Personal Identity and Values

Russian Abstract: Данный документ является сборником «заметок на полях», раскрывающих состав и содержание метода структурно-онтологического анализа. Указанный метод разработан для системного описания предметной области изучаемых явлений. Он включает специальную процедуру по построению структурно-онтологических матриц и алгоритм их описания. Междисциплинарная направленность метода продемонстрирована на примере анализа процесса социализации личности. English Abstract: This document is a collection of `marginal notes` revealing the composition and content of the structural ontological analysis method. The specified method is developed for a systemic description of the subject (...) matter area of the studied phenomena. It includes a special procedure for constructing structural-ontological matrices and an algorithm for their description. The interdisciplinary focus of the method is demonstrated by the example of an analysis of the personality socialization process. (shrink)

I would like to thank Kris McDaniel for his reply. In my original response to McDaniel I say that, given his interpretation of the distinction between conventional and ultimate truth, we would no longer be able to employ certain powerful arguments in favor of the thesis that persons are merely conventionally existent, and it would turn out that the thesis that persons are merely conventionally existent doesn't have some of the important implications that proponents of that thesis generally take it (...) to have. McDaniel offers a reply to both of these concerns. In the remainder of this rejoinder I will say a bit about his reply.In my original response to McDaniel I claim that a proponent of... (shrink)

Kris McDaniel has recently proposed an interpretation of the distinction between conventional truth and ultimate truth, as that distinction is made within Abhidharma metaphysics. According to McDaniel's proposal, the distinction between conventional truth and ultimate truth is closely connected with a similar distinction between conventional existence and ultimate existence. What is more, the distinction between conventional existence and ultimate existence should be interpreted along ontological pluralist lines: the difference between things that ultimately exist and things that merely conventionally exist amounts (...) to a difference in the modes of being enjoyed by the things in question.One... (shrink)

Botticelli and Tizian depict the Annunciation in two very different ways. Botticelli portrays a kneeling angel in an act of guiding from below, while Tizian represents an angel imposing himself from above with an authoritarian forefinger. Botticelli's painting suggests an intention of orientation that is not authoritarian yet able to bring about a transformation (Umbildung). It also suggests that an individual's transformation cannot be achieved in a closed solipsistic dimension, but requires a disclosure from otherness. My theory is that at (...) the origin of ethics there is a non-authoritarian way of orientation that comes from otherness and arises from the emotional sphere thanks to a "care of desire". The expression cura sui has often been interpreted as a care confined to a private and solipsistic dimension with the aim of strengthening the self-referential subject. By "care of desire" I mean a care not turned upon itself but made possible by a disclosure coming from otherness and addressed to the transformation of the individual and of society. In the human existence, emotions reveal an extraordinary plasticity. They are not already regulated by instinct but develop and get to maturity even many years after biological birth. Moreover, this maturation process does not follow a universal process identical for everyone, being different for every individual. In fact it finds its realization in the unique order of feelings (ordo amoris) that characterizes every individual. Emotions guide actions and the way we interact with the others and with the world. In the human existence they become plastic and don't have only a homeostatic function of self-regulation. They give flexibility to our way of perceiving, of existing and of taking our position in the world. The care of desire is dedicated to the plasticity of emotions and makes ethics, i.e. a person's formation process (Bildung) and flourishing, possible. It also allows the transition from the “environmental closedness” (Umweltgeschlossenheit) to the world-openness (Weltoffenheit). To sum up, the care of desire implies the transition from a solipsistic self-care to a “care for world-openness”. From this point of view, emotion is no more the secondary result of a cognitive process, but at the origin of every formative, perceptive and cognitive process: In the beginning was the emotion. Yet in this process of creative transformation not every emotion has the same significance: at the core of emotions’ plasticity there are love and wonder (thaumàzein), whose peculiar feature is “lack of envy” (aphthonoi). (shrink)

In this article I develop two arguments, taking Max Scheler’s phenomenology as a starting point. The first one is that emotions are not private and internal states of consciousness, but what makes us come into contact with the expressive dimension of reality, by orienting our placement in the world and our interaction with others. The second thesis is that some emotions have an “anthropogenetic” nature that is at the roots of the ontology of a person and of social ontology: it (...) is through practices of “sharing” certain emotions that the humanity has been born and that the various forms of social realities are established. In accordance with one of María Zambrano’s phrases, I propose to trace these anthropogenetic emotions back to the «hambre de nacer del todo» («hunger for being fully born») of a being that never stops being born again. (shrink)

