In this paper I outline and defend a new approach to personal-identity—personal-identity non-cognitivism—and argue that it has several advantages over its cognitivist rivals. On this view utterances of personal-identity sentences express a non-cognitive attitude towards relevant person-stages. The resulting view offers a pleasingly nuanced picture of what we are doing when we utter such sentences.

The personal identity relation is of great interest to philosophers, who often consider fictional scenarios to test what features seem to make persons persist through time. But often real examples of neuroscientific interest also provide important tests of personal identity. One such example is the case of Phineas Gage – or at least the story often told about Phineas Gage. Many cite Gage’s story as example of severed personal identity; Phineas underwent such a tremendous change that Gage “survived as a (...) different man.” I discuss a recent empirical finding about judgments about this hypothetical. It is not just the magnitude of the change that affects identity judgment; it is also the negative direction of the change. I present an experiment suggesting that direction of change also affects neuroethical judgments. I conclude we should consider carefully the way in which improvements and deteriorations affect attributions of personal identity. This is particularly important since a number of the most crucial neuroethical decisions involve varieties of cognitive enhancements or deteriorations. (shrink)

Phineas Gage’s story is typically offered as a paradigm example supporting the view that part of what matters for personal identity is a certain magnitude of similarity between earlier and later individuals. Yet, reconsidering a slight variant of Phineas Gage’s story indicates that it is not just magnitude of similarity, but also the direction of change that affects personal identity judgments; in some cases, changes for the worse are more seen as identity-severing than changes for the better of comparable magnitude. (...) Ironically, thinking carefully about Phineas Gage’s story tells against the thesis it is typically taken to support. (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.

In her recent book Persons and Bodies1, Lynne Rudder Baker has defended what she calls the constitution view of persons. On this view, persons are constituted by their bodies, where “constitution” is a ubiquitous, general metaphysical relation distinct from more familiar relations, such as identity and part-whole composition.

Recent epistemology has focused almost exclusively on propositional knowledge. This paper considers an underexplored area of epistemology, namely knowledge of persons: if propositional knowledge is a state of mind, consisting in a subject's attitude to a (true) proposition, the account developed here thinks of interpersonal knowledge as a state of minds, involving a subject's attitude to another (existing) subject. This kind of knowledge is distinct from propositional knowledge, but it exhibits a gradability characteristic of context-sensitivity, and admits of shifty thresholds. (...) It is supported by a wide range of unexplored linguistic data and intuitive cases; and it promises to illuminate debates within epistemology, philosophy of religion, and ethics. (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)

It is commonly held that since non-human animals are not persons, they are not objects of due regard and care in the same way that humans are. But how might we begin to think about recognizing animals as persons? This chapter attempts to reconstruct an answer by drawing on the resources of the Pātañjalayogaśāstra (the Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali, 200-400 CE). Animals are persons from the perspective of this tradition, and so animals are proper objects of due regard and care. (...) According to classical Yoga philosophy, however, this form of recognition is not easy to attain. The discerning insight that allows one to “see” the personhood of other living beings requires a discipline of attention, one that constitutes the practice of yoga itself. (shrink)

While first-person methods are essential for a science of consciousness, it is controversial what form these methods should take and whether any such methods are reliable. I propose that first-person experiments are a reliable method for investigating conscious experience. I outline the history of these methods and describe their characteristics. In particular, a first-person experiment is an intervention on a subject's experience in which independent variables are manipulated, extraneous variables are held fixed, and in which the subject (...) makes a phenomenal judgement about the target experience of the investigation. I examine historical and contemporary examples of first-person experiments: Mariotte’s demonstration of the visual blind spot, Kanizsa’s subjective contours, the Tse Illusion, and investigations of the non-uniform resolution of the visual field. I discuss the role that phenomenal contrast plays in these methods, and how they overcome typical introspective errors. I argue that their intersubjective repeatability is an important factor in their scientific status, however, it is not the only factor. That they control for extraneous factors and confounds is another factor which sets them apart from pseudoscience (e.g., the perception of auras), and hence another reason for classifying them as genuine experiments. Furthermore, by systematically mapping out the structure of visual experience, these methods make scientific progress. Praises of such first-person experimental approaches may not always be sung by philosophers and psychologists, but they continue to flourish as respectable scientific methods nevertheless. (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)

