Some notes on identity, culture, and freedom (idfreedm.doc - February 23, 1998; idfreedm.html revised 9/24/02, 10/2/08, 10/14/09, 2/16/12,� 2/10/17)
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.
Note 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 [Ursula K. Leguin/Simone de Beauvoir/Martin
Buber/Erving Goffman/ William James/George H. Mead]? 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; some additions February 10, 2017)
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