This paper examines the unique structures of identity formation within the craftsperson/maker mindset and their relation to Western views of work and labor. The contemporary Maker Movement has its origins not only in the internet revolution, but also in the revival of handicraft during the last several economic recessions. Economic uncertainty drives people toward the ideals and practices of craft as a way to regain a sense of agency and control. One learns how to become an active participant in our (...) material lives by making and maintaining the objects that surround us. This orientation toward craft has the potential to alter the practitioner's sense of self going forward. I will argue that the work-based nature of craft leads to a unique and positive sense of self that the assumed freedom of ‘art’ and intellectualized labor unwittingly discourages. Tacit mechanisms shape the craft mindset through emphasis on skill, mastery of materials, polymathic problem solving, and quality. Hannah Arendt’s notion of the vita activa and Martin Heidegger’s arguments on modern technology reveal the dynamics between physical and intellectual labor and how many have greatly misunderstood the ‘essence’ of the craftsperson’s work. Peter Dormer and Glenn Adamson’s analysis of the nature of craft demonstrate how these two lines of thought can be unified into one system of selfhood granting the greater sense of agency many seek without relying on an individualized sense of self. The Richard Sennett shows how this sense of self challenges the desire to liberate ourselves from labor via technology and poetic autonomy as seen in Franco Berardi’s Manifesto of Post-Futurism. Malcolm Gladwell's work on intuition examines the impact of this tacit craft mindset and the psychological mechanisms that drive it. This will allow Peter Korn’s first-hand account of his own craft practice to demonstrate this structure and its inherent points of resistance against today’s hyper-individualized and resultingly selfish ways of life. Throughout this paper, a clear emphasis on materiality as a profound source of embodied knowledge will be maintained to reveal craftspersonhood as a source of deep existential fulfillment and practical philosophy. Acknowledging and embracing our intrinsic materiality and all that it has to teach us is imperative in the face of a consumption-centric culture of excess and exploitation that looms over much of the West. (shrink)

This brief article presents a Buddhist answer to the question of whether self-transformation possible and, if so, how it can be achieved.

Persons are widely believed to be rational, planning agents that are both author and main character of their life stories. A major goal is to keep these narratives coherent as they unfold, and part of a fulfilled life allegedly stems from this coherence. My aim is to challenge these convictions by considering two related claims about persons and their lives. Contrary to the widespread theoretical conviction in philosophy of mind and action, persons are fundamentally emotional and affective rather than rational (...) and deliberative beings. And so, on a practical level, persons need not constantly aspire to integrate their past, present, and future into a coherent whole in order to live fulfilled lives. Needless to say, I cannot hope to defend these claims and their relation in great detail with a few brief strokes. In addition to theoretical reflections, I discuss some practical implications and potential benefits that come with discarding the daunting task of continuously keeping track of one's life story. Drawing on insights from a contemplative Buddhist tale, I venture that the practice of letting go can break the spell, and give rise to an alleviating source of liberation from life's troubles.Export citation. (shrink)

This article covers the different stages of the constitution of the person that goes beyond selfishness and self-affirmation and is formed as the inseparable unity of the metaphysical subject that is expressed in the "Other-in-the same" and "Being-for-the-other". This leads one to say that the person is intrinsically relation and exteriority that is realized in the language that transcends the inner self. This relationship, considered internally as a footprint, and in the exterior as visage, invokes a third party that establishes (...) and holds it. The person is shown as an asymmetrical relationship that I call triadic. (shrink)

Our aim in this entry is to articulate the state of the art in the moral psychology of personal identity. We begin by discussing the major philosophical theories of personal identity, including their shortcomings. We then turn to recent psychological work on personal identity and the self, investigations that often illuminate our person-related normative concerns. We conclude by discussing the implications of this psychological work for some contemporary philosophical theories and suggesting fruitful areas for future work on personal identity.