The article contains a reconstruction of the rapid psychological change argument by Scott Campbell. According to the standard psychological approach, the identity of a person is tied to persistence one’s memories, beliefs, wants and intentions. A person stays the same person if one holds strongly psychologically connected and continuous over time. the structure of rapid psychological change argument is compared with the argument of incredibly long-lasting psychological change by David lewis. It is concluded that the main goals (...) of critical attacks of these arguments are the temporal mismatch of psychological connectedness and continuity as well as the reductionist claim that all the facts what matters for survival can be described in an impersonal way. (shrink)

While there are urgent health-related demands surrounding dementia, there are sociopolitical dimensions to this issue that ought not to be neglected, concerning the ways in which institutions and individuals treat people living with dementia. Key among these concerns, for dementia self-advocate Christine Bryden, is the dominant narrative of dementia as a process that irreversibly sets those that live with it on a path to the destruction of their personal identities and personhood. In this paper, I bolster Bryden’s arguments against the (...) loss narrative and develop a novel conception of personhood as a first step towards challenging it. (shrink)

Perceptual Confidence is the view that our conscious perceptual experiences assign confidence. In previous papers, I motivated it using first-personal evidence (Morrison, 2016), and Jessie Munton motivated it using normative evidence (Munton, 2016). In this paper, I will consider the extent to which it is motivated by third-personal evidence. I will argue that the current evidence is supportive but not decisive. I will then describe experiments that might provide stronger evidence. I hope to thereby provide a roadmap for future research.

In Reasons and Persons, Parfit (1984) posed a challenge: provide a satisfying normative account that solves the Non-Identity Problem, avoids the Repugnant and Absurd Conclusions, and solves the Mere-Addition Paradox. In response, some have suggested that we look toward person-affecting views of morality for a solution. But the person-affecting views that have been offered so far have been unable to satisfy Parfit's four requirements, and these views have been subject to a number of independent complaints. This paper describes (...) a person-affecting account which meets Parfit's challenge. The account satisfies Parfit's four requirements, and avoids many of the criticisms that have been raised against person-affecting views. (shrink)

According to second‐personal approaches to moral obligation, the distinctive normative features of moral obligation can only be explained in terms of second‐personal relations, i.e. the distinctive way persons relate to each other as persons. But there are important disagreements between different groups of second‐personal approaches. Most notably, they disagree about the nature of second‐personal relations, which has consequences for the nature of the obligations that they purport to explain. This article aims to distinguish these groups from each other, highlight their (...) respective advantages and disadvantages, and thereby indicate avenues for future research. (shrink)

What is it for a person to have style? Philosophers working in action theory, ethics, and aesthetics are surprisingly quiet on this question. I begin by considering whether theories of artistic style shed any light on it. Many philosophers, artists, and art historians are attracted to some version of the view that artistic style is the expression of personality. I clarify this view and argue that it is implausible for both artistic style and, suitably modified, personal style. In fact, (...) both theories of style crack along the same line, which suggests that they can indeed be mutually illuminating. I articulate and defend a view of personal style according to which, roughly, having style is a matter of expressing one’s ideals. I show how this illuminates the widely neglected value of personal style and propose a new, analogous theory of individual artistic style: artistic style is the expression of the ideals the artist has for her art. (shrink)

Many Perdurantists have been drawn to the “Conventionalist” idea that our person-directed attitudes can determine whether or not we survive events such as teletransportation. In this paper, I suggest a novel “Contextualist Conventionalism” according to which Conventionalism is true with respect to some, but not all, contexts in which we ask “will I survive?”—instead in “reflexive” contexts, “I” reflexively refers to a thinker whose persistence conditions are mind-independent. Unlike one form of Conventionalism which implies that the reference of “I” (...) is never constrained to reflexively referring to the thinker, Contextualist Conventionalism instead implies that there are some important contexts where the “I” is so constrained. And unlike another form of Conventionalism that secures such reflexive reference by holding that the survival of the thinker is a mind-dependent matter, Contextualist Conventionalism secures reflexive reference while avoiding such a radical metaphysical commitment. (shrink)

Many philosophers think that we should use a lottery to decide who gets a good to which two persons have an equal claim but which only one person can get. Some philosophers think that we should save identified persons from harm even at the expense of saving a somewhat greater number of statistical persons from the same harm. I defend a principled way of justifying both judgements, namely, by appealing to the decreasing marginal moral value of survival chances. I (...) identify four desiderata that, I contend, any such justification should satisfy, and explain how my account meets these desiderata, unlike some previous accounts. (shrink)

