Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
How important is the brain (or memory)?
I found this article in Esquire about the story of Henry Molaison a man who, after brain surgery could not have new memories:
When a surgeon cut into Henry Molaison's skull to treat him for epilepsy, he inadvertently created the most important brain-research subject of our time — a man who could no longer remember, who taught us everything we know about memory. Six decades later, another daring researcher is cutting into Henry's brain. Another revolution in brain science is about to begin.
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Personal Identity
Chapter 4 discusses human iddentity. First we have to understand what's the idea. Identity comes from the root id, idem (again and again).
Let's complicate things a bit: What sort of things are you and I and other human people?
For instance, are we made up entirely of matter, just as stones are, or partly or wholly of something else? And if we are made of matter, what matter is it? (Just the matter that makes up our bodies, or might we be larger or smaller than our bodies?) Where, in other words, do our spatial boundaries lie? More fundamentally, what fixes those boundaries? Are we substances - that is, independent beings—or is each of us a state or an aspect of something else, or perhaps some sort of process or event?
Generally speaking, we take identity to be that what makes you unique as an individual and different from others. Let's take a look at some views:
Animalism is the idea that you are your body. If we are "animals," we have the persistence conditions of animals. And animals appear to persist by virtue of some sort of brute physical continuity. So Animalism seems to imply a somatic version of you.
Careful! Being a person however is only a temporary property. A person is the kind of entity that has the moral right to make its own life-choices, to live its life without (unprovoked) interference from others. In general PERSON