Practical Identity

This paper challenges the two aims of Michael Cholbi’s Rational Will View (RWV) which are to (1) offer an account of why paternalism is presumptively or pro tanto wrong and (2) relate the relative wrongness of paternalistic interventions to the rational powers that such interventions target (Sections 1 and 2). Some of a paternalizee’s choices harm their future selves in ways that would be wrong if they were done to others. I claim this challenges Cholbi’s second aim (2) because the (...) cases his account deems particularly wrong turn out to be not to be as wrongful as expected (Section 3). When this second aim is challenged, it has knock-on effects on the capacity of the RWV to discern which cases of paternalism are generally more wrongful than others, which undermines Cholbi’s first aim (1). I consider responses on behalf of Cholbi’s view but conclude that the account is insufficient on its own to vindicate its two aims (Section 4). Finally, I draw on recent work that adopts ideas from the practical reasoning literature to help determine paternalism’s wrongness (Section 5). I argue this helps Cholbi’s view withstand my objections, but we must remain skeptical of why interceding with rational powers is particularly wrong. (shrink)

ABSTRACT I motivate ‘Origin Conventionalism’—the view that which facts about one’s origins are essential to one’s existence depends partly on our person-directed attitudes. One important upshot is that the view offers a novel and attractive solution to the Nonidentity Problem. That problem typically assumes that the sperm-egg pair from which a person originates is essential to that person’s existence; in which case, for many future persons that come into existence under adverse conditions, had those conditions not been realized, the individuals (...) wouldn’t have existed. This is problematic because it delivers the counter-intuitive conclusion that it’s not wrong to bring about such adverse conditions since they don’t harm anyone. Origin Conventionalism, in contrast, holds that whether a person’s sperm-egg origin is essential to their existence depends on their person-directed attitudes. I argue that this provides a unique and attractive way of preserving the intuition that the actions in the ‘nonidentity cases’ are morally wrong because of the potential harm done to the individuals in question. (shrink)

Disavowals such as "That's not who I am" are one way to distance ourselves from unsavory actions in order to try to mitigate our responsibility for them. Although such disclaimers can be what Harry Frankfurt calls "shabbily insincere devices for obtaining unmerited indulgence," they can also be a way to renew our commitments to new values as part of the processes of aspiration and moral improvement. What, then, separates backsliding aspirants from those in denial who seek unmerited indulgence? Drawing on (...) Christine Korsgaard, on the one hand, and Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty, on the other, I propose a two-dimensional account of practical identity that makes sense of a certain kind of self-ignorance and helps us distinguish the aspirant from the superficially similar cases of denial and resignation. A key factor is how one responds to what I call residual practical identities. (shrink)

Reflectivists consider reflective reasoning crucial for good judgment and action. Anti-reflectivists deny that reflection delivers what reflectivists seek. Alas, the evidence is mixed. So, does reflection confer normative value or not? This paper argues for a middle way: reflection can confer normative value, but its ability to do this is bound by such factors as what we might call epistemic identity: an identity that involves particular beliefs—for example, religious and political identities. We may reflectively defend our identities’ beliefs rather than (...) reflect open-mindedly to adopt whatever beliefs cohere with the best arguments and evidence. This bounded reflectivism is explicated with an algorithmic model of reflection synthesized from philosophy and science that yields testable predictions, psychometric implications, and realistic metaphilosophical suggestions—for example, overcoming motivated reflection may require embracing epistemic identity rather than veiling it (à la Rawls 1971). So bounded reflectivism should be preferred to views offering anything less. (shrink)

Drawing on work in the Philosophy of Race, this chapter argues that the existence of races in heaven is either incompatible or only questionably compatible with the mainstream Christian view of the afterlife. However, it also argues that there is a phenomenon adjacent and related to race that can exist in the afterlife, namely racial identity. If one thinks of racial identity as a kind of practical identity, it turns out that racial identity is primarily psychological. Thus, its existence in (...) heaven is compatible with the mainstream Christian view that people with some semblance of human psychology continue on after death. Furthermore, the chapter offers reasons to think that we will need racial identities in the afterlife to facilitate forgiveness and reconciliation. Finally, it suggests that preserving racial identities from this life to the next is, on balance, preferable. (shrink)

Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) is an invasive therapeutic method involving the implantation of electrodes and the electrical stimulation of specific areas of the brain to modulate their activity. DBS brings therapeutic benefits, but can also have adverse side effects. Recently, neuroethicists have recognized that DBS poses a threat to the very fabric of human existence, namely, to the selves of patients. This article provides a review of the neuroethical literature examining this issue, and identifies the crucial dimensions related to the (...) self which DBS may endanger—personal identity, authenticity, and autonomy. The most influential theories accounting for these dimensions are analyzed herein, and it is argued that most of these theories require further refinement. This paper also demonstrates the interrelation between personal identity, authenticity, and autonomy, and concludes that one can only fully understand the impact of DBS on the self when all of these factors are taken into account. (shrink)

