Traditionally, this puzzle has been solved in various ways. Aristotle, for example, distinguished between “accidental” and “essential” changes. Accidental changes are ones that don't result in a change in an objects' identity after the change, such as when a house is painted, or one's hair turns gray, etc. Aristotle thought of these as changes in the accidental properties of a thing. Essential changes, by contrast, are those which don't preserve the identity of the object when it changes, such as when (...) a house burns to the ground and becomes ashes, or when someone dies. Armed with these distinctions, Aristotle would then say that, in the case of accidental changes, (1) and (2) are both false—a changing thing can really change one of its “accidental properties” and yet literally remain one and the same thing before and after the change. (shrink)

Advocates of the Person-Centered Healthcare (PCH) approach say that PCH is a response to a failure of caring for patients as persons. Nevertheless, there are many human subjects falling to fulfill the requirements of a traditional philosophical definition of personhood. Hence, if we take, PCH seriously, a greater clarification of the key terminology of PCH is urgently needed. It seems necessary, for instance, that the concept of the person should be extended in order to include those individuals with insipient or (...) immature levels of consciousness, as well as those who are severely and permanently mentally handicapped. In this article, we will depart from some well-known philosophical concepts of what it means to be a person and try to offer a broader and more inclusive meaning. We suggest that persons are human beings with a socially recognized biography, which implies to recognize as persons individuals with necessities, but also with narratives about their interests and claims, expressed sometimes by other people related to them. This is particularly the case of individuals that suffer from severe disorders of consciousness. For those, is not only care that matters; respect matters too. Caregivers should therefore not only sympathetically care for the well-being of these people; they should also be concerned to respect their interests and claims by interpreting them empathetically, in the light of their biographical story. Our conclusion is that, in order to be coherent, PCH must consider individuals with severe disorders of consciousness as persons and we think that our revised concept of personhood fits with this requirement. (shrink)

Derek Parfit famously argued that personal identity is not what matters for prudential concern about the future. Instead, he argues what matters is Relation R, a combination of psychological connectedness and continuity with any cause. This revisionary conclusion, Parfit argued, has profound implications for moral theory. It should lead us, among other things, to deny the importance of the separateness of persons as an important fact of morality. Instead, we should adopt impersonal consequentialism. In this paper, I argue that Parfit (...) is mistaken about this last step. His revisionary arguments about personal identity and rationality have no implications for moral theory. We need not decide whether Relation R or personal identity contain what matters if we want to retain the importance of the separateness of persons. (shrink)

Derek Parfit’s early work on the metaphysics of persons has had a vast influence on Western philosophical debates about the nature of personal identity and moral theory. Within the study of Buddhism, it also has sparked a continuous comparative discourse, which seeks to explicate Buddhist philosophical principles in light of Parfit’s conceptual framework. Examining important Parfitian-inspired studies of Buddhist philosophy, this article points out various ways in which a Parfitian lens shaped, often implicitly, contemporary understandings of the anātman doctrine and (...) its relation to Buddhist ethics. I discuss in particular three dominant elements appropriated by Parfitian-inspired scholarship: Parfit’s theoretical categories; philosophical problems raised by his reductionist theory of persons; and Parfit’s argumentative style. I argue that the three elements used in this scholarship constitute different facets of one methodological approach to cross-cultural philosophy, which relies on Western terminology and conceptual schemes to establish a conversation with non-Western philosophy. I suggest that while this methodology is fruitful in many ways, philosophy as a cosmopolitan space may benefit significantly from approaching Buddhist philosophy using its own categories and terminology. (shrink)

Baruch Spinoza, Friedrich Nietzsche and, more recently, Ruediger Bittner argued that regret is unreasonable. My article criticises this view and describes what I consider to be the common-sense understanding of regret: In some – but not all – cases of flawed actions it is unreasonable to regret what one did. The article characterises the common-sense understanding by eight principles and offers an explication of core concepts.

Among your closest associates is a certain human animal – a living, breathing, organism. You see it when you look in the mirror. When it is sick, you don't feel too well. Where it goes, you go. And, one thinks, where you go, it must follow. Indeed, you can make it move through sheer force of will. You bear, in short, an important and intimate relation to this, your animal. So too rest of us with our animals. Animalism says that (...) this relation is nothing short of identity. According to animalists, we do not only coincide with or constitute or inhabit or otherwise hang out with these close associates, our animals: we are them. In this article, I offer an opinionated take on what animalism might be and situate it against contemporary rivals. Then, I outline a simple case for animalism. Finally, I sketch non-standard routes for animalists to take in light of standard challenges. My goal in all of this is to open up some new avenues of animalist thinking. (shrink)

This paper defends Parfit's "theoretical" view of personal identity against Christine Korsgaard's objections grounded in practical identity.

It is often argued that associations are intelligent organisms with minds and intentional states of their own. It is also argued that groups are merely a plurality of individuals who are related or associated only in a specific and limited sense. This paper draws on both classical and contemporary scholarship to develop an ontological account of persons which has real-world legal and ethical implications.

Technological advancements have provided militaries with the possibility to enhance human performance and to provide soldiers with better warfighting capabilities. Though these technologies hold significant potential, their use is not without cost to the individual. This paper explores the complexities associated with using human cognitive enhancements in the military, focusing on how the _purpose and context_ of these technologies could potentially undermine a soldier’s ability to say no to these interventions. We focus on cognitive enhancements and their ability to also (...) enhance a soldier’s autonomy (i.e., autonomy-enhancing technologies). Through this lens, we explore situations that could potentially compel a soldier to accept such technologies and how this acceptance could impact rights to individual autonomy and informed consent within the military. In this examination, we highlight the contextual elements of vulnerability—institutional and differential vulnerability. In addition, we focus on scenarios in which a soldier’s right to say no to such enhancements can be diminished given the special nature of their work and the significance of making better moral decisions. We propose that though in some situations, a soldier may be compelled to accept said enhancements; with their right to say no diminished, it is not a blanket rule, and safeguards ought to be in place to ensure that autonomy and informed consent are not overridden. (shrink)

Parfit argues that survival, Not identity, Is the important thing in cases of personal resurrection, Fission, Etc. I argue that parfit's and dennett's well known cases--And fantasies about cloning and telecloning--Suggest a distinction between type and token persons, Memories, Intentions, Etc. Parfit is wrong, I suggest, To think survival more determinate than identity; with quine I hold that there is no objective matter to be right or wrong about.

In this paper I will analyse the relationship between metaphor and imagination. This issue has been recently studied by cognitive linguists who appreciate its importance, while other semantic perspectives neglect it. I will analyse the thesis which affirms that metaphors are based on cognitive components which are not logical-propositional but imaginative: the “image schemata” are recurrent models of corporeal experiences, centres of knowledge organization which structure – in a non-propositional form – an amount of salient information. This information emerges from (...) the sensorimotor activities such as: manipulation of objects, spatial orientation and focusing perceptive attention on different goals. According to this theory, imagination is the drive of the entire cognitive experience and, through metaphorical projection, it activates and coordinates the schemata from which the very linguistic activity originates. Starting with empirical studies about the cognitive and neurobiological plausibility of image schemata, I will assert the function of imagination as the trait d’union between experience and cognitive use of the metaphor, through the use of sensory and synesthetic metaphors as mediators among perceptive, physical and linguistic dimensions. I hope future research will concentrate on the relationship between synesthesia and image schemata because of their strong connection with human perceptive, cognitive and neural structures. (shrink)