Digital phenotyping will potentially enable earlier detection and prediction of mental illness by monitoring human interaction with and through digital devices. Notwithstanding its promises, it is certain that a person’s digital phenotype will at times be at odds with their first-person testimony of their psychological states. In this paper, we argue that there are features of digital phenotyping in the context of psychiatry which have the potential to exacerbate the tendency to dismiss patients’ testimony and treatment preferences, which (...) can be instances of epistemic injustice. We first explain what epistemic injustice is, and why it is argued to be an extensive problem in health and disability settings. We then explain why epistemic injustice is more likely to apply with even greater force in psychiatric contexts, and especially where digital phenotyping may be involved. Finally, we offer some tentative suggestions of how epistemic injustice can be minimised in digital psychiatry. (shrink)

The literature acknowledges a distinction between immoral, amoral and moral management. This paper makes a case for the employee (at any level) as a moral agent, even though the paper begins by highlighting a body of evidence which suggests that individual moral agency is sacrificed at work and is compromised in deference to other pressures. This leads to a discussion about the notion of discretion and an examination of a separate, contrary body of literature which indicates that some individuals in (...) corporations may use their discretion to behave in a socially entrepreneurial manner. My underlying assumption is that CSR isn’t solely driven by economics and that it may also be championed as a result of a personal morality, inspired by employees’ own socially oriented personal values. A conceptual framework is put forward and it is suggested that individuals may be categorized as Active or Frustrated Corporate Social Entrepreneurs; Conformists or Apathetics, distinguished by their individualistic or collectivist personal values. In a discussion of the nature of values, this paper highlights how values may act as drivers of our behavior and pays particular attention to the values of the entrepreneur, thereby linking the existing debate on moral agency with the field of corporate social responsibility. (shrink)

What’s the difference between those psychological posits that are ‘me” and those that are not? Distinguishing between these psychological kinds is important in many domains, but an account of what the distinction consists in is challenging. I argue for Psychological Constructionism: those psychological posits that correspond to the kinds within folk psychology are personal, and those that don’t, aren’t. I suggest that only constructionism can answer a fundamental challenge in characterizing the personal level – the plurality problem. The things that (...) plausibly qualify as personal are motley. Other attempts at accounting for the personal level either cannot accommodate this plurality, or cannot explain what unifies the personal. Given arguments others have given for a pluralistic conception of folk psychology, constructionism explains and predicts this plurality in a systematic and unified way, thereby solving the plurality problem. (shrink)

In our article (Zawadzki and Adamczyk 2021), we analyzed threats that novel memory modifying interventions may pose in the future. More specifically, we discussed how optogenetics’ potential for reversible erasure/deactivation of memory “may impact authenticity by producing changes at different levels of personality.” Our article has received many thoughtful open peer commentaries for which we would like to express our great appreciation. We have identified two main threads of objections. They are related to the potential applicability of optogenetics as a (...) therapeutic memory modification technology (MMT) in humans—applicability thread, and the normative value of authenticity, that is, the assumption that preserving authenticity is valuable (either in general or in the particular approach we adopted)—normative thread. Both of these threads concern fundamental issues: The former deals with the scientific credibility of the case vignette on which our discussion is based, and the latter deals with the normative weight of our considerations. We think that addressing both of them can be instructive in a broader context as they reflect a more general disagreement among neuroethicists about the very purpose and method of our discipline. (shrink)

The project takes as its starting point our conflicting intuitions about personal identity exposed by Bernard Williams' thought experiment involving the switching of bodies in "The Self and the Future." The conflicted intuitions are identified as animalist and psychologist and correspond roughly with the two major approaches to personal identity. The traditional strategy to resolve the conflict---thought experiments---is critically examined and the project concludes that proper thought experiments will reveal the conflict but are unlikely to resolve it. A new reading (...) of the conflict is proposed. The concept of the person is a cluster concept with distinct components: biological human beings, rational agency and psychological continuity, where the latter is construed as the temporal analog of phenomenological unity at a time. The project then suggests that moral theory is best pursued not by a naturalist conception of persons that unites the components of the cluster, but by a novel conception that separates them. This can be accomplished best by eliminating the concept of the person altogether. Objections that the concept of the person is ineliminable are considered and rejected, as are objections that the nature of conflict is not reason enough to abandon the concept. Personhood's centrality for value theory is questioned and the eliminativist strategy is defended on the grounds that responsibility, self-concern and moral rights are best analyzed with the component concepts instead of the cluster concept. Eliminativism is therefore preferable to competing accounts of personal identity because the former is better suited for moral theory. Among the advantages are the ability to: attribute responsibility to group agents without calling them persons, make sense of our conflicting demonstrations of self-concern without taking them as evidence for conflicting theories of personal identity, and attribute moral rights to entities who fail to meet traditional criteria for personhood but who are nonetheless entitled to moral respect. (shrink)

