7 ideas
3539 | Personal identity is just causally related mental states [Parfit, by Maslin] |
Full Idea: For Parfit all personal identity really amounts to is a chain of experiences and other psychological features causally related to each other in 'direct' sorts of ways. | |
From: report of Derek Parfit (Personal Identity [1971]) by Keith T. Maslin - Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind 10.5 | |
A reaction: When summarised like this, it strikes me that Parfit is just false to our experience, whatever Hume may say. I suspect that Parfit (and those like him) concentrate too much on rather passive perceptual experience, and neglect the will. |
1393 | One of my future selves will not necessarily be me [Parfit] |
Full Idea: If I say 'It will not be me, but one of my future selves', I do not imply that I will be that future self. He is one of my later selves, and I am one of his earlier selves. There is no underlying person we both are. | |
From: Derek Parfit (Personal Identity [1971], §5) | |
A reaction: The problem here seems to be explaining why I should care about my later self, if it isn't me. If the answer is only that it will be psychologically very similar to me, then I would care more about my current identical twin than about my future self. |
1392 | If we split like amoeba, we would be two people, neither of them being us [Parfit] |
Full Idea: In the case of the man who, like an amoeba, divides….we can suggest that he survives as two different people without implying that he is those people. | |
From: Derek Parfit (Personal Identity [1971], §1) | |
A reaction: Maybe an amoeba is a homogeneous substance for which splitting is insignificant, but when a person has certain parts that are totally crucial, splitting them is catastrophic, and quite different. I'm not sure that splitting a self would leave persons. |
1391 | Concern for our own lives isn't the source of belief in identity, it is the result of it [Parfit] |
Full Idea: Egoism, and the fear not of near but of distant death, and the regret that so much of one's life should have gone by - these are not, I think, wholly natural or instinctive. They are strengthened by a false belief in stable identity. | |
From: Derek Parfit (Personal Identity [1971], §6) | |
A reaction: This raises some very nice questions, about the extent to which various aspects of self-concern are instinctive and natural, or culturally induced, and even totally misguided and false. I can worry about the distant death of my guinea pig, or my grandson. |
23215 | Even the poorest have a life to lead, and so should consent to who governs them [-] |
Full Idea: For really I think that the poorest hee that is in England hath a life to live, as the greatest hee; …and every Man that is to live under a Government ought first by his own Consent to put himself under that Government. | |
From: - (The Putney Debates [1647]) | |
A reaction: [remark made by Thomas Rainsborough] This is the social contract idea which is explicit in Hobbes. I'm sure we can at least trace it back to John Lilburne in the 1630s. |
1748 | Archelaus was the first person to say that the universe is boundless [Archelaus, by Diog. Laertius] |
Full Idea: Archelaus was the first person to say that the universe is boundless. | |
From: report of Archelaus (fragments/reports [c.450 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 02.Ar.3 |
5989 | Archelaus said life began in a primeval slime [Archelaus, by Schofield] |
Full Idea: Archelaus wrote that life on Earth began in a primeval slime. | |
From: report of Archelaus (fragments/reports [c.450 BCE]) by Malcolm Schofield - Archelaus | |
A reaction: This sounds like a fairly clearcut assertion of the production of life by evolution. Darwin's contribution was to propose the mechanism for achieving it. We should honour the name of Archelaus for this idea. |