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15390
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Metaphysics attempts to give an account of everything, in terms of categories and principles [Simons]
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Full Idea:
Metaphysics, the noblest of philosophic enterprises, is an attempt to give an account of everything. ...Its job is to provide a universal framework (of categories and principles) within which anything whatever can take its place.
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From:
Peter Simons (Whitehead: process and cosmology [2009], 'Speculative')
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A reaction:
Bravo! I take metaphysics to be entirely continuous with science, but operating entirely at the highest level of generality. See Westerhoff on categories, though. The enterprise may not be going too well.
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16236
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Maybe our persistence conditions concern bodies, rather than persons [Olson, by Hawley]
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Full Idea:
Instead of attributing person-like persistence conditions to bodies, we could attribute body-like persistence conditions to persons, …so human persons are identical with human organisms.
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From:
report of Eric T. Olson (The Human Animal [1997]) by Katherine Hawley - How Things Persist 5.10
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A reaction:
In the case of pre-birth and advanced senility, Olson thinks we could have the body without the person, so person is a 'phase sortal' of bodies. A good theory, which seems to answer a lot of questions. 'Person' may be an abstraction.
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6669
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For 'animalism', I exist before I became a person, and can continue after it, so I am not a person [Olson, by Lowe]
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Full Idea:
According to 'animalism', I existed before I was a person and I may well go one existing for some time after I cease to be a person; hence, I am not essentially a person, but a human organism.
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From:
report of Eric T. Olson (The Human Animal [1997]) by E.J. Lowe - Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind Ch.10
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A reaction:
There is a very real sense in which an extremely senile person has 'ceased to exist' (e.g. as the person I used to love). On the whole, though, I think that Olson is right, and yet 'person' is an important concept. Neither concept is all-or-nothing.
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