Tuesday 12 June 2012

A222 - Exploring Philosophy : Book 1 'The Self'

Today's big decision - just stick to revising three books. I am pretty happy with the three books that I have chosen, so concentrating on them must be better than 'wasting time' on back-up questions...... I don't think this is a gamble, but time will tell :-)

So the theorists to remember from Book 1:

Plutarch & Hobbs
Ship Of Theseus, what is identity anyway ? Qualitatively v. numerically identical.

Locke
Man, Person, Substance, Soul,
Personal identity important in matters of moral responsibility and the day of judgement.
Issues of PRAISE and BLAME, mainly retrospective
5 thought experiments: Prince/Cobbler, DayMan/NightMan, Drunk/Sober Man, Detached Little Finger, Mayor of Quinborough,

Reid's challenge through Boy-YoungOfficer-General,

Mackie says that rather than just being retrospective knowing that we will be a day of judgement in the future should/may influence out behaviour now to make a better life for a future self. How does this change if we are a different person in the future through memory loss ?

Hume
Self is a fiction. No evidence of an enduring self when we reflect on our experience.
Empiricist and skeptic
Ideas and impressions, giving perceptions and experiences.
How could you have the idea of colour or taste without an impression
Bundle Theory of Self
Impressions vivid - ideas faint
Hume's Fork If an idea is neither derived from an impression or true by definition then it is worthless and 'can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion'

Butler said there was an unchanging self and that it was primitive, and we are all conscious of our continued personal identity. We can perceive a continuing soul.

Hume Cont.
Complex ideas can be made from multiple impressions. The idea of a  Snowy Mountain having the impression of snow and the impression of a mountain.
The Self is a simple idea, a faint copy of the original impression, but there is no impression.
Impressions, heat, pain, taste, pleasure, grief - no single impression gives the idea of self.
You do not survive death.
Theatre of the Mind - with ideas and impessions passing across it.

Kant - self was a structural notion. There has to be a self to have a thought. There must be an 'I' to have an 'I think'. - Descartes ?

Hume Cont.
The experience of perceiving an unchanging object (a stone) and that of perceiving an object that through a series of linked stages changes somewhat can be very similar. So we describe things that succeed each other as one identical thing, but this is a mistake.

Parfit
Thought experiments, Split Brain, Teletransporter,
Are we the same person as we were when we were 8, or that we shall be when we are 80.
Like Locke psychological continuity matters.
Like Hume has thought experiments that ow the self is an illusion.
Survival is the important thing.
Parfit says we have various successive 'selfs', some of which are so distantly related we should not care for them. Phases of a single life.
Parfit wonders if we should worry about death, as it will not be our present self that dies but a different future self in which, depending on when death happens, some, all or none of the present self will exist.

Taylor's criticism of Parfit - we have to understand ourselves in terms of our WHOLE life's experiences, attitudes,concerns, as a life narrative so that we can make sense of ourselves. We are not like a car..... There is a relationship between our sense of self and questions about the meaning and purpose of our lives.


So, it is a matter now of getting a good question, interpreting and answering it correctly and not panicking and forgetting everything........

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