There has been a growing interest in research concerning memory modification technologies (MMTs) in recent years. Neuroscientists and psychologists are beginning to explore the prospect of controllable and intentional modification of human memory. One of the technologies with the greatest potential to this end is optogenetics—an invasive neuromodulation technique involving the use of light to control the activity of individual brain cells. It has recently shown the potential to modify specific long-term memories in animal models in ways not yet possible (...) with other MMTs. As the therapeutic potential of optogenetics has already prompted approval of the first human trials, it is especially important and timely to consider the opportunities and dangers this technology may entail. In this article, we focus on possible consequences of optogenetics as an MMT by analyzing fundamental threats potentially associated with memory modifications: the potential disruption of personality and authenticity. (shrink)

On the basis of two thought experiments, I argue that self-building technologies are possible given our current level of technological progress. We could already use technology to make us instantiate selfhood in a more perfect, complete manner. I then examine possible extensions of this thesis, regarding more radical self-building technologies which might become available in a distant future. I also discuss objections and reservations one might have about this view.

What justifies one interlocutor to challenge the conversational expectations of the other? Paul Grice approaches conversation as one instance of joint action that, like all such action, is governed by the Cooperative Principle. He thinks the expectations of the interlocutors must align, although he acknowledges that expectations can and do shift in the course of a conversation through a process he finds strange. Martin Heidegger analyzes discourse as governed by the normativity of care for self and for another. It is (...) the structure of care that warrants disrupting the presumed cooperative horizon of a conversation in order to occasion some new insight. The chapter expands Heidegger’s ontological conception of care to make sense of the exigencies of conversation. Conversation requires taking cognizance of (1) the human good, (2) the specifics of the conversational context, and (3) one’s responsibilities for the other. This threefold understanding can provide directives for subverting the interlocutor’s expectation for the purposes of a given conversation. (shrink)

Disagreements about abortion are often assumed to reduce to disagreements about fetal personhood (and mindedness). If one believes a fetus is a person (or has a mind), then they are “pro-life.” If one believes a fetus is not a person (or is not minded), they are “pro-choice.” The issue, however, is much more complicated. Not only is it not dichotomous—most everyone believes that abortion is permissible in some circumstances (e.g. to save the mother’s life) and not others (e.g. at nine (...) months of a planned pregnancy)—but scholars on both sides of the issue (e.g. Don Marquis and Judith Thomson) have convincingly argued that fetal personhood (and mindedness) are irrelevant to the debate. To determine the extent to which they are right, this article will define “personhood,” its relationship to mindedness, and explore what science has revealed about the mind before exploring the relevance of both to questions of abortion’s morality and legality. In general, this article does not endorse a particular answer to these questions, but the article should enhance the reader’s ability to develop their own answers in a much more informed way. (shrink)

In The Sickness unto Death, Kierkegaard describes selfhood as an achievement, specifically claiming that the self’s task ‘is to become itself’ (SUD, 29/SKS 11, 143). But how can one can become who or what one already is, and what sort of achievement is it? This chapter draws on the work of Christine Korsgaard, another philosopher who sees selfhood as an achievement, using her notion of practical identity to explore Kierkegaard’s accounts of the structure of the self and of selfhood as (...) achievement. Kierkegaard’s treatment of selfhood—as aspirational and, if undertaken well, appropriately grounded in one’s facticity (i.e. the concrete facts of one’s situation)—suggests how consciously endorsed identities can guide (or fail to guide) our agency. Having a practical identity involves striving to inhabit adopted roles by aligning our actions with relevant normative demands, but also sometimes embracing and consciously adopting identities already tacitly guiding our engagement with the world. This framework also suggests several ways we can be alienated from desires, actions, or, more generally, our selves. Putting Kierkegaard in conversation with contemporary agency theory, this chapter has two guiding lines of inquiry. First, what does it mean to achieve selfhood and how can the notion of practical identity illuminate or be illuminated by this question? Second, how can this analysis clarify the experience of not being oneself, whether resulting from self-deception, self-ignorance, or the potentially frustrating gap between who one is and who one wants to be? (shrink)

The thought that empathy plays an important role in moral motivation is almost a platitude of contemporary folk psychology. Parallel themes were mooted in German moral philosophy and aesthetics in the 1700s, and versions of the empathy construct remained prominent in continental accounts of moral motivation through the nineteenth century and early twentieth centuries. This chapter elucidates the Empathic Motivation Hypothesis (EMH) and sets out some of the conceptual and empirical challenges it faces. It distinguishes empathic concern from other dimensions (...) of empathy (e.g., resonance, attunement, distress, and non-empathic concern) and examines the merits of EMH as a developmental thesis, focusing on evidence from psychopathology and attachment theory. (shrink)

