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Single Idea 5324

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

Full Idea

In general the two criteria of memory and bodily identity work together.

Gist of Idea

Bodily identity and memory work together to establish personal identity

Source

A.J. Ayer (The Central Questions of Philosophy [1973], §VI.B)

Book Ref

Ayer,A.J.: 'The Central Questions of Philosophy' [Penguin 1976], p.116


A Reaction

This seems better than any simplistic one-criterion approach. In life we use different criteria for our own identity, as when dreaming, or waking with a hangover, or wondering if we are dead after an accident.


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]