2016; Hongladarom in The Ethics of AI and Robotics A Buddhist Viewpoint, Lexington Book, Maryland, 2020; Hongladarom in MIT Technology Review, 2021; Lin et al. in Robot Ethics: The Ethical and Social Implications fo Robotics, MIT, Cambridge, 2012; Promta and Einar Himma in J Inf Commun Ethics Soc 6(2):172–187, 2008), completely ignored. This inattention to non-Western philosophy perpetuates a pernicious form of intellectual imperialism (Alatas in Southeast Asian J Soc Sci 28(1):23–45, 2000), and deprives the field of vital intellectual resources. The aim of this article is twofold: to introduce Buddhist concepts and arguments to an unfamiliar audience and to demonstrate how those concepts can be fruitfully deployed within the field of AI ethics. In part one, I develop a Buddhist inspired critique of two propositions about privacy: that the scope of privacy is defined by an essential connection between certain types of information and personal identity (i.e., what makes a person who they are), and that privacy is intrinsically valuable as a part of human dignity (Council of the European Union in Position of the Council on General Data Protection Regulation, 2016). The Buddhist doctrine of not self (anattā) rejects the existence of a stable and essential self. According to this view, persons are fictions and questions of personal identity have no ultimate answer. From a Buddhist perspective, the scope and value of privacy are entirely determined by contextual norms—nothing is intrinsically private nor is privacy intrinsically valuable (Nissenbaum in Theor Inq Law 20(1):221–256, 2019). In part two, I show how this shift in perspective reveals a new critique of surveillance capitalism (Zuboff in J Inf Technol 30(1):75–89, 2015). While other ethical analyses of surveillance capitalism focus on its scale and scope of illegitimate data collection, I examine the relationship between targeted advertising and what Buddhism holds to be the three causes of suffering: ignorance, craving and aversion. From a Buddhist perspective, the foremost reason to be wary of surveillance capitalism is not that it depends on systematic violations of our privacy, but that it systematically distorts and perverts the true nature of reality, instilling a fundamentally misguided and corrupting conception of human flourishing. Privacy, it turns out, may be a red herring to the extent that critiques of surveillance capitalism frame surveillance, rather than capitalism, as the primary object of concern. A Buddhist critique, however, reveals that surveillance capitalism is merely the latest symptom of a deeper disease.

Narrative and Personal Identity

Abstract In this paper I explore how and why personal identity might be essentially narrative in nature. My topic is the question of personal identity in the strict sense of identity—the question of which person you are, and how that person is extended in space, time, and quality. In this my question appears to contrast with the question of personal identity in the sense sought by teenagers and sufferers of mid-life crises who are trying to ‘find themselves’. But in fact it will be key to my argument that these questions are not distinct and independent. Whereas Parfit was concerned, in his work on personal identity, with how he was extended over time, the teenager who is finding themselves is concerned with how they are extended in quality. Indeed, the core of my argument is that because narrative is the key to understanding how we are extended in quality, and quality is just one more dimension along which we are extended, along with space and time, narrative must also be the clue as to how we are extended in space and time. You, I will argue, are the protagonist in the best story of your life.

Virtue, habit and neuroscience

Neuroscience has much to offer to our understanding of human action, including its ethical dimensions. However, while neuroscience has been applied to questions of personal identity, emotion and moral decision-making, its implications for the classical notion of virtue have hardly been considered. This likely has much to do with the way in which the classical notion of virtue, together with closely related concepts of nature and habit, has been forgotten or distorted within the context of modern thought. As a consequence, the standard neuroscientific concept of habit as automatic and routine behavior is fundamentally opposed to teleological activity and thus cannot be reconciled with the classical concept of habit that is essential to virtue. The recovery of the classical notion of virtue in contemporary philosophy invites us to rethink the neuroscientific concept of habit in light of a different view of human behavior for which plasticity is not just indeterminacy but rather openness to freedom and growth.