The article aims at contrasting the autopoietic understanding of an individual and her or his actions as described by Niklas Luhmann with Paul Ricoeur’s notion of narrative identity, focusing on people as legal subjects. The article assumes that when legal subjects necessitate ethical engagement and evaluation, the law could cease to deal with problems in a mere legalistic fashion but is allowed the freedom to appeal to norms of justice external to itself as in other natural law theories. Through narrative (...) identity the deeds of role players are to be understood in greater complexity than what a self-referential legal system is comfortable in dealing with. (shrink)

This paper introduces three new criteria that a theory of personal identity ought to satisfy: (1) material holism, (2) narrative unity, and (3) narrative integrity. Material holism guards against the undesirable consequence of positing the person as part and existentially distinct from the organismal whole, of which it is dependent and interconnected. Narrative unity ensures that continuity between the beginning, middle, and end of a human life is sufficiently accounted for. Narrative integrity secures fidelity and congruence between each part and (...) the whole, the whole to each part. Jeff McMahan’s Embodied Mind Account (EM) fails to satisfy each of these. On McMahan’s account, human persons and human organisms are distinct entities, human persons come into existence after its human organism, and human persons may go out of existence before their human organism. Moreover, fetuses, infants, the congenitally severely cognitively impaired, those with severe dementia, and the comatose are non-persons. A theory of personal identity that incorporates holism and narrative can provide a better explanation of human existence, life and death, and the identity paradox of dicephalic twins. If accepted, EM must either be rejected or ameliorated, and the new criteria ought to be incorporated in contemporary research of personal identity. (shrink)

In the industrial era, advanced science and technology make immortality-obsessed human beings constantly develop, modify, and reshape their bodies and consciousness, to overcome the fragility and transience of their bodies and approach the dream of immortality. The transformation of the body, in turn, drives society to confront the co-existence of cyborg, transhuman, information subject, nomadic posthuman and other life forms. Focusing on Chinese-American writer Ken Liu’s science fiction the Future Trilogy, Arc, and The Waves, this paper attempts to explore the (...) metamorphosis of the body and the ethical choices in the tension between death and immortality, embodiment and disembodiment. Immortality is not a Utopian paradise but causes many ethical problems and loss of continuity of time, space, history, and identity. Liu’s works suggest that the solution to the problem of posthuman disembodiment involves embracing embodiment and recognizing the importance of memory and social interaction in the formation of one’s identity, affirming that memory and the interaction with others are necessary conditions for the formation of the subject’s identity. Blending genesis myths and technological immortality, Liu explores the possibility of creating new life different from human beings. The posthumans depicted are always in the status of becoming, eager to discover the new world, and indicate the author’s expectations for the bright new future. (shrink)

The idea that love changes who we are is widely shared, and has been mostly explored from a stance in the middle stage of love (i.e., when people already love each other). But how do we get there? And what happens when love ends? In this chapter, I explore how self-understanding may be shaped in different ways at different stages of love through the notions of narrative and existential feeling. As I will argue, love gains narrative momentum at the beginning, (...) which is maintained during the middle, and ultimately extinguished at the end. This momentum is triggered and later sustained by the existential feeling that ‘things make sense’, which keeps the lovers oriented towards each other. (shrink)

For nearly two decades, ethicists have expressed concerns that the further development and use of memory modification technologies (MMTs)—techniques allowing to intentionally and selectively alter memories—may threaten the very foundations of who we are, our personal identity, and thus pose a threat to our well-being, or even undermine our “humaneness.” This paper examines the potential ramifications of memory-modifying interventions such as changing the valence of targeted memories and selective deactivation of a particular memory as these interventions appear to be at (...) the same time potentially both most promising clinically as well as menacing to identity. However, unlike previous works discussing the potential consequences of MMTs, this article analyzes them in the context of the narrative relational approach to personal identity and potential issues related to autonomy. I argue that such a perspective brings to light the ethical aspects and moral issues arising from the use of MMTs that have been hidden from previously adopted approaches. In particular, this perspective demonstrates how important the social context in which an individual lives is for the ethical evaluation of a given memory-modifying intervention. I conclude by suggesting that undertaking memory modifications without taking into account the social dimension of a person’s life creates the risk that she will not be able to meet one of the basic human needs—the autonomous construction and maintenance of personal identity. Based on this conclusion, I offer some reflections on the permissibility and advisability of MMTs and what these considerations suggest for the future. (shrink)