In his early works, Derek Parfit famously defended revisionary reductionism about personhood. According to this view, facts about personal identity consist in the holding of more particular psychological facts, which can be described wholly impersonally. He also argued that, in some cases, the truth of this view makes questions about diachronic personal identity empty questions to which no meaningful answers can be given. Yet, in his later works, Parfit defends several ethical theories such as contractualism and rule-consequentialism, which seem to (...) rely on exactly the kind of determinate notion of personal identity to which he objected earlier. Parfit, furthermore, never explored reductionism’s consequences for such theories in his later works. In order to solve this interpretative puzzle, this chapter tries to argue that, even if they are seemingly conflicting, Parfit’s views on personal identity and rule-consequentialism, Scanlonian contractualism, and Kantian contractualism do form a coherent and unified whole. (shrink)

Many philosophers hypothesize that our concept of personal identity is partly constituted by the one-person-one-place rule, which states that a person can only be in one place at a time. This hypothesis has been assumed by the most influential contemporary work on personal identity. In this paper, we report a series of studies testing whether the hypothesis is true. In these studies, people consistently judged that the same person existed in two different places at the same time. (...) This result undermines some widely held philosophical assumptions, supports others, and fits well with recent discoveries on identity judgments about inanimate objects and non-human animals. (shrink)

The study aimed at identifying the personal variables and their effect in promoting job creation in Gaza Strip through business incubators. The researchers used the descriptive analytical approach to achieve the study objectives. The study population consisted of 92 of the pilot projects benefiting from the three business incubators in Gaza Strip (Palestinian Information Technology Incubator, UCAS Technology Incubator and Business and Technology Incubator). The study reached a number of results, the most important of which are the existence of statistically (...) significant differences on entrepreneurship attributed to each age as most of them are between the ages of 22-30, Gender for males, business incubator, scientific qualification for the specialties of information technology and engineering, and years of experience. Based on the findings, the researchers recommend focusing on university students in guiding them towards entrepreneurship and helping new graduates to start entrepreneurship. And to guide students to scientific disciplines that help them in entrepreneurship after graduation, whether starting a small business or self-employment, support females to entrepreneurship as most of the entrepreneurs are male, in addition to stimulating males as well. (shrink)

There has been a call for a potentially revolutionary change to our existing understanding of the psychological concept of personal identity. Apparently, people can psychologically represent people, including themselves, as multiple individuals at the same time. Here we ask whether the intransitive judgments found in these studies truly reflect the operation of an intransitive concept of personal identity. We manipulate several factors that arbitrate between transitivity and intransitivity and find most support for transitivity: in contrast to prior work, most participants (...) do not make intransitive judgments when there is any reason to favor one individual over another. People change which single individual they personally identify with, depending on which individual competes more strongly or weakly for identity, rather than identifying with both individuals. Even when two individuals are identical and therefore both entitled to be the same person, we find that people make more transitive judgments once they understand the practical commitments of their responses (Experiment 4), and report not being able to actually imagine two perspectives simultaneously when reasoning about the scenario (Experiment 5). In short, we suggest that while people may make intransitive judgments, these do not reflect that they psychologically represent identity in an intransitive manner. (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)

The unusually loyal supporters of Donald Trump are often described as a cult. How can we understand this extreme phenomenon in U.S. politics? We develop theoretical expectations and use the Big Five personality dimensions to investigate whether Trump's most loyal supporters share personality characteristics that might make them inclined to cult-like support. We find that (1) Trump's supporters share high levels of Conscientiousness; (2) this is substantively and statistically distinguishable from the commonly identified association between Conscientiousness and Conservatism; and (3) (...) the association is highly robust to a range of sensitivity tests. Our main findings are robust across two surveys. Study 1 is an online survey conducted in 2021 designed specifically for this project. Study 2 is the 2016 American National Election Study (ANES). (shrink)

In order to articulate an account of erotic love that does not attempt to transcend its personal features, Robert Solomon and Martha Nussbaum lean on the speeches by Aristophanes and Alcibiades in Plato’s Symposium. This leads them to downplay the sense in which love is not only for another person, but also for the good. Drawing on a distinction between relative and absolute senses of speaking about the good, I mediate between two features of love that at first may (...) seem irreconcilable. The first is the sense in which love is deeply personal in character. The second is the sense in which we in love come to articulate ethical demands. With the help of the Diotimian ascent of love that Socrates presents in his speech, I submit that these two can come together in the realization that our personally conditioned responses in love are transformed to accommodate demands that carry an unconditional meaning. (shrink)

According to First-Person Realism, one's own first-person perspective on the world is metaphysically privileged in some way. After clarifying First-Person Realism by reference to parallel debates in the metaphysics of modality and time, I survey eight different arguments in favor of First-Person Realism.