When time becomes personal. Aging and personal identity

Aging is an integral part of human existence. The problem of aging addresses the most fundamental coordinates of our lives but also the ones of the phenomenological method: time, embodiment, subjectivity and intersubjectivity, and even the social norms that grow into the very notion of aging as such. In my article, I delineate a phenomenological analysis of aging and show how such an analysis connects with the debate concerning personal identity: I claim that aging is not merely a physical process, but is far more significantly also a spiritual one as the process of aging consists in our awareness of and conscious relation to our aging. This spiritual process takes place on an individual and on a social level, whereas the latter is the more primordial layer of this experience. This complicates the question of personal identity since it will raise the question in two ways, namely who I am for myself and who I am for the others, and in a further step how the latter experience shapes the former. However, we can state that aging is neither only physical nor only spiritual. It concerns my bodily processes as it concerns the complex reflexive structure that relates my former self with my present and even future self.

The Meaning of Life between Time and Eternity

This paper explores the question of the meaning of life, not only from the perspective of its temporal unfolding from birth to death but also from the perspective of its own particular meaning and its final cause, to use Aristotelian categories. In order to discuss this argument I refer myself to Edith Stein to show how crucial moments of her own life give rise to important and de􀏔ining philosophical positions that touch upon questions of personal identity, social and communal relations, and a relationship with God.

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.”

Is religiosity a risk or a protective factor? The connection between religiosity and deviance among religious youths

ABSTRACTThis article seeks to examine the connection between religiosity and deviance, focusing on the phenomenon of risk behaviour among Jewish national-religious youth at-risk. The study was conducted by using interviews with 66 participants in six focus groups among teenagers and young people at-risk, normative youth and professionals. Analysis of the research findings revealed several main themes that touch upon the issue of religion as both a protecting and a risk factor for religious youths, beginning with the question of personal identity, and continue with the influence of social control and social labelling.

The problem of personal identity of man in the social and cultural world

The article is devoted to understanding the problem of human self-determination in the modern social and cultural space, in which the question of personal identity becomes a search for one's own individualization, a question of survival and preservation of man as such. The relevance of the study is determined by the process of dehumanization of modern society, a crisis of spirituality leading to the prevalence of destructive origins, to depersonalization and the destruction of the individual personal dimension of human existence. The leading approach to the study of this problem is the method of the ascent from the abstract to the concrete, which makes it possible to comprehend the being of man and the phenomena of his existence associated with it. In this study, we used the dialectical method and the hermeneutical analysis of texts by modern scholars who consider the problems of the philosophical foundations of personal identity in the modern social and cultural world. The connection between the constitution of the essential definitiveness of the human personality and the existential source of the human origin itself is shown. The influence of the social transformation processes on the methods and possibilities of self-identification of man, on his self-identity is revealed. The conducted analysis shows that the key problem of modern society is man himself as a subject of a technotronic-oriented civilization, in which his personal identity is not only a key factor in his existence, but also a fundamental link in the reconstruction of the wholeness of being.

Narrative and persistence

AbstractMany philosophers say that the nature of personal identity has to do with narratives: the stories we tell about ourselves. While different narrativists address different questions of personal identity, some propose narrativist accounts of personal identity over time. The paper argues that such accounts have troubling consequences about the beginning and end of our lives, lead to inconsistencies, and involve backwards causation. The problems can be solved, but only by modifying the accounts in ways that deprive them of their appeal.

BOOK REVIEW: A page in African ethics: A review of Bernard Matolino’s Personhood in African philosophy

One of the most difficult intellectual problems which humans have over the ages sought to resolve is the question of personal identity. And in disparate philosophical systems, including the African, reflections on personhood have sometimes taken an ethical or religious turn, or both. For this reason, Bernard Matolino’s 191-page book, Personhood in African philosophy is useful to philosophers, ethicists and religious thinkers. The fact that the book was published by a company which seeks to promote contemporary theology solidifies my observation. This book is well-written and the quality of the ideas expressed in it is good. It discusses many of the most important concerns and disputes over personhood – especially, regarding the ethical foundations of personhood – in African philosophical thought. It is rather surprising that this book has not been sufficiently reviewed by scholars or received adequate attention on the continent, although Matolino is a well-known South African philosopher.

Absolut idealisme – et glemt potentiale?

