Some notes on identity, culture, and freedom (idfreedm.doc - February 23, 1998; idfreedm.htm revised 9/24/02, 10/2/08, 10/14/09, 2/16/12)
Discuss self-naming the 1st person restriction and Anthem.
(& essay option in context of either)
Philosophy and
"what
is __" questions.
The question with a twist:
Who are you?
Who are you,
really?
The question of
what it is to
be someone and not somebody (or something) else is a philosophical
problem:
The problem of
personal
identity.
[there is a more
general
metaphysical problem: identity and individuation]
--explain ontology:
what
there is.
Review the problem
of change
in terms of the question, "What is it that changed from this to
that?"
if x=y, then if x
is an F,
then y is an F.
(x)(y)
((x=y.->(Fx->Fy))
Descartes and the Mind -Body problem (psuchia, soul).
"What is it to be
the
same person?"
Memory: Locke
memories of
individual. and
others. approx. = "history"
note relation of
this to
attempts to separate groups from their identities
Brain and Body:
DNA, physical
props and extended conscousness (see Andy
Clark's Natural-Born Cyborgs: Minds, Technologies, and the Future of
Human Intelligence(2004)), etc.
Notr the relevance of Gary Marcus's book, Kluge: The Haphazard
Construction of
the Human Mind (2008), Oliver
Sacks's
Musicophilia
(2008),
and V. S. Ramachandran and Sandra Blakeslee's Phantoms
in the
Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind (1998).
How do we know who
someone
else is? What makes them them?
Lead in to lecture
on
freedom, character and culture.
K. Vonnegut, Jr,: "You are who you pretend to be." See Mother Night and "Who am I this time" (from Welcome to the Monkey House). Relate this to William James's chapter on "Habit" in The Principles of Psychology.
Lead in to section
on
freedom, character and culture.
What if you accept
what your
culture defines you to be? Are you free to do so?
(Discuss questions
"Are
you free?/Are you really free?")
What counts as
freedom;
digress into problem of free will and determinism. Discuss a
determinist, an
existential, a Kantian, a Jamesian, and a Buberian response.
Social definitions,
public
and private selves, fragmented selves, many selves, the self as task,
the self
as illusion. Buber's self as partner in dialogue.
-------------------------------
For more discussion of problems of personal identity, see the "Personal
Identity" entry in the on-line Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy
=============================================================
Michael Kagan, Le Moyne College
(Last edited September 23, 2011)
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