Employers sometimes use personality tests in hiring or specifically look for candidates with certain personality traits such as being social, outgoing, active, and extraverted. Therefore, they hire based on personality, specifically extraversion in part at least. The question arises whether this practice is morally permissible. We argue that, in a range of cases, it is not. The common belief is that, generally, it is not permissible to hire based on sex or race, and the wrongness of such hiring practices is (...) based on two widely accepted principles: the Relevance Principle and the Fairness Principle. The Relevance Principle states that hiring should be based on what is relevant to job performance, while the Fairness Principle states that hiring should be based on features that individuals can control. Since hiring based on sex or race violates these principles, it is wrong. However, we argue that, in a range of cases, hiring based on extraversion also violates these principles, and assuming the validity of the Relevance and the Fairness Principles, it follows that personality discrimination is morally wrong in those cases. (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.

Let’s say that an act requires Person-Affecting Justification if and only if some alternative would have been better for someone. So, Lucifer breaking Xavier’s back requires Person-Affecting Justification because the alternative would have been better for Xavier. But the story continues: While Lucifer evades justice, Xavier moves on and founds a school for gifted children. Xavier’s deepest values become identified with the school and its community. When authorities catch Lucifer, he claims no Person-Affecting Justification is needed: because (...) the attack set Xavier on his life’s path, it’s no longer true that the alternative would have been better by the standard of what Xavier now values most. An unappealingly paternalistic way to hold Lucifer to account is to discount Xavier’s preferences as merely adaptive. Instead, I propose understanding the persons of Person-Affecting Justification to be not persons but person stages. This allows us to hold Lucifer to account without having to discount Xavier’s actual preferences, and has interesting implications for compensatory justice, including making sense of reparations for historical wrongs. (shrink)

When involved in a disagreement, a common reaction is to tell oneself that, given that the information about one’s own epistemic standing is clearly superior in both amount and quality to the information about one’s opponent’s epistemic standing, one is justified in one’s confidence that one’s view is correct. In line with this natural reaction to disagreement, some contributors to the debate on its epistemic significance have claimed that one can stick to one’s guns by relying in part on information (...) about one’s first-order evidence and the functioning of one’s cognitive capacities. In this article, I argue that such a manoeuvre to settle controversies encounters the problem that both disputants can make use of it, the problem that one may be wrong about one’s current conscious experience, and the problem that it is a live possibility that many of one’s beliefs are the product of epistemically distorting factors. I also argue that, even if we grant that personal information is reliable, when it comes to real-life rather than idealized disagreements, the extent of the unpossessed information about one’s opponent’s epistemic standing provides a reason for doubting that personal information can function as a symmetry breaker. (shrink)

I argue for the moral relevance of a category of individuals I characterize as far-persons. Following Gary Varner, I distinguish near-persons, animals with a " robust autonoetic consciousness " but lacking an adult human's " biographical sense of self, " from the merely sentient, those animals living "entirely in the present." I note the possibility of a third class. Far-persons lack a biographical sense of self, possess a weak autonoetic consciousness, and are able to travel mentally through time a distance (...) that exceeds the capacities of the merely sentient. Far-persons are conscious of and exercise control over short-term cognitive states, states limited by their temporal duration. The animals in question, human and nonhuman, consciously choose among various strategies available to them to achieve their ends, making them subjects of what I call "lyrical experience:" brief and potentially intense pleasures and pains. But their ends expire minute-by-minute, not stretching beyond, I say metaphorically, the present hour. I conclude by discussing the moral status of far-persons. (shrink)