The aims of this paper are to: (1) identify the best framework for comprehending multidimensional impact of deep brain stimulation on the self; (2) identify weaknesses of this framework; (3) propose refinements to it; (4) in pursuing (3), show why and how this framework should be extended with additional moral aspects and demonstrate their interrelations; (5) define how moral aspects relate to the framework; (6) show the potential consequences of including moral aspects on evaluating DBS’s impact on patients’ selves. Regarding (...) (1), I argue that the pattern theory of self can be regarded as such a framework. In realizing (2) and (3), I indicate that most relevant issues concerning PTS that require resolutions are ontological issues, including the persistence question, the “specificity problem”, and finding lacking relevant aspects of the self. In realizing (4), I identify aspects of the self not included in PTS which are desperately needed to investigate the full range of potentially relevant DBS-induced changes—authenticity, autonomy, and responsibility, and conclude that how we define authenticity will have implications for our concept of autonomy, which in turn will determine how we think about responsibility. Concerning (5), I discuss a complex relation between moral aspects and PTS—on one hand, they serve as the lens through which a particular self-pattern can be evaluated; on the other, they are, themselves, products of dynamical interactions of various self-aspects. Finally, I discuss (6), demonstrating novel way of understanding the effects of DBS on patients’ selves. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to analyze the basis for the moral obligation to remember. As the moral relation to the past is primarily a matter of shared identity, the kind of obligation in question splits into two related issues, namely, that of political, state-oriented and state-organized memory on which the political identity rests and that of memory labour grounded in social identities based in shared, time-extended projects. Drawing upon tensions between these two, I discuss time control and the (...) accumulation of identity as central to memory labour and, referring to John Zerzan’s critique of symbolical roots of power, pinpoint the moral basis of such an accumulation. On the basis of this, I argue for nesting the duty to remember in acknowledging the agent’s recognition of the relatedness and dependency of their agency and possibilities of flourishing which can be obtained thanks to adjusting the field of the virtue of practical wisdom so that it includes members of the time-extended community. (shrink)

Everyone thinks they know who Prince Zuko is and can be. His father, Fire Lord Ozai, and sister, Azula, think him weak, disobedient, and undeserving of the crown. His Uncle Iroh thinks him good, if troubled, but ultimately worthy of his faith. The kids initially think him a villain, but eventually come to see him as a person – neither monster nor saint – someone who can choose to go in a new way. Zuko himself shows great ambivalence between these (...) conflicting stories about who he is, though each one helps to craft his own self-understanding. In this paper, we apply Hilde Lindemann’s narrative account of the self to explore the ways that others “hold” Zuko in one identity or “let him go” from others. According to Lindemann, our personal identities consist of the first- and third-person stories that cluster around significant acts, relationships, and commitments in our lives. Our identities are fundamentally relational, formed by the interaction between our own self-conception and the ways in which others see us. As such, others’ stories can enable or prevent us from imaginatively projecting ourselves into a particular future. This can lead us to becoming trapped in our identities; without the possibility of being perceived differently by others, we might find ourselves unable to try different ways of being or acting. The converse is also true, in that others can open up new possible identities by seeing things in us that we have trouble seeing in ourselves. If others in our moral community see us as wicked, beyond redemption and unable to repair our wrongs, we are held in the role of the villain and might come to live into that role without question. Zuko’s story is a perfect illustration of Jean Harvey’s reminder that, “it is just not true that once a thief, always a thief” and that agents can choose to go in a new way, can choose to change. How does Zuko change? We argue that Zuko’s redemption is enabled by those in his moral community holding him in identities in which he is a good person, capable and deserving of care, friendship, and love. While the identity he has in relation to his father and sister closes down many possible futures, his uncle Iroh in particular persists in holding him in an identity in which he is loved and worthy of love. And in doing so - in holding this space for him - Iroh opens up a way for Zuko to exercise agency and choose to become a different kind of person than the one he thought he was destined to be. (shrink)

One goal of this paper is to argue that autobiographical memories are extended and distributed across embodied brains and environmental resources. This is important because such distributed memories play a constitutive role in our narrative identity. So, some of the building blocks of our narrative identity are not brain-bound but extended and distributed. Recognising the distributed nature of memory and narrative identity, invites us to find treatments and strategies focusing on the environment in which dementia patients are situated. A second (...) goal of this paper is to suggest various of such strategies, including lifelogging technologies such as SenseCams, life story books, multimedia biographies, memory boxes, ambient intelligence systems, and virtual reality applications. Such technologies allow dementia patients to remember their personal past in a way that wouldn’t be possible by merely relying on their biological memory, in that way aiding in preserving their narrative identity and positively contributing to their sense of well-being. (shrink)

A self is a temporal unity in which responsibility for past commitments modifies how the present world is experienced and evaluated. This structure is analogous (a) to biological evolutionary changes in perception and (b) to how changes in a computer program determine how it will respond in the future. Responsibility is not an add-on to a self, but the mode of its integration over time. (Presented at Royal Institute of Philosophy Annual Conference, Narrative and Understanding Persons, University of Hertfordshire, UK, (...) 2005). (shrink)

The self is not a metaphysical object but a mode of temporal organization unified by responsibility. Learning to be responsible constitutes the self as a self-identical entity over time. Responsibility depends on the current self interpreting previous events, attributing them to itself and thereby committing itself for the future. (2004) .