Teleological theories of reason and value, upon which all reasons are fundamentally reasons to realize states of affairs that are in some respect best, cannot account for the intuition that victims in non-identity cases have been wronged. Many philosophers, however, reject such theories in favor of alternatives that recognize fundamentally non-teleological reasons, second-personal reasons that reflect a moral significance each person has that is not grounded in the teleologist’s appeal to outcomes. Such deontological accounts appear to be better positioned to (...) identify the wrong committed against non-identity victims because a person wrongs another on such accounts if she violates his second-personal claims -- overall benefit to victims presents no obstacle to the identification of second-personal wrongdoing. Derek Parfit argues that non-identity is a problem for these deontological theories as well because the alleged victims are properly understood as consenting to the action in question, thereby waiving any such second-personal claim. But his arguments misrepresent the role of consent on such theories by articulating it through appeal to the very teleological theory of reasons that their advocates dismiss as inadequate. Properly understood, Parfit’s appeal to consent understood as retroactive endorsement only provides the answer on such deontological accounts to the question of whether, given that the non-identity victim is second-personally wronged, he is nonetheless better off existing. Indeed, it becomes clear that it is teleological theories for which non-identity poses a particular problem: they cannot -- while their deontological counterparts can – account for the intuition that non-identity victims have been wronged. (shrink)

This is a review of the excellent collection by Stephan Blatti and Paul Snowdon which collates essays pertaining to Animalism: the theory that we human persons are identical with the human animals we share our lives with, and thus have the property of being human animals; perhaps essentially and most fundamentally.

The cohabitation theory is a popular solution to the problem of personal fission. It affirms that all the people who result from fission were there cohabiting the pre-fission body all along. Adopting this solution is an uncontroversial move for four-dimensionalists, but is it open to three-dimensionalists too? Some have thought so, but Katherine Hawley, Mark Johnston, and Eric Olson have argued to the contrary. They claim three-dimensionalists simply cannot be cohabitation theorists. In this paper, I explain how they can.

The paradox of 'the One and the Many' might, more generally, be understood as the paradox of relationship. In order for there to be relationship there must be at least two parties in relation. The relation must, at once, hold the parties apart (otherwise they would collapse into unity) while holding them together (otherwise relationship itself would cease). It must do so, further, without itself becoming a third party which would then, itself, need to be related. This paper considers this (...) paradox as we find it manifest in the theories of quantum physics, the Socratic pursuit of universals, and, finally, at the very heart of human personhood - where we discover it at the core of interpersonal relationships, existential anxiety, and social distress. It is suggested, in the end, that though reason cannot resolve the terms of this paradox, there is a potential solution to the existential problems that spring from it, a solution lying in what Jesus calls, simply, 'faith.'. (shrink)

One of the standard approaches to the metaphysics of personal identity has some counter-intuitive ethical consequences when combined with maximising consequentialism and a plausible doctrine about aggregation of consequences. This metaphysical doctrine is the so-called ‘multiple occupancy’ approach to puzzles about fission and fusion. It gives rise to a new version of the ‘utility monster’ problem, particularly difficult problems about infinite utility, and a new version of a Parfit-style ‘repugnant conclusion’. While the article focuses on maximising consequentialism for simplicity, the (...) problems demonstrated apply more widely to a range of ethical views, especially flavours of consequentialism. This article demonstrates how these problems arise, and discusses a number of options available in the light of these problems for a consequentialist tempted by a multiple occupancy metaphysics. (shrink)

Revisionary theories of logic or truth require revisionary theories of mind. This essay outlines nonclassically based theories of rational belief, desire, and decision making, singling out the supervaluational family for special attention. To see these nonclassical theories of mind in action, this essay examines a debate between David Lewis and Derek Parfit over what matters in survival. Lewis argued that indeterminacy in personal identity allows caring about psychological connectedness and caring about personal identity to amount to the same thing. The (...) essay argues that Lewis's treatment of two of Parfit's puzzle cases—degreed survival and fission—presuppose different nonclassical treatments of belief and desire. (shrink)

Personal identity is one of the important and complex issues in the field of the philosophy of the soul. It is also related to the philosophy of ethics and metaphysics in different respects and has given rise to some problems in these two areas. The justification of ethical responsibility and man's eternity in the posthumous state have attracted psychologist-philosophers' attention to the significance and necessity of explaining personal identity. This paper examines the issue from the view point of Mulla Sadra. (...) Here, the writer initially refers to some of the most important contemporary theories about personal identity which can generally be divided into two reductionist and non-reductionist branches. Reductionists intend to reduce the human identity to elements such as memory, biological specifications, or continuous psychological states, while non-reductionists are against this. Mulla Sadra's theory in this regard is not in conformity with any of the above theories; however, it is more consistent with the non-reductionist approach from certain aspects. Though relying on the fundamental ontological and psychological principles of his own philosophy, Mulla Sadra tries to present a picture of human identity that, while depending on human nature, reveals personal identity, too. This is an identity in whose process of formation the three elements of habits, intentions, and acts play major roles. The extent of the consistency of these three elements with rationality is the reason behind having people with different identities. It should also be added that no human being enjoys a single and fixed identity; rather, identity is a continuous reality that, while being one, is a plural truth. (shrink)

A review of Personhood, Ethics, and Animal Cognition: Situating Animals in Hare’s Two-Level Utilitarianism, by Gary E. Varner. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2012. Pp. xv + 336. H/b £40.23. and The Philosophy of Animal Minds, edited by Robert W. Lurz. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Pp. 320. P/b £20.21.