Physicalism is the most widely accepted metaphysical view today. The thesis of physicalism, however, seems unable to adequately explain the existence and nature of consciousness. Moreover, the thesis is not itself a scientific finding but must be characterized as a metaphysical assumption. Hence, there are strong reasons to explore alternatives to the physicalist view. While metaphysical theses based on classic idealistic views like subjective or absolute idealism have been largely absent from the philosophical debate during most of the 20th century, in the last few decades theses of this kind have been advocated, most notably by John Foster and Timothy Sprigge. Russell’s and Moore’s influential refutations of idealism have been severely questioned by recent scholarship, which means that conventional arguments against absolute idealism appear to be significantly less well-founded than what is usually assumed. With Sprigge’s panpsychistic absolute idealistic metaphysical system as the basis and by incorporating key elements in Foster’s thinking, the present paper outlines an idealistic thesis which, it is argued, first of all escapes the problem of consciousness inherent in physicalism and secondly counters important arguments raised against Sprigge’s views, including the question of personal identity and the problem of the one and the many. In addition, this thesis can be seen as naturalistic in a broad sense, thereby potentially being of existential relevance also within the framework of modernity. Thus, it is the aim of the present paper to argue – although sketchily – that despite its controversial character in the light of contemporary mainstream views, panpsychistic absolute idealism demonstrates a significant explanatory power and is therefore of philosophical interest as a subject for further study.

Cosmopolitan perspective in the work of Zygmunt Bauman

The theoretical legacy of Zygmunt Bauman is an inexhaustible sourceof inspiration for sociological analysis, particularly bearing in mindthe scope of his work and the diverse range of modern day problemsthat this British-Polish author dealt with. The first part of this articleexamines the question of personal identity in liquid modernity, whichis the starting point of Bauman’s work. Similar to some other authors,Bauman discusses the paradox of the individual who is not free inan individualized society. Bauman’s diagnosis carries pessimistic featureswhich in some places correspond to insights developed in classicalsociology. Bauman makes occasional and sporadic incursionsinto the pitfalls of conservative thought, particularly in relation tothe dichotomies of individual versus community, individualism versustogetherness, and egoism versus solidarity. However, it seems thatthe author manages to skilfully avoid the inherent theoretical traps ofsociology, turning towards cosmopolitan theory. The second part ofthis article presents the thesis that Bauman’s thought is in fact cosmopolitan,especially bearing in mind his final public appearances andwritings. This argument is based in his description of global societythat is simultaneously integrating and developing, and dramaticallydisintegrating and regressing. Bauman writes about violent killingsand expulsions of people in the 21st century and their inability to findrefuge in the Western and democratic world that promotes humanrights. Recalling the crucial cosmopolitan principles of solidarity andhospitality, Bauman makes an appeal to progressive forces to consolidateand work on opening and reaffirming the “cosmopolitan condition”of contemporary society.

NYELV, IDENTITÁS, KULTÚRA: FORDÍTHATÓSÁG ÉS DEPENDENCIA

A dolgozat az identitás–kultúra–nyelv fogalomköréből kiindulva vizsgálja három kortárs horvát szerző – Dubravka Ugrešić, Mirko Kovač és Miljenko Jergović – műveinek fordíthatóságát (és a „fordító feladatát”), különös tekintettel az identitás és a kulturális kötődés nyelven keresztüli részleges, illetve szinte teljes konstituálódása és a fordíthatóság közötti kapcsolatra. Ahol az egyéni identitás általános kérdései nem közvetlenül és expliciten tematizálódnak, ott az identitás hordozói a kultúra és a nyelv kontextusában rejtőznek. Az ilyen szövegek természetesen annál kevésbé fordíthatók, minél kevésbé honosak a forrásnyelv identitáshordozó elemei a célnyelvhez tartozó kultúrában. A fabularitásra építő és ezzel egy időben a kulturális „paranomázia” felé erőteljesen elmozduló szövegek esetében ugyanakkor a fordító minél otthonosabban mozog a forrásnyelvi kultúrában, annál erőteljesebben szembesül(het) a külső/idegen világ befogadásának lehetségességével, ám e tapasztalat egy másik nyelv szavaival történő visszaadásának lehetetlenségével is.