In this entry, we survey key discussions on the role of narrative in theology and philosophy of religion. We begin with epistemological questions about whether and how narrative offers genuine understanding of reality. We explore how narrative intersects with the problems of evil and divine hiddenness. We discuss narrative's role in theological reflection and practice in general, and in black and feminist theologies specifically. We close by briefly exploring the role of narrative in theorization about life's meaning.

In “Of Personal Identity”, Hume attempts to understand why we ordinarily believe in persistent selves. He proposes that this ontological commitment depends on illusions and fictions: the imagination tricks us into supposing that an unchanging core self remains static through the flux and change of experience. Recent work in cognitive science provides a good deal of support for Hume’s hypothesis that common beliefs about the self are founded on psychological biases rather than rational insight or evidence. We naturally believe in (...) personal persistence, according to this emerging research, because we are prone to categorize the world in terms of hidden essences and structure our lives in terms of whole life stories. (shrink)

It is widely held that it is good to conceive of one's life narratively, but why this is the case has not been well established. I argue that conceiving of one's life narratively can contribute to one's flourishing by mediating to oneself a second-person experience of oneself, furnishing one with valuable second-personal productive distance from oneself and as a result self-understanding. Drawing on Eleonore Stump's theory that narratives re-present to their audiences the second-person experiences they depict, I argue that conceiving (...) of one's life narratively facilitates taking on the second-person experience that an audience would have in hearing one's life narrative, mediating how someone from a second-person perspective might perceive oneself and as a result yielding valuable self-understanding. I conclude with some practical implications. (shrink)

Dennett elabora una concepción del “yo” entendido como un centro de gravedad narrativo. Uno de los obstáculos principales para valorar esta propuesta radica en que resulta dificultoso entender cuál es la naturaleza del concepto dennettiano de “yo”: concretamente, cuáles son los compromisos ontológicos y epistemológicos que cabe atribuir al fenómeno en cuestión. En este artículo defendemos que el mejor modo de realizar una reconstrucción interpretativa de su noción de “yo” es apelando a la distinción elaborada por Reichenbach entre tres clases (...) de entidades, Concreta,a e Illata, y entendiendo a los centros de gravedad narrativos como un caso de Abstracta reichenbachiano. Sostenemos que resulta pertinente e iluminador entender los centros de gravedad narrativos como Abstracta en el sentido de Reichenbach, apoyándonos en que: i) aunque no la aplica directamente al problema de la naturaleza del “yo”, Dennett sí emplea la distinción de Reichenbach en otras partes de su obra; ii) Dennett traza explícitamente una analogía del “yo” con los centros de gravedad que son, justamente, uno de sus ejemplos de Abstracta; iii) este modo de entender al “yo” permite dar sentido y entender mejor ciertos aspectos de la teoría narrativista dennettiana. Además de permitirnos clarificar las metáforas empleadas por Dennett en la elaboración de su teoría narrativa, dicha elucidación conceptual permite comprender mejor la distinción entre las tres clases de psicología intencional trazada por Dennett y es útil para sugerir a cuál de estos tres tipos pertenece el concepto de “yo”. Dennett's theory of personal identity argues that the “self” is no more than a center of narrative gravity. One of the main hurdles to assessing this proposal lies in the fact that it is difficult to understand what the nature of Dennett's concept of "self" is; specifically, what are the ontological and epistemological commitments that can be attributed to the phenomenon in question. In this article, we claim that the best way to make an interpretative reconstruction of his notion of "self" is appealing to the distinction elaborated by Reichenbach between three classes of entities, Concreta, Abstracta, and Illata, and understanding the narrative centers of gravity as a case of Reichenbachian Abstracta. We defend that understanding the narrative centers of gravity as Abstracta in the sense of Reichenbach is pertinent and illuminating given that: i) although he does not apply it directly to the problem of the nature of the "self", Dennett does use Reichenbach's distinction in other parts of his work; ii) Dennett explicitly draws an analogy of the "self" with the centers of gravity that are, precisely, one of his examples of Abstracta; iii) this way of understanding the "self" allows us to give sense and better understand certain aspects of Dennett’s narrative theory. Besides allowing us to clarify the metaphors used by Dennett in the elaboration of his narrative theory, such conceptual elucidation allows us to better understand the distinction between the three classes of intentional psychology drawn by Dennett (1987) and is useful in suggesting to which of these three types the concept of "self" belongs. (shrink)

Thought Experiments in Ethics, 2021 CONTENTS Preface i Chapter I The Story in Your Head: Tomoceuszkakatiti and Gyugyu 1 Chapter II How Thought Experiments Move Us: The Samaritan and His Neighbours 16 Chapter III What Makes a Thought Experiment? 34 Chapter IV Thought Experiments in Practical Philosophy and Bioethics 75 Chapter V The Experience Machine 93 Chapter VI The Last Man Argument 129 Chapter VII The Trolley Problem 158 Chapter VIII The Violinist Analogy 213 Conclusion 246 Notes 248.

