Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Commentary on 'De Anima'', 'Against Barbaric physics' and 'Personal Identity'

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6 ideas

16. Persons / B. Nature of the Self / 5. Self as Associations
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.
16. Persons / D. Continuity of the Self / 2. Mental Continuity / b. Self as mental continuity
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.
16. Persons / D. Continuity of the Self / 4. Split Consciousness
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.
16. Persons / D. Continuity of the Self / 5. Concerns of the Self
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.
22. Metaethics / B. Value / 2. Values / e. Death
16764 The soul conserves the body, as we see by its dissolution when the soul leaves [Toletus]
     Full Idea: Every accident of a living thing, as well as all its organs and temperaments and its dispositions are conserved by the soul. We see this from experience, since when that soul recedes, all these dissolve and become corrupted.
     From: Franciscus Toletus (Commentary on 'De Anima' [1572], II.1.1), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 24.5
     A reaction: A nice example of observing a phenemonon, but not being able to observe the dependence relation the right way round. Compare Descartes in Idea 16763.
27. Natural Reality / A. Classical Physics / 1. Mechanics / c. Forces
16709 Some people return to scholastic mysterious qualities, disguising them as 'forces' [Leibniz]
     Full Idea: It pleases others to return to occult qualities or scholastic faculties, but since these crude philosophers and physicians see that those terms are in bad repute they change their name, calling them 'forces'.
     From: Gottfried Leibniz (Against Barbaric physics [1716], A&G:313), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 19.7
     A reaction: Deceptive, because Leibniz embraced forces in his revised Aristotelian essentialism. Leibniz placed forces within essences, and he is worried about forces as separate entities, unsupported by any substance.