CONTEXTUAL IDENTITY: THE CASE OF ANTON AMO AFER

What does it take for a person to persist through the various changes that he or she undergoes in the course of a lifetime? Consider the case of Anton Wilhelm Amo. Assumed to be born in Ghana in the first half of the eighteenth century, Amo was brought to Germany at the age of three or four, where he was reared by a German Duke. He obtained degrees in the natural sciences as well as philosophy, and became the first black philosophy professor in Germany. Wiredu argues that Amo was an African and a philosopher, therefore, he was an African philosopher. Amo returned to, what Wiredu calls, “home”, “to his motherland”, after more than forty years. Could he have felt “at home” in Ghana? Was this really to be his “motherland”? Was Amo actually German or rather deep down Ghanaian? Who was Amo really? Amo’s is no rare case in our time of globalisation. This is reflected by a large number of discussions on migration, immigration, interculturalism and multiculturalism across the globe. Philosophically these questions are typically treated as questions of personal identity. The case of Amo seems to pose above all one particular and persistent traditional philosophical question: What fact about a person such as Amo makes that person the same person through the various changes that he or she undergoes in the course of a lifetime? This paper considers possible responses to this question by comparing concepts of narrative, experiential, communal, cultural and placial identity, and offers an alternative, contextual identity.

Limits of the atheistic interpretation of the theodicy problem

This paper discusses the classical problem of the of the traditions of God's nature with the pressing experiences of unhidden evil and destruction within human history, as well as its atheistic resolution. In doing so, this problem is paralleled with the question of personal identity of individuals, under the conditions of a behavior which is otherwise unexpected and dissonant in regards to everyday dispositions. In the further course of the discussion, we treat the famous, so-called. ?Inconsistent trilemma" (God is omnipotent, God is unlimitedly good, There is evil), and question some of its aspects, that is, the consequences that are usually drawn from there. Concludingly, this paper argues that the agnosticism is more rational response to the problem of theodetic than atheism: There are stronger reasons in favor of the thesis that it is not completely clear whether God does exist or not - than for the outright denial of his possible existence as atheism claims.

Phenomenon of Social Identification: The Fundamental Problems

Identification with other people is one of the most important mechanisms of the socialization process and formation of a person. In a traditional primitive society a group status of an individual was clear and straightforward: you are a part of a class, community, caste etc., in which there exist specific and quite rigid criteria of membership and behavioral norms. However, it is during the period of changes, when the obsolete way of life is tumbling down and a person is losing his or her habitual life benchmarks, when spiritual values that have been solid so far are being destroyed, and the question of personal identity becomes very important. This very fact makes the individual aspire to identify him or herself with one or another community, social structure, and a group, in order to obtain the accustomed sense of security and safety.

Darkly Dreaming (in) Authenticity: The Self/Persona Opposition in Dexter

In ‘Darkly Dreaming (in) Authenticity: The Self/Persona Opposition in Dexter,’ Glenn D'Cruz uses Dexter Morgan, the novelised serial killer and Showtime TV anti-hero to examine the connections between self and persona and the discourse of authenticity. D’Cruz foresees a series of challenges for persona studies and considers key concerns ahead, in terms of the critical vocabulary and scholarly agenda and addresses the need for critical genealogy of the term ‘persona’.

Hybrid Identities and Just Being Yourself

This paper points out a tension between Agustín Rayo’s criteria for singulartermhood and his explicit views on the status of Hybrid Identities, that is, identity statements that use singular terms from two different Systems of Representation, such as ‘7=Julius Caesar’ or more suggestively ‘I am b’ where ‘b’ is a singular term referring to my brain. It argues that non-trivial Hybrid Identities are common and important in philosophy and elsewhere, and it suggests a friendly alternative that involves treating Hybrid Identities on the model of Rayo’s ‘Just Is’ statements. The last section of the paper points out that even this friendly alternative has counterintuitive consequences when combined with the metaphysical conventionalism that Rayo finds attractive, when it comes to questions of personal identity over time.