How can personal identity be determined in such a way that developments, experiences and other dynamic and context-dependent aspects of that identity can be taken into account? For several decades now, the narrative, the story, has often been referred to in answering this question as a cognitive instrument that can adequately deal with those aspects. The monologue thus appears to present itself as a medium in which personal or autobiographical identity is formed. However, what happens when we place the identity (...) narrative in a dialogue: when two people with very diverse backgrounds have a dialogue that touches on their identity? Does this perhaps provide an entirely new challenge and enrichment of that narrative, which can have a major impact on both the individual and the relationship? I want to explore these questions in this article, motivated by both the philosophical perspective and my experiences as co-initiator of the "Keti Koti Table", in which such a dialogue plays a central role. To this end, I will first discuss the dynamic aspects of the narrative, in which the phenomenon of "refiguration" as presented by Ricoeur is key. This is then discussed in the context of the dialogue. In § 4 I discuss the specific dialogue method that we have developed for the Keti Koti Table. Subsequently, in § 5, some experiences of participants are discussed, whose identity refigurations are analyzed under the influence of the dialogue in § 6. It is concluded with a brief conclusion about the special significance of the dialogue for the narrative self-constitution in a diverse society. (shrink)

In this paper, I provide an analysis of Marya Schechtman's theory of personal identity defended in her book Staying Alive: Personal Identity, Practical Concerns, and the Unity of a Life.

Pandemic-related restrictions can be especially tragic for people whose lives are ending; it seems that the needs and desires of people who are dying should be given extra consideration. Given an additivist view of well-being, however, the last weeks of a person's life can only matter so much relative to the rest of the life they had. This article reflects on the end of my mother's life during the Covid-19 pandemic in order to make the case that the additive view (...) of well-being is part of a broader trend of dehumanizing emergency ethics. (shrink)

While the nature of the virtues and their role in human action are controversial, we wish to explore the thesis that virtues play a causal role in the production of action. One fruitful, though controversial, approach to understanding the nature of the self is through the notion of a narrative and in particular a person’s self narrative or narratives. Similarly we wish to explore the thesis that self narratives play a causal role in action. We consider how virtues and self-narratives (...) interrelate and, in particular, how they play a comparable role in the production of action. The basic ideas in the literature concerning reasons as causes of action provide us with a useful starting point even though the focus on reasons has tended to sideline potential causal roles for both virtues and self-narratives. Without attempting to develop a new theory of causation, we draw a picture of how virtues and self-narratives, in relation to each other, can be regarded as causally effective in producing action. (shrink)

Narrative views of agency and identity arise in opposition to reductionism in both domains. While reductionists understand both identity and agency in terms of their components, narrativists respond that life and action are both constituted by narratives, and since the components of a narrative gain their meaning from the whole, life and action not only incorporate their constituent parts but also shape them. I first lay out the difficulties with treating narrative as constitutive of metaphysical identity and turn to its (...) function in practical identity. I then explore the ways narrative shapes our agency—by tapping into our motivational structures, providing an understanding of the social background within which our agency operates, guiding our agency through an understanding of our histories and aspirations, providing the links that structure actions internally, and allowing us to change the meaning of our pasts. I suggest that putting these functions of narrative together may allow us to genuinely shape our past motivational structures through our actions. Finally, if life has the form of a narrative, it may seem as if mortality is necessary for our lives and their contents to be meaningful: a narrative, it might seem, relies on the ending for its meaning. If so, an immortal life would be meaningless. I examine the possibility that even an immortal life may draw meaning from local narratives that constitute projects within such a life, while arguing that, to the contrary, narrative may be a tool exclusively adapted to mortal lives. (shrink)

En este capítulo, defiendo que el proceso de identificación presente en relaciones de amor romántico tiene una estructura narrativa en tres niveles: social, intersubjetivo y personal.

In Greek mythology the Muses –patron goddesses of fine arts, history, humanities, and sciences– are tellingly portrayed as the daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne, the goddess Memory, who is of the race of Titans, older still than Zeus and other Olympian deities. The relationship between memory and such fields as epic poetry, history, music and dance is easily recognizable to moderns. But bards/poets like Homer and Hesiod, who began oral storytelling by “invoking the Muses” with their audience, knew well that (...) remembering, forgetting, and imagining are each to be esteemed as, in Hesiod’s words, “gifts of the goddesses.” The economy of memory is an important concern for moral psychology, philosophy of emotions, and philosophy of imagination. This chapter examines ways that amusements, both classically and today, can function to educate moral emotions in and though their multi-faceted engagements with the economy of memory. (shrink)

