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Single Idea 5583

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

Full Idea

Why do we have need of a doctrine of the soul grounded merely on pure rational principles? Without doubt chiefly with the intent of securing our thinking Self from the danger of materialism.

Gist of Idea

We need an account of the self based on rational principles, to avoid materialism

Source

Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B406-/A383)

Book Ref

Kant,Immanuel: 'Critique of Pure Reason', ed/tr. Guyer,P /Wood,A W [CUO 1998], p.433


A Reaction

And why is materialism a 'danger'? Only, I think, because it would make immortality impossible. Huge chunks of Enlightenment philosophy are the last vestiges of the religious view of reality. I think we can base morality on a material self.


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

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