Daniel Dennett's distinction between personal and subpersonal explanations was fundamental in establishing the philosophical foundations of cognitive science. Since it was first introduced in 1969, the personal/subpersonal distinction has been adapted to fit different approaches to the mind. In one example of this, the ‘Pittsburgh school’ of philosophers attempted to map Dennett's distinction onto their own distinction between the ‘space of reasons’ and the ‘space of causes’. A second example can be found in much contemporary philosophy of psychology, where Dennett's (...) distinction has been presumed to be equivalent to Stephen Stich's distinction between doxastic and subdoxastic states. Both these interpretations of the personal/subpersonal distinction, and also Dennett's own philosophical views of the mind, go beyond the personal/subpersonal distinction itself. They each involve supplementing the distinction between personal and subpersonal explanations with metaphysical claims about the relationship between the two kinds of explanation and the entities they posit. (shrink)

When talking about personal identity in the context of medical ethics, ethicists tend to borrow haphazardly from different philosophical notions of personal identity, or to abjure these abstract metaphysical concerns as having nothing to do with practical questions in medical ethics. In fact, however, part of the moral authority for respecting a patient’s self-regarding decisions can only be made sense of if we make certain assumptions that are central to a particular, psychological picture of personal identity, namely, that patients will (...) remain psychologically connected to a certain degree with their future selves. I draw this out, show problems with approaches in medical ethics based on alternate theories of personal identity that do not recognise this, and explore some important implications. Namely, I show how this recognition can better explain the circumstances under which we should respect advance directives and why, and how it can better make sense of patient fears that they will not "survive" personality-altering deep brain stimulation procedures, and provide guidance on approaching patient decisions concerning this type of procedure in a manner that captures and addresses such concerns. (shrink)

Frans de Waal (1948-2024) transformed our understanding of primate cognition and social behavior, shaping the perspectives of scientists, philosophers, and the general public through his groundbreaking research and engaging popular books.

I argue that we can understand the de se by employing the subjective mode of presentation or, if one’s ontology permits it, by defending an abundant ontology of perspectival personal properties or facts. I do this in the context of a discussion of Cappelen and Dever’s recent criticisms of the de se. Then, I discuss the distinctive role of the first personal perspective in discussions about empathy, rational deference, and self-understanding, and develop a way to frame the problem of lacking (...) prospective access to your future self as a problem with your capacity to imaginatively empathize with your future selves. (shrink)

Introduction -- What is personal responsibility? -- Ordinary language -- Common conceptions -- What do philosophers mean by responsibility? -- Personally responsible for what? -- What do philosophers think? part I -- Causes -- Capacity -- Control -- Choice versus brute luck -- Second-order attitudes -- Equality of opportunity -- Deservingness -- Reasonableness -- Reciprocity -- Equal shares -- Combining criteria -- What do philosophers think? part II -- Utility -- Self-respect -- Autonomy -- Human flourishing -- Natural duties and (...) special obligations -- A matter of perspectives -- Combining values -- What do politicians think? -- A brief typology -- International comparisons -- Welfare reform -- Healthcare reform -- Rights and responsibilities -- On the responsibilities of politicians -- What do ordinary people think? -- Why ask? -- Attitudes to welfare claimants -- When push comes to shove -- Perceptions and reality -- Further international comparisons -- The trouble with opinion surveys -- Four contemporary issues in focus -- Unemployment -- Health -- Drug abuse -- Personal debt and financial rewards -- So how do we decide? -- Getting the public involved -- Citizens juries -- Answering some potential criticisms. (shrink)

Despite the apparent relationship between personal values and entrepreneurship, this topic t has been subject to little academic research. This article aims to explain, in the Brazilian context, how the personal values of entrepreneurs influence the degree of professionalism in their business. The article uses a descriptive and exploratory quantitative approach, with data collected via a survey and focus group. Results show that, in the Brazilian context, ethics and capitalist values have a greater influence on professionalism than do risk, innovation, (...) family history, etc. Certain personal values of small-business entrepreneurs become organizational values that drive their actions in challenging environments. The finding that only one of the ten independent variables has been considered statistically influential on professionalism constitutes its main theoretical contribution. It rethinks professionalism, no longer as a dependent variable, but as a personal value, like the rest, in independent, innovative and sovereign way. (shrink)