This paper shows that the identity of living things is a composite reality. It also suggests that the immune system constitutes a unifying process for the organism.

Derek Parfit argues in Reasons and Persons that acting according to your present desires is more rational, or at least as rational, as acting in your long-term self-interest. To do this, he puts forward a case supporting a 'critical present-aim theory' of rationality opposed to the self-interest theory, and then argues against a number of possible replies. This article is a response to these arguments, concluding that Parfit's favouring of the present-aim theory is unfounded, and that self-interest is the better (...) theory of rationality. (shrink)

Often described as an outcome, inequality is better understood as a social process -- a function of how institutions are structured and reproduced, and the ways people act and interact within them across time. Racialized inequality persists because it is enacted moment to moment, context to context -- and it can be ended should those who currently perpetuate it commit themselves to playing a different role instead. This essay makes three core contributions: first, it highlights a disturbing parity between the (...) people who are most rhetorically committed to ending racialized inequality and those who are most responsible for its persistence. Next, it explores the origin of this paradox – how it is that ostensibly antiracist intentions are transmuted into ‘benevolently racist’ actions. Finally, it presents an alternative approach to mitigating racialized inequality, one which more effectively challenges the self-oriented and extractive logics undergirding systemic racism: rather than expropriating blame to others, or else adopting introspective and psychologized approaches to fundamentally social problems, those sincerely committed to antiracism can take concrete steps in the real world – actions which require no legislation or coercion of naysayers, just a willingness to personally make sacrifices for the sake of racial justice. (shrink)

“No lies": The Hurricane Notebook, found on a Wilmington beach after a storm, contains the thoughts, artistic experiments, vignettes, and recorded dialogues of an unknown author calling herself "Elizabeth M." Its entries record the inner life of a soul in crisis, perpetually returning to the moment she learned of her sister's suicide and making an unrelenting attempt to understand herself and the human condition. Whether engaged in introspective soul-searching, or reconstructing her discussions with friends, mentors, and acquaintances, she challenges herself (...) to accept "No lies" that would mask or hide her own responsibility for evil in the world. The notebook ends abruptly; having traversed subjects as diverse as God, childhood, chess, philosophy, ballet, self-hood, conscience, guilt, and friendship, Elizabeth's questions are left uncertain and hanging in the air, just like her hope that she might find "one person on earth who understands me," and unanswered, like her plea "Having understood me, would you grieve on my behalf, my friend?". (shrink)

In this four part essay I present a comprehensive model of health based on the generalized empirical method of Bernard Lonergan, which integrates the empirical method of natural science and the phenomenological method of historical and related human sciences in a way that is unique among contemporary thinkers. The GEM model, in turn, offers a unique framework - a higher viewpoint - for integrating the manifold viewpoints of clinical practice, the humanities (the drama and narrative of human living), health science (...) and health policy in a methodically dynamic and critically progressive fashion in order to address the many pressing problems of contemporary healthcare. (shrink)

