Some notes on identity, culture, and freedom (idfreedm.doc - February 23, 1998; idfreedm.htm revised 9/24/02, 10/2/08, 10/14/09)
Discuss
the 1st person restriction and Anthem.
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., etc.
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
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