The main theory at the core of this monograph is that the person is an entity ontologically new, since she is able to perform an act of self-transcendence, which is meant as her critical distancing from her own “self”, understood as subject of social recognition (Anerkennung), in order to open to the encounter with the world (Weltoffenheit). This allows us to consider a person in a new way, different both from confessional interpretations that see her only as a (...) center of the spirit and from reductivistic views. Schelling examines the act of self-transcendence through the concept of ecstasy, whereas Scheler associates it with the phenomenological reduction. The act of self-transcendence, that Schelling sees as originated by the “hunger of being”, is at the roots of the formation process of a person (Bildung): the person takes her shape by exiting from her own self-referential dimension and encountering otherness. If considered from this viewpoint, Plato’s “epimeleia heautou” exceeds an intimistic perspective: the “care” is no more a solipsistic self-care, but rather becomes the care through which the person transcends her own self to open to the relationships with otherness. It turns, therefore, into a care for world-openness (care for Weltoffenheit). The transformation of the individual and of society so becomes the double-faced aspect of the same process. The development of this set of problems occurs through a dialogue with Schelling’s and Scheler’s positions, but it is also supported by a historical-philosophical investigation, that for instance provides evidence of the influences of Schelling’s Berlin period on Scheler’s last theories and on the philosophical anthropology of the 20th century. Schelling was the first to conceive the concept of “eccentricity” in an anthropological sense, since until then the term had been confined to Kepler’s astronomy. Consequently, the planets’ elliptic (eccentric) movement heightens to an emblematic metaphor of human nature and freedom. The monograph also examines a possible convergence between Plato’s epimeleia heautou and Scheler’s phenomenological reduction. The book ends with a chapter on the topic of Vorbild. The exemplary testimony, that is Vorbild, becomes witnessing evidence immune from any pedagogical-moralistic intent: in fact, if it should relapse into the rhetoric of the “wish to give a good example”, it would immediately conform to the opposite logic of the model. A model is universal in so far as it makes everyone more like the others, nullifying the diversity, whereas exemplariness is universal in so far as it makes everyone more unique and motivates each one to follow her own characteristic path of existential trans-formation. Exemplarity doesn’t convey any contents, but rather encourages a kind of solidaristic involvement. Yet there are also negative exemplarities (Gegenbild) that place obstacles in the formation and block the existence of the personal center. (shrink)

The study aimed to determine the personal financial management practices among selected personnel of the Bureau of the Treasury – Central Office. It used the descriptive method of gathering data. The respondents of the study consisted of 183 personnel from 35 divisions of the Bureau and selected through simple random probability sampling technique. The study shown that most of the respondents aged 26 to 35 years old, female, single, bachelor’s degree holder, rank and file workers, permanent employees, have been in (...) the agency for 5 years and below and with monthly compensation ranging from P15,001 – P30,000. In terms of financial planning, most of the respondents set their short and long-term financial goals. In terms of money management, most of the respondents saved so that they do not need to borrow from others. In terms of income and asset protection, most of the respondents considered uncertainties for their future. And in terms of investments, most of the respondents purchased government securities. The researcher recommended to utilize various social media platforms as an avenue for financial planning, start considering the use of credit management in the acquisition of their needs, understand the need of acquiring non-life insurance and start familiarizing themselves in the concept of the derivatives market. Also, the Bureau of the Treasury should initiate seminars/webinars about how to start writing a financial plan, effective ways in managing finances, the vital role of insurance and estate planning, and possible ways in earning money when investing on securities and derivatives. (shrink)

In 1995, as a student of psychology inspired by natural science, I defined a logical model of personality explaining psychosis. I created (for my MA thesis, 1998 and grant research, 1999) new kind of tests assessing intelligence, creativity, prejudices, expectations to show more exact methods in psychology. During my Phd study in economics, I developed 'Maximization of Uniqueness (Originality)' model enhancing the classic utility to explain irrational motivations linking economics and psychology. Later I became computer programmer developing functional programming. According (...) to Personality model (and my experience in chess composition), I've built server and client logic of information system www.each.co.uk, and produced visual art. I presented the excerpts of 'Personality Model' in a few articles, and later as part of my art exhibitions: From Animation (Oct 2013, Holland Park, London), Parallax 12 (Feb 2015, Chelsea Town Hall, London), Fading Memory (Sep 2015, Weißenohe / Nuremberg, Germany). Another work: The Science is a subset of the Art extends Personality Model to art, society. At the end I add example and explanation of a special problem, when the higher intelligence leads to a wrong solution. It was published in Japanese Journal Problem Paradise in 1999. All presented results can be repeated. Computer testing would enable to acquire more data and more exact analysis. (shrink)