In der Diskussion um personale Identität nehmen die einflussreichen Arbeiten Derek Parfits eine Sonderstellung ein, insofern Parfit nicht bestrebt ist, eines der gängigen Identitätskriterien zu verteidigen, sondern vielmehr behauptet, dass unsere alltäglichen wie philosophischen Vorstellungen von personaler Identität unrettbar inkohärent sind und deshalb aufgegeben werden sollten. In seinem Beitrag beleuchtet Sascha Settegast die verschiedenen Argumente, die Parfit für diese provokante These vorbringt, und unternimmt insbesondere den Versuch einer systematischen Dekonstruktion der wichtigsten Gedankenexperimente Parfits, die zeigen soll, dass sich diese Gedankenexperimente (...) auf eine Weise auflösen lassen, die unsere alltäglichen Intuitionen über personale Identität intakt belässt. Settegast entwickelt dabei die Grundzüge einer Konzeption personaler Identität, die sich einerseits von den gängigen neo-lockeanischen und animalistischen Ansätzen abgrenzt und andererseits bewusst an den zeitgenössischen Neo-Aristotelismus in der Ethik anknüpft, wie er etwa bei Philippa Foot und Michael Thomp-son anzutreffen ist. Die diachrone numerische Identität menschlicher Personen gründet nach Settegasts Auffassung darin, dass der Verlauf ihres Lebens eine zeitliche Einheit aufweist, die dadurch bedingt ist, dass ihre Lebensführung die menschliche Lebensform auf eine individuell charakteristische Weise exemplifiziert. Insofern dies aber nur durch Kultivierung der Tugen-den zu erreichen ist, handelt es sich laut Settegast bei personaler Identität letztlich nicht um eine Tatsache, die einfach vorliegt oder nicht, sondern um eine Aufgabe, die uns als Menschen gegeben ist und wesentlich darin besteht, in bewusster Orientierung auf das gute Leben hin ein stabiles, sich zeitlich durchhaltendes Selbst allererst auszubilden. (shrink)

Diogenes of Sinope, bilinen adıyla Diogenes ya da Sinoplu Diyojen’e yönelik yapılan bu çalışmada amacım, Dioegenes’in yaşamının, felsefi duruşunun ve benimsediği etik kuralların kapsamlı ve belgelenmiş bir şekilde sunulmasıdır. Diogenes’in hayatını ve öğretilerini güvenilir bir şekilde aktarmak aşırı derecede zordur, çünkü diğer antik filozoflardan ayrı olarak, onun yaşamına ilişkin güvenilir kaynaklar bulmak oldukça sınırlıdır. Ayrıca, fıçının içinde yaşayan bir Kinikli’ye yönelik ortaya konulmuş birçok kurmaca anekdot ile uğraşılması gerekmektedir. Güvenilir bilginin azlığı ve belgesiz atıfların yarattığı zorluklara rağmen, yine de birçok (...) kişinin hayalinde hayatta kalmayı başaran ünlü filozofun portresini ölümünden yirmi üç yüzyıl sonra yeniden inşa etmek mümkün gözükmektedir. Bu bağlamda, Diogenes’in yaşam tarzı ve felsefesine yönelik bilgiler verilecek, ardından temsil ettiği akım olan kinizmin temel öğretileri çeşitli kaynaklardan gösterilerek aktarılacaktır. Son olarak da, Diogenes’in Sinop kültürünün ve kültürel mirasımızın bir parçası olarak kabul edilmesinin mümkün olup olmadığı tartışılacaktır. (shrink)

There is a connection between moral facts and personal identity facts: morality grounds personal identity. If, for example, old Sally enters a teletransporter, and new Sally emerges, the fundamental question to ask is: is new Sally morally responsible for actions (and omissions) of old Sally? If the moral facts are such that she is morally responsible, then Sally persisted through the teletransporter event, and if not, Sally ceased to exist.

Most believe that it is worse for a person to die than to continue to exist with a good life. At the same time, many believe that it is not worse for a merely possible person never to exist than to exist with a good life. I argue that if the underlying properties that make us the sort of thing we essentially are can come in small degrees, then to maintain this commonly-held pair of beliefs we will have to embrace (...) an implausible sort of evaluative hypersensitivity to slight nonevaluative differences. Avoidance of such hypersensitivity pressures us to accept that it can be worse for merely possible people never to exist. If this conclusion is correct, then the standard basis for giving no or less priority to merely possible persons would disappear (i.e., that things cannot be better or worse for them). Though defenders of Person-Affecting Views and their opponents may still disagree in theory, they could arrive at the same answers to many monumentally important practical questions. (shrink)

Owen Flanagan's The Bodhisattva's Brain aims to introduce secular-minded thinkers to Buddhist thought and motivate its acceptance by analytic philosophers. I argue that Flanagan provides a compelling caution against the hasty generalizations of recent “science of happiness” literature, which correlates happiness with Buddhism on the basis of certain neurological studies. I contend, however, that his positive account of Buddhist ethics is less persuasive. I question the level of engagement with Buddhist philosophical literature and challenge Flanagan's central claim, that a Buddhist (...) version of eudaimonia is a common core conception shared by all Buddhists. I argue that this view is not only a rational reconstruction in need of argumentation but is in tension with competing Buddhist metaphysical theories of self, including the one Flanagan himself endorses. (shrink)

