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Single Idea 5173

[filed under theme 16. Persons / B. Nature of the Self / 7. Self and Body / a. Self needs body ]

Full Idea

For any two sense-experiences to belong to the sense-history of the same self it is necessary and sufficient that they should contain organic sense-contents which are elements of the same body.

Gist of Idea

Two experiences belong to one self if their contents belong with one body

Source

A.J. Ayer (Language,Truth and Logic [1936], Ch.7)

Book Ref

Ayer,A.J.: 'Language, Truth and Logic' [Penguin 1974], p.165

A Reaction

This makes more sense if you are a realist about organic bodies, but less sense if (like Ayer) you define the body in terms of sense-experiences. It is a stab at what is now called 'animalism', but needs an account of brain transplant thought-experiments.

The 15 ideas with the same theme [a body is necessary for a sef]:

4836 The mind only knows itself by means of ideas of the modification of the body [Spinoza]
5583 We need an account of the self based on rational principles, to avoid materialism [Kant]
20757 The powerful self behind your thoughts and feelings is your body [Nietzsche]
15583 Certainty that I will die is more basic to my existence than the Cogito [Heidegger]
23747 What is sacred is not a person, but the whole physical human being [Weil]
5324 Bodily identity and memory work together to establish personal identity [Ayer]
5668 People own conscious states because they are causally related to the identifying body [Ayer]
5173 Two experiences belong to one self if their contents belong with one body [Ayer]
5176 Empiricists can define personal identity as bodily identity, which consists of sense-contents [Ayer]
9263 A person is an entity to which we can ascribe predicates of consciousness and corporeality [Strawson,P]
5673 If we have a pain, we are strongly aware of the bodily self [Cassam]
16236 Maybe our persistence conditions concern bodies, rather than persons [Olson, by Hawley]
6669 For 'animalism', I exist before I became a person, and can continue after it, so I am not a person [Olson, by Lowe]
4936 The self is founded on bodily awareness centred in the brain stem [Edelman/Tononi]
6144 You hold a child in your arms, so it is not mental substance, or mental state, or software [Merricks]