Memory technologies are cultural artifacts that scaffold, transform, and are interwoven with human biological memory systems. The goal of this article is to provide a systematic and integrative survey of their philosophical dimensions, including their metaphysical, epistemological and ethical dimensions, drawing together debates across the humanities, cognitive sciences, and social sciences. Metaphysical dimensions of memory technologies include their function, the nature of their informational properties, ways of classifying them, and their ontological status. Epistemological dimensions include the truth-conduciveness of external memory, (...) the conditions under which external memory counts as knowledge, and the metacognitive monitoring of external memory processes. And lastly, ethical and normative dimensions include the desirability of the effects memory technologies have on biological memory, their effects on self and culture, and their moral status. Whilst the focus in the article is largely philosophical and conceptual, empirical issues such as the way we interact with memory technologies in various contexts are also discussed. We thus take a naturalistic approach in which philosophical and empirical concepts and approaches are seen as continuous. (shrink)

Kirjasymposioartikkeli esittelee Hanna Meretojan teoksen The Ethics of Storytelling: Narrative Hermeneutics, History, and the Possible (Oxford University Press, 2018) keskeisimmät ajatukset ja kytkee ne laajempaan hermeneuttiseen ja jälkistrukturalistiseen ajatteluperinteeseen, etenkin Jean-François Lyotardin luonnehdintaan jälkimodernista aikakaudesta suurten modernien historiallisten metakertomusten horjumisen ja pienten paikallisten kertomusten moneuden aikakautena. Tässä valossa Meretojan hermeneuttista kertomusetiikkaa voidaan lukea ennen muuta pienten, ei-totalisoivien kertomusten etiikkana. Artikkeli esittää, että tällaiselle etiikalle löytyy hedelmällinen vertailukohta Hannah Arendtin totalitarismiteoriasta, joka sijoittaa ideologiset metakertomukset totalitaarisen hallinnan ja sen tuottaman ”banaalin pahuuden” (...) ytimeen; niin Arendtin kuin Meretojankin kertomusetiikan keskeisenä viitekohtana on holokausti moderniteetin eettisenä nollapisteenä. Nämä yhteydet tuovat esiin Meretojan hahmotteleman hermeneuttisen etiikan laajan teoreettisen kaikupohjan myöhäismodernissa ajatteluperinteessä. Lopuksi pohditaan kysymystä hermeneuttisen pienten kertomusten etiikan jatkuvasta ajankohtaisuudesta sosiaalisen median ja sen ”kuplien” aikakaudella. (shrink)

Poetry and Ethics: Inventing Possibilities in Which We Are Moved to Action and How We Live Together, Obiora Ike / Andrea Grieder / Ignace Haaz (Eds.), Global Series No. 16, Geneva: Globethics Publications, 2018, pp. 247-262.

This book on the topic of ethics and poetry consists of contributions from different continents on the subject of applied ethics related to poetry. It should gather a favourable reception from philosophers, ethicists, theologians and anthropologists from Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America and allows for a comparison of the healing power of words from various religious, spiritual and philosophical traditions. The first part of this book presents original poems that express ethical emotions and aphorism related to a philosophical questioning (...) of the grounding of our values for life. The poems are written by twelve authors coming from four continents, for whom poetic emotions are sources of artistic inspiration and that can be used for conflict resolution. In the second part, which features short essays, nine authors tackle how poems, symbolic representations, metaphorical narratives and lies impact the space of possibilities, in which we are moved to action, knowledge formation, and how we imagine the world together. (shrink)

Nancy Jecker and Andrew Ko (2017) wish to present an account of personal identity which captures what matters to the patient and places the patient at the center of medical decisions. They focus particularly on medical interventions in the brain that can cause drastic changes in personality; under what circumstances should we say the patient has 'survived' these changes? More specifically, how can we best understand the notion of survival in a way that captures what is of concern to the (...) patient? This goal is laudable, however, their chosen account of narrative identity is ill-suited to this task for one reason in particular; it does not give sufficient guidance in predicting which medical decisions are likely to be experienced as disruptive to identity. (shrink)

Many people believe that for someone to now be responsible for some past action, the agent of that action and the responsible agent now must be one and the same person. In other words, many people that moral responsibility presupposes numerical personal identity. In this paper, I show why this platitude is false. I then suggest an account of what actual metaphysical relationship moral responsibility presupposes instead.

In this paper, I examine Eugenio Lecaldano’s way of tackling the issue of the meaning of life. I highlight the dependence of his individualistic approach on the specific character of the person who inquires into the meaning of life. I also sketch a weaker way of understanding the meaning of life as an attempt to provide reasons which are valid from the standpoint of the present, and which will make us continue living.