It seems plausible that (i) how much punishment a person deserves cannot be affected by the mere existence or nonexistence of another person. We might have also thought that (ii) how much punishment is deserved cannot increase merely in virtue of personal division. I argue that (i) and (ii) are inconsistent with the popular belief that, other things being equal, when people culpably do very wrong or bad acts, they ought to be punished for this—even if they have repented, are (...) now virtuous, and punishing them would benefit no one. Insofar as we cannot deny (i), we are either forced to abandon the popular belief in desert, or else allow that personal division could, as I put it, “multiply desert.” Some may not find the latter, considered by itself, troubling. But I argue that the thesis that division multiplies desert faces a potentially serious problem, which arises in the context of personal fusion. It is difficult to see how to maintain a particular family of desert views in light of the cases here presented. (shrink)

The special and unique attitudes that we take towards events in our futures/pasts—e.g., attitudes like the dread of an impeding pain—create a challenge for “Reductionist” accounts that reduce persons to aggregates of interconnected person stages: if the person stage currently dreading tomorrow’s pain is numerically distinct from the person stage that will actually suffer the pain, what reason could the current person stage have for thinking of that future pain as being his? One reason everyday subjects believe they have a (...) substantially extended temporal existence stems from introspection—they introspectively experience their selves as being temporally extended. In this paper, I examine whether a Reductionist about personal identity can co-opt this explanation. Using Galen Strawson’s recent work on self-experience as a resource, I reach both a negative and a positive conclusion about the prospects of such a position. First, the relevant kind of self-experience—i.e., the introspective experience of one’s self as being a substantially temporally extended entity—will not automatically arise within a person stage simply in virtue of that stage being psychologically connected to/continuous with other person stages. Second, the relevant kind of self-experience will arise, however, in virtue of person stages weaving together their respective experiences, actions, etc. via a narrative. This positive conclusion points towards a new Reductionist position that focuses upon a narrative, and not mere psychological continuity, in attempting to justify the special attitudes we take towards events in our futures/pasts. (shrink)

In their paper “Sixteen Days” Barry Smith and Berit Brogaard try to answer the question: when does a human being begin to exist? In this paper we will address some methodological issues connected with this exercise in ontology. We shall begin by sketching the argument of “Sixteen Days”. We shall then attempt to characterize what is special about the ontological realism of “Sixteen Days” as contrasted to the linguistic constructivism which represents the more dominant current in contemporary analytic philosophy. This (...) will allow us to infer guidelines for assessing the quality of ontological theories of various types. We shall argue that ontological parsimony, groundedness, faithfulness to ordinary language, consistency with science, coherence, and fruitfulness are at least part of the adequacy criteria for such theories. These criteria will then be applied to the theory presented in “Sixteen Days”, and they will lead us to some revisions of this theory as well as to some reflections on its ethical implications. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to examine the relationship between the formation of the self and the worldly horizon within which this self achieves its meaning. Our inquiry takes place from two perspectives: the first derived from the Nietzschean analysis of how one becomes what one is; the other from current developments in complexity theory. This two-angled approach opens up different, yet related dimensions of a non-essentialist understanding of the self that is none the less neither arbitrary nor deterministic. (...) Indeed, at the meeting point of these two perspectives on the self lies a conception of a dynamic, worldly self, whose identity is bound up with its appearance in a world shared with others. After examining this argument from the respective view points offered by Nietzsche and complexity theory, the article concludes with a consideration of some of the political and ethical implications of representing our situatedness within a shared human domain as a condition for self-formation. (shrink)

Personalism has brought new important elements concerning the way human person is seen, but the vocational dimension has not received as much interest as other elements. By understanding vocation as the call received by every human being to exist and give his/her own existence a meaning, we propose this element as one of the fundamentals of personalist bioethics. This vocational dimension analysis of the person allows a better understanding of the primacy of responsibility, the untransferable value of identity, the attention (...) to others and the role of health professionals as transmitters of such call. -/- El personalismo ha presentado novedades importantes sobre la mirada a la persona humana, pero no se le ha dado tanto interés a su dimensión vocacional como a otros elementos. Entendida la vocación como la llamada que recibe todo ser humano a existir y a dar sentido a su propia existencia, proponemos este elemento como uno de los fundamentos de la bioética personalista. Este análisis de la dimensión vocacional de la persona nos permite comprender mejor la primacía de la responsabilidad, el valor intransferible de la identidad, la atención por el otro y el papel del profesional de la salud como transmisor de esa llamada. (shrink)

