If someone with dissociative identity disorder commits a wrongful act, is she responsible? If one adopts the Multiple Persons Thesis, it may seem that one alter cannot be responsible for the actions of another alter. Conversely, if one regards the subject as a single person, it may seem that she is responsible for any actions she performs. I will argue that this subject is a single person, but one who suffers from delusions of disownership and therefore does not fulfill ordinary (...) requirements for responsible agency. This is because she suffers from extreme ambivalence: her deep-seated needs and desires conflict, and she forms alter-personalities as a way to cope with inner discord without abandoning any of these contradictory impulses. However, although the ability to exercise autonomous agency is eroded in such cases, the capacity for autonomous agency is preserved. The subject with DID is weakly responsible for her wrongful acts. (shrink)

If someone with dissociative identity disorder commits a wrongful act, is she responsible? If one adopts the Multiple Persons Thesis, it may seem that one alter cannot be responsible for the actions of another alter. Conversely, if one regards the subject as a single person, it may seem that she is responsible for any actions she performs. I will argue that this subject is a single person, but one who suffers from delusions of disownership and therefore does not fulfill ordinary (...) requirements for responsible agency. This is because she suffers from extreme ambivalence: her deep-seated needs and desires conflict, and she forms alter-personalities as a way to cope with inner discord without abandoning any of these contradictory impulses. However, although the ability to exercise autonomous agency is eroded in such cases, the capacity for autonomous agency is preserved. The subject with DID is weakly responsible for her wrongful acts. (shrink)

The paper discusses ubiquitous computing and the conception of the self, especially the question how the self should be understood in the environment pervaded by ubiquitous computing, and how ubiquitous computing makes possible direct empathy where each person or self connected through the network has direct access to others’ thoughts and feelings. Starting from a conception of self, which is essentially distributed, composite and constituted through information, the paper argues that when a number of selves are connected to one another (...) in the ubiquitous computing network, a possibility opens up where the selves can directly communicate with one another. This has a potential finally to solve the problem of other minds, and in fact any philosophical conundrum based on the supposed distinction between self and the world. When selves have direct access to others’ thoughts and feelings, they know the content of others’ mental states directly without having to make inferences or employing some other indirect methods. As they are interconnected through the ubiquitous network, and as they are essentially constituted through information, the selves then are spread out across the network. What this implies is that any boundary between a self and another is not as hard and fast as hitherto may have been understood. Toward the end, the paper also discusses how freedom and autonomy are still possible in this ubiquitously networked world. (shrink)