Putting on a Play in an Underworld Courtroom: The “Mingpan” (Infernal Judgment) Scene in Tang Xianzu’s Mudan Ting (Peony Pavilion)

PUTTING ON A PLAY IN AN UNDERWORLD COURTROOM: THE ‘‘MINGPAN’’ (INFERNAL JUDGMENT) SCENE IN TANG XIANZU’S MUDAN TING (PEONY PAVILION) THOMAS KELLY University of Chicago This article is an attempt to present a new way of thinking about courtroom trials in traditional Chinese theater. I look at how one playwright, Tang Xianzu 湯顯祖 (1550–1616), used meta-theatrical devices to comically deflate and satirize judicial authority. At the same time, however, I argue that he used the scaffolding of the courtroom trial to experiment with theatrical scene composition in the chuanqi 傳奇 drama form. Tang not only used a theatrical idiom to parody the procedures of the courtroom, he looked to the format of the trial to stretch the representational possibilities of the dramatic medium. Questions of what constitutes juridical authority and what grounds an act of adjudication are equally pertinent to the role-playing of the courtroom and the illusionary domain of the stage in his most famous play, Mudan ting 牡丹亭 (The peony pavilion; preface dated 1598). I focus specifically on how these themes are treated in the complex courtroom scene in the twenty-third scene of the play, ‘‘Mingpan’’ 冥判 (Infernal judgment). The scene as Tang wrote it, I suggest, displays a heightened awareness of how dramatic representations of the law in both the world of the living and the dead can call into question the nature and artifice of the theater itself. THE ‘‘MINGPAN’’ SCENE IN TANG XIANZU’S MUDAN TING Tang Xianzu’s Mudan ting returns time and again to question the verifiability of characters’ testimonies and the disputed status of actions taken within the world of the play.1 The burden of proof falls on the two lovers, Du Liniang 杜麗娘 and Liu Mengmei 柳夢梅, who each must justify and corroborate their testimony before juridical authorities and also prove to family and friends who they are from Scene 16 on. Liu not only has to prove his credentials as a promising scholar to Miao Shunbin 苗舜賓 when the latter is inspecting jewels (Scene 21) and metropolitan 1 As Tina Lu has argued at length, questions of personal identity are at stake throughout the play: Are characters who they claim to be? Can we trust their outward appearances? These questions assume an added urgency in the underworld trial scene, which Lu only discusses in relation to issues of counterfeiting and slippage between material and nominal worth in the determination of monetary value (see Tina Lu, Persons, Roles and Minds: Identity in Peony Pavilion and Peach Blossom Fan, [Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001], pp. 106–13). CHINOPERL: Journal of Chinese Oral and Performing Literature 32.2 (December 2013): 132–155 # The Permanent Conference on Chinese Oral and Performing Literature, Inc. 2013 DOI: 10.1179/0193777413Z.00000000010 civil service examination candidates (Scene 41), he also has to prove that he is not guilty of robbing the grave of Liniang, the daughter of (the play’s chief patriarch) Du Bao 杜寶. Liu is arrested (Scene 50) and undergoes harsh interrogation and physical torture by Du Bao (Scene 53). It is not until the final scene (Scene 55) that Du Bao’s charges against him are finally dismissed by the emperor, even if this does not lead to Du Bao recognizing Liu as his son-in-law. Du Liniang never suffers judicial torture,2 but she also is required to repeatedly prove that she is who she claims to be and that her love—a love that both kills and resurrects her—is genuine. Although the final scene is initially presented as a contest between the counterclaims of Du Bao and Liu Mengmei, and it seems that Du Liniang only attends as a witness (she even arrives unescorted), after her arrival the key question becomes whether she is presently a ghost or not.3 Prior to that, however, Liniang is the main ‘‘defendant’’ in ‘‘Mingpan,’’ the play’s most elaborate and complex courtroom scene, a scene that appears almost half-way through the drama and marks an important turning point in the narrative.4 Earlier, Du Liniang encountered her lover in a dream (Scene 10), was unable to repeat the experience (Scene 12), became love-sick enough that she felt the need to paint and leave...