Often described as an outcome, inequality is better understood as a social process -- a function of how institutions are structured and reproduced, and the ways people act and interact within them across time. Racialized inequality persists because it is enacted moment to moment, context to context -- and it can be ended should those who currently perpetuate it commit themselves to playing a different role instead. This essay makes three core contributions: first, it highlights a disturbing parity between the (...) people who are most rhetorically committed to ending racialized inequality and those who are most responsible for its persistence. Next, it explores the origin of this paradox – how it is that ostensibly antiracist intentions are transmuted into ‘benevolently racist’ actions. Finally, it presents an alternative approach to mitigating racialized inequality, one which more effectively challenges the self-oriented and extractive logics undergirding systemic racism: rather than expropriating blame to others, or else adopting introspective and psychologized approaches to fundamentally social problems, those sincerely committed to antiracism can take concrete steps in the real world – actions which require no legislation or coercion of naysayers, just a willingness to personally make sacrifices for the sake of racial justice. (shrink)

Over the last 30 years the Indian philosopher-economist Amartya Sen has developed an original normative approach to the evaluation of individual and social well-being. The foundational concern of this ‘capability approach’ is the real freedom of individuals to achieve the kind of lives they have reason to value. This freedom is analysed in terms of an individual’s ‘capability’ to achieve combinations of such intrinsically valuable ‘beings and doings’ (‘functionings’) as being sufficiently nourished and freely expressing one’s political views. In this (...) account, ‘development’ is conceived as the expansion of individuals’ capability, and thus as a concept that goes beyond the economic growth of third world countries. My thesis is a philosophical examination of Sen’s capability approach. In the first part (chapters 1-3) I present and defend my interpretation of Sen’s work. (shrink)

Human development is meant to be transformational in that it aims to improve people's lives by enhancing their capabilities. But who does it target: people as they are or the people they will become? This paper argues that the human development approach relies on an understanding of personal identity as dynamic rather than as static collections of preferences, and that this distinguishes human development from conventional approaches to development. Nevertheless, this dynamic understanding of personal identity is presently poorly conceptualized and (...) this has implications for development practice. We identify a danger of paternalism and propose institutionalizing two procedural principles as side constraints on development policies and projects: the principle of free prior informed consent and the principle of democratic development. -/- . (shrink)

Ever since the debate concerning euthanasia was ignited, the distinction between active and passive euthanasia – or, letting die and killing – has been marked as one of its key issues. In this paper I will argue that a) the borderline between act and omission is an altogether blurry one, and it gets even vaguer when it comes to euthanasia, b) there is no morally significant difference between active and passive euthanasia, and c) if there is any, it seems to (...) favor active instead of passive euthanasia. Therefore, while the distinction between active and passive euthanasia might be meaningful in terms of description, if it is considered to be endowed with moral weight and used on purpose of justifying one type of euthanasia instead of the other, it becomes morally problematic and misleading. (shrink)

This paper takes a novel approach to the active bioethical debate over whether advance medical directives have moral authority in dementia cases. Many have assumed that advance directives would lack moral authority if dementia truly produced a complete discontinuity in personal identity, such that the predementia individual is a separate individual from the postdementia individual. I argue that even if dementia were to undermine personal identity, the continuity of the body and the predementia individual’s rights over that body can support (...) the moral authority of advance directives. I propose that the predementia individual retains posthumous rights over her body that she acquired through historical embodiment in that body, and further argue that claims grounded in historical embodiment can sometimes override or exclude moral claims grounded in current embodiment. I close by considering how advance directives grounded in historical embodiment might be employed in practice and what they would and would not justify. (shrink)

There is recent empirical evidence that personal identity is constituted by one’s moral traits. If true, this poses a problem for those who advocate for moral enhancement, or the manipulation of a person’s moral traits through pharmaceutical or other biological means. Specifically, if moral enhancement manipulates a person’s moral traits, and those moral traits constitute personal identity, then it is possible that moral enhancement could alter a person’s identity. I go a step further and argue that under the right conditions, (...) moral enhancement can constitute murder. I then argue that these conditions are not remote. (shrink)

It is commonly argued that a serious right to life is grounded only in actual, relatively advanced psychological capacities a being has acquired. The moral permissibility of abortion is frequently argued for on these grounds. Increasingly it is being argued that such accounts also entail the permissibility of infanticide, with several proponents of these theories accepting this consequence. We show, however, that these accounts imply the permissibility of even more unpalatable acts than infanticide performed on infants: organ harvesting, live experimentation, (...) sexual interference, and discriminatory killing. The stronger intuitions against the permissibility of these ‘pre-personal acts’ allow us to re-establish a comprehensive and persuasive reductio against psychological accounts of persons. (shrink)

