Introducing Persons: Theories and Arguments in the by Peter Carruthers

By Peter Carruthers

Stimulating creation to the main significant and engaging matters within the philosophy of brain. subject matters coated contain dualism as opposed to a few of the different types of materialism, own id and survival, and the matter of different minds.

Show description

Read or Download Introducing Persons: Theories and Arguments in the Philosophy of the Mind PDF

Similar consciousness & thought books

Self and Identity: Fundamental Issues (Rutgers Series on Self and Social Identity)

Self and id were vital but unstable notions in psychology due to the fact that its youth as a systematic self-discipline. lately, psychologists and different social scientists have began to strengthen and refine the conceptual and empirical instruments for learning the advanced nature of self. This quantity provides a severe research of primary concerns within the clinical learn of self and identification.

Modest Nonconceptualism: Epistemology, Phenomenology, and Content

The writer defends nonconceptualism, the declare that perceptual event is nonconceptual and has nonconceptual content material. carrying on with the heated and complicated debate surrounding this subject over the last twenty years, she bargains a sustained safeguard of a singular model of the view, Modest Nonconceptualism, and gives a scientific evaluation of a few of the valuable controversies within the debate.

Meaning in life and why it matters

Most folk, together with philosophers, are likely to classify human causes as falling into certainly one of different types: the egoistic or the altruistic, the self-interested or the ethical. in response to Susan Wolf, despite the fact that, a lot of what motivates us doesn't very easily healthy into this scheme. usually we act neither for our personal sake nor out of responsibility or an impersonal trouble for the realm.

The importance of how we see ourselves : self-identity and responsible agency

The previous fifteen years have noticeable a wellspring of curiosity within the notion and sensible nature of the self. questions on the metaphysics of non-public identification have preoccupied philosophical scholarship. much less awareness has been paid to the subject of the self from the first-person point of view, the viewpoint of someone who regards definite phenomena as exact of and necessary to her identification.

Extra resources for Introducing Persons: Theories and Arguments in the Philosophy of the Mind

Example text

4) How convincing do you find the arguments for saying that conscious states are non-physical? Can you think of any arguments for the opposite conclusion? (5) Is it possible to be mistaken about one’s own conscious states? How is this question related to the problem of other minds? Ayer, ‘One’s Knowledge of Other Minds’, Theoria, vol. XIX (1953). Reprinted in AYER [1], and GUSTAFSON. ——, ‘Privacy’, Proceedings of the British Academy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959). Reprinted in AYER [2].

Premiss (3) was established by considering what is required for the existence of a particular chair. And premiss (4) is the thesis for which we have just been arguing. Then if the whole argument is valid, as it appears to be, we have constructed a proof of the existence of the soul. (C) Immortality If dualism is true then it is logically possible that I (my soul, my self) might survive the destruction of my body. So the above argument may be taken as a proof of the possibility of disembodied after-life.

But it is being proposed that the argument is rationally convincing—despite the fact that the induction is based upon one case only—in virtue of the myriad causal connections mentioned in premiss (2). It can often be reasonable to allow oneself to be convinced by an argument by analogy from one case only. Imagine that you are walking on the sea-shore one day, and discover a great many black boxes washed up on the beach by the tide. They all have an array of coloured buttons and lights, and you discover that they all behave in a similar manner: pressing a red button causes a red light to flash, and so on.

Download PDF sample

Rated 4.49 of 5 – based on 14 votes