The distinction between personal and subpersonal levels of psychological explanation has proved useful in order to differentiate ways of understanding human behavior. Yet little has been discussed about how these kinds of explanations would work in making sense non-animals’ intelligent behavior. In this paper I assess the main characterizations of personal and subpersonal explanations and how they could be applied in interpreting animal behavior in a scientific setting. Specifically, my claim is that personal level explanation is especially relevant to explain (...) human actions as singular events. Through this, I will argue that instances of animal behavior can potentially be taken as singular events in the same way in which we take human action to be. Thus, personal level explanation plays an important role in behavioral sciences of non-human animals. -/- La distinción entre los niveles personal y subpersonal de explicación psicológica ha resultado de gran utilidad para diferenciar distintos modos de comprender el comportamiento humano. La discusión teórica en torno a la distinción se ha enfocado particularmente en torno a cómo caracterizar el nivel personal. Sin embargo, poco se ha dicho sobre cómo estas explicaciones operarían a la hora de hacer inteligible el comportamiento inteligente de animales no humanos. En este trabajo analizo las principales caracterizaciones que se han dado de las explicaciones de nivel personal y cómo éstas aplicarían a la interpretación del comportamiento animal en contextos científicos. Específicamente, defenderé que las explicaciones de nivel personal son especialmente relevantes para explicar las acciones humanas en tanto eventos singulares. A partir de esto, argumentaré que también los comportamientos animales pueden potencialmente ser eventos singulares como lo son las acciones humanas. Así, las explicaciones de nivel personal juegan un rol importante en las ciencias del comportamiento animal. (shrink)

I argue that the feeling that one is the owner of his or her mental states is not an intrinsic property of those states. Rather, it consists in a contingent relation between consciousness and its intentional objects. As such, there are (a variety of) circumstances, varying in their interpretive clarity, in which this relation can come undone. When this happens, the content of consciousness still is apprehended, but the feeling that the content “belongs to me” no longer is secured. I (...) discuss the implications of a mechanism enabling personal ownership for understanding a variety of clinical syndromes as well normal mental function. (shrink)

This paper argues that whereas philosophical discussions of first-person methods often turn on the veridicality of first-person reports, more attention should be paid to the experimental circumstances under which the reports are generated, and to the purposes of designing such experiments. After pointing to the ‘constructedness’ of first-person reports in the science of perception, I raise questions about the criteria by which to judge whether the reports illuminate something about the nature of perception. I illustrate this point (...) with a historical debate between Gestalt psychologist and atomists, both of whom used first-person methods to investigate perception. (shrink)

Este artículo defiende que toda acción es un suceso que entraña, responsabilidad agente. Toda acción es el suceso que es el "hacer" de alguien. La responsabilidad del agente que define una acción es el tipo que justifica el premio-castigo. Esto implica que la acción es, en todos los casos, revocable y socialmente sancionada, igual que lo es la responsabilidad que la define. Más aún, si la identidad personal se ha de comprender dentro del reino de la acción, las teorías de (...) corte narrativo, más que las aproximaciones mentalistas, se encuentran mucho mejor posicionadas para llevar a cabo esta labor de comprensión.Este artículo defiende que toda acción es un suceso que entraña, responsabilidad agente. Toda acción es el suceso que es el "hacer" de alguien. La responsabilidad del agente que define una acción es el tipo que justifica el premio-castigo. Esto implica que la acción es, en todos los casos, revocable y socialmente sancionada, igual que lo es la responsabilidad que la define. Más aún, si la identidad personal se ha de comprender dentro del reino de la acción, las teorías de corte narrativo, más que las aproximaciones mentalistas, se encuentran mucho mejor posicionadas para llevar a cabo esta labor de comprensión.This paper argues that an action is an event that essentially conveysagent responsibility. Any action is the event that is someone’s doing. Andagent responsibility, which defines action, is the kind of responsibility that justifiesreward and punishment. This means that action is, in all cases, defeasileand socially santioned, such as it is the type of responsibility that defines action.Moreover, if pesonal identity is to be understood within the frame ofaction, narrativist kind of theories, rather than mentalist approaches, are in amuch better position to do the job. (shrink)

If someone says, “You’ve stereotyped me,” we hear the statement as an accusation. One way to interpret the accusation is as follows: you haven’t seen or treated me as an individual. In this essay, I interpret and evaluate a theory of wrongful stereotyping inspired by this thought, which I call the failure-to-individualize theory of wrongful stereotyping. According to this theory, stereotyping is wrong if and only if it involves failing to treat persons as individuals. I argue that the theory—however one (...) interprets it—is inadequate. Either the theory will not reliably identify all cases of wrongful stereotyping or it will fail to adequately explain why they are wrong. I conclude that it does not follow that we must entirely jettison the objection that stereotyping fails to treat persons as individuals. What follows is only that the objection must play a more circumscribed role in a theory of when and why stereotyping is wrong. (shrink)