We examined change over time in the relationship between moral identity and presence of meaning during early adulthood. Moral identity refers to a sense of morality and moral values that are central to one’s identity. Presence of meaning refers to the belief that one’s existence has meaning, purpose, and value. Participants responded to questions on moral identity and presence of meaning in their senior year of high school and two years after. Mixed effects model analyses were used to examine how (...) moral identity and presence of meaning interacted during this two-year period. The findings demonstrated that moral identity positively predicted presence of meaning over time. (shrink)

A high level of confidence in the identity of individuals is required to let them die as ordered by an advance directive. Thus, if we are animalists, then we should lack the confidence required to apply lethal advance directives to the cheerfully demented, or so I argue. In short, there is consensus among animalists that the best way to avoid serious objections to their account is to adopt an ontology that denies the existence of brains, hands, tables, chairs, iced-tea, and (...) lemonade. The adoption of such an ontology reduces the justificatory force of commonsense, which is key in arguing that we are animals and that we persist as long as we are biologically alive. With this loss of justification comes the loss of a high level of confidence that Quinn-pre-dementia’s lethal advanced directive applies to Quinn-post-dementia, via identity. If we do not have a high level of confidence that Quinn-pre-dementia’s advanced directive applies to Quinn-post- dementia, then it is not enough (on its own) to let Quinn-post-dementia die. (shrink)

This paper explores the implications of extended and distributed cognition theory for our notions of personal identity. On an extended and distributed approach to cognition, external information is under certain conditions constitutive of memory. On a narrative approach to personal identity, autobiographical memory is constitutive of our diachronic self. In this paper, I bring these two approaches together and argue that external information can be constitutive of one’s autobiographical memory and thus also of one’s diachronic self. To develop this claim, (...) I draw on recent empirical work in human-computer interaction, looking at lifelogging technologies in both healthcare and everyday contexts. I argue that personal identity can neither be reduced to psychological structures instantiated by the brain nor by biological structures instantiated by the organism, but should be seen as an environmentally-distributed and relational construct. In other words, the complex web of cognitive relations we develop and maintain with other people and technological artifacts partly determines our self. This view has conceptual, methodological, and normative implications: we should broaden our concepts of the self as to include social and artifactual structures, focus on external memory systems in the (empirical) study of personal identity, and not interfere with people’s distributed minds and selves. (shrink)

In seinem Buch ‚Die Quellen des Selbst’ (1989 / 1996) unternahm Charles Taylor den Versuch, die Geschichte der personalen Identität oder des Selbst in der abendländischen Kultur als das Wechselspiel von Individuum und Gesellschaft auf der Grundlage des jeweils allgemein vorgegebenen moralischen Verhältnisses eines Individuums zum Ganzen darzustellen. Das sog. Selbst ist nach Taylor also im Kern ein moralisch verfasstes Selbst im Sinne eines Menschen, der von sich selbst aufrichtig in seiner jeweiligen Epoche sagen kann: Ich bin ein guter Mensch. (...) Taylors Werk endet freilich in Ratlosigkeit. Er weiß nicht, auf welcher verbindlichen Grundlage der heutige, westlich sozialisierte (und zumindest in Europa mehrheitlich säkular orientierte) Mensch von sich noch sagen könnte, er sei ein guter Mensch oder führe ein gutes Leben. Der vorliegende Aufsatz versucht diese Frage zu beantworten, indem er einige Bedingungen der Möglichkeit moralisch fundierter personaler Identität erkundet, die auch und gerade unter heutigen Bedingungen noch erfüllbar sein könnten. Der Aufsatz wird zunächst den Begriff des Guten bei Taylor genauer zu entschlüsseln versuchen, um dann, auch unter Einbeziehung einiger soziologischer Kategorien, das Rahmenwerk einer sog. ‚dynamischen Identität’ zu skizzieren. (shrink)

This paper examines the complexity and fluidity of maternal identity through an examination of narratives about "real motherhood" found in children's literature. Focusing on the multiplicity of mothers in adoption, I question standard views of maternity in which gestational, genetic and social mothering all coincide in a single person. The shortcomings of traditional notions of motherhood are overcome by developing a fluid and inclusive conception of maternal reality as authored by a child's own perceptions.