Combining Texts

Ideas for 'Confessions of a Philosopher', 'Vagueness: a global approach' and 'fragments/reports'

unexpand these ideas     |    start again     |     choose another area for these texts

display all the ideas for this combination of texts


2 ideas

16. Persons / C. Self-Awareness / 3. Limits of Introspection
Why don't we experience or remember going to sleep at night? [Magee]
     Full Idea: As a child it was incomprehensible to me that I did not experience going to sleep, and never remembered it. When my sister said 'Nobody remembers that', I just thought 'How does she know?'
     From: Bryan Magee (Confessions of a Philosopher [1997], Ch.I)
     A reaction: This is actually evidence for something - that we do not have some sort of personal identity which is separate from consciousness, so that "I am conscious" would literally mean that an item has a property, which it can lose.
16. Persons / D. Continuity of the Self / 2. Mental Continuity / b. Self as mental continuity
It seems absurd that there is no identity of any kind between two objects which involve survival [Fine,K]
     Full Idea: Pace Parfit and others, it boggles the mind that survival could be independent of any relation of identity between the currently existing object and the objects that subsequently exist.
     From: Kit Fine (Vagueness: a global approach [2020], 3)
     A reaction: Yes. If the self or mind just consists of a diachronic trail of memories such that the two ends of the trail have no connection at all, that isn't the kind of survival that any of us want. I want to live my life, not a life.