21314
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Consciousness presupposes personal identity, so it cannot constitute it [Butler]
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Full Idea:
One would think it really self-evident that consciousness of personal identity presupposes, and therefore cannot constitute, personal identity, any more than knowledge can presuppose truth, which it presupposes.
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From:
Joseph Butler (Analogy of Religion [1736], App.1)
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A reaction:
It rather begs the question to dogmatically assert that mere consciousness presupposes a self, especially after Hume's criticisms. That consciousness implies a subject to experience needs arguing for. Is it the best explanation?
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21318
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If the self changes, we have no responsibilities, and no interest in past or future [Butler]
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Full Idea:
If personality is a transient thing ...then it follows that it is a fallacy to charge ourselves with any thing we did, or to imagine our present selves interested in any thing which befell us yesterday, or what will befall us tomorrow.
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From:
Joseph Butler (Analogy of Religion [1736], App.1)
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A reaction:
We seem to care about the past and future of our children, without actually being our children. Can't my future self be my descendant, a close one, instead of me?
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22040
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Freedom is produced by the activity of the mind, and is not intrinsically given [Hegel]
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Full Idea:
Actual freedom is not something immediately existent in mindedness, but is something to be produced by the mind's own activity. It is thus as the producer of its freedom that we have to consider mindedness in philosophy.
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From:
Georg W.F.Hegel (Philosophy of Mind (Encylopedia III) [1817], §382, Zusatz), quoted by Terry Pinkard - German Philosophy 1760-1860 11
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A reaction:
Pinkard glosses this as an agent being free by being the centre of a group of social responsibilities. Hence I presume small children have no freedom. Presumably we could deprive citizens of all responsibility, and hence of metaphysical freedom.
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