I argue against two popular claims. The first is a descriptive, empirical thesis about the nature of ordinary human experience: ‘each of us constructs and lives a “narrative” . . . this narrative is us, our identities’ (Oliver Sacks); ‘self is a perpetually rewritten story . . . in the end, we become the autobiographical narratives by which we “tell about” our lives’ (Jerry Bruner); ‘we are all virtuoso novelists. . . . We try to make all of our material (...) cohere into a single good story. And that story is our autobiography. The chief fictional char- acter . . . of that autobiography is one’s self’ (Dan Dennett). The second is a normative, ethical claim: we ought to live our lives narratively, or as a story; a ‘basic condition of making sense of ourselves is that we grasp our lives in a narrative’ and have an understanding of our lives ‘as an unfolding story’ (Charles Taylor). A person ‘creates his identity [only] by forming an autobiographical narrative – a story of his life’, and must be in possession of a full and ‘explicit narrative [of his life] to develop fully as a person’ (Marya Schechtman). (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to examine the central role of praxis in Arendt’s conception of the human world and the structure of political life as a site of subjective interaction and narrative discourse. First, Arendt’s use of Aristotle will be presented in terms of the meaning of action as a unique philosophical category. Second, Arendt’s encounter with the work of Martin Heidegger will be shown to involve a critical response to his reading of Aristotle. Finally, the revised conception (...) of praxis that derives from her philosophical reflections will be related to the experience of narrative as a necessary complement to human plurality. (shrink)

Our ability to tell stories about ourselves has captivated many theorists, and some have taken these developments for an opportunity to answer long-standing questions about the nature of personhood. In this essay I employ two skeptical arguments to show that this move was a mistake. The first argument rests on the observation that storytelling is revisionary. The second implies that our stories about ourselves are biased in regard to our existing self-image. These arguments undercut narrative theories of identity, but they (...) leave room for a theory of narrative self-knowledge. The theory accommodates the first skeptical argument because there are event descriptions with retrospective assertibility conditions, and it accommodates the second argument by denying us epistemic privilege in regard to our own past. The result is that we do know our past through storytelling, but that it is a contingent feature of some of our stories that they are about ourselves. (shrink)

Why do we tell our life stories? What is the point of studying narratives? What is the truth of narratives? How are narratives collected and studied by researchers? In this book the voices of teachers, education researchers, student teachers and philosophers join to form a polyphonic voice that attempts to answer these questions. They shed light on the obscure world of narrative research. This book contains both theoretical articles and empirical examples of narrative research. The theoretical articles introduce and develop (...) the basic concepts of narrative research and focus attention on its philosophical foundations. The empirical articles apply the narrative approach in a multi-dimensional way and provide a clear illustration of narrative research in action. The narrative data consists of teachers' stories about teacher education and school practice. (shrink)

John Fischer has recently argued that the value of acting freely is the value of self-expression. Drawing on David Velleman’s earlier work, Fischer holds that the value of a life is a narrative value and free will is valuable insofar as it allows us to shape the narrative structure of our lives. This account rests on Fischer’s distinction between regulative control and guidance control. While we lack the former kind of control, on Fischer’s view, the latter is all that is (...) needed for self-expression. I first develop Fischer’s narrative account, focusing on his reliance on temporal loops as giving us control over the value of our lives. Second, I argue that the narrative account grants us greater power over the past than Fischer would allow: since narrative allows not only for changes in how we feel about episodes in our past but what those episodes in fact were, it allows for a kind of retroactive self-constitution. Finally, I suggest that this modification of the narrative view opens the possibility of a conception of freedom far stronger than guidance control. It does not give us the libertarian control over whether to choose A or B in the present, but it does provide a measure of control over the sort of person an agent has been, and thus whether she is the sort of person who will choose A or B in the future. (shrink)

Marya Schechtman has raised a series of worries for the Psychological Continuity Theory of personal identity (PCT) stemming out of what Derek Parfit called the ‘Extreme Claim’. This is roughly the claim that theories like it are unable to explain the importance we attach to personal identity. In her recent Staying Alive (2014), she presents further arguments related to this and sets out a new narrative theory, the Person Life View (PLV), which she sees as solving the problems as well (...) as bringing other advantages over the PCT. I look over some of her earlier arguments and responses to them as a way in to the new issues and theory. I argue that the problems for the PCT and advantages that the PLV brings are all merely apparent, and present no reason for giving up the former for the latter. (shrink)

Heidegger, like Kierkegaard, has recently been claimed as a narrativist about selves. From this Heideggerian perspective, we can see how narrative expands upon the psychological view, adding a vital teleological dimension to the understanding of selfhood while denying the reductionism implicit in the psychological approach. Yet the narrative approach also inherits the neo-Lockean emphasis on the past as determining identity, whereas the self is fundamentally about the future. Death is crucial on this picture, not as allowing for the possibility of (...) a final meaning to our lives, but as determining Dasein as ‘pure unactualizable possibility.’ Ultimately, therefore, narrative is not what constitutes selfhood – but this does not mean that narrative is not relevant to personal identity, because narrative allows identity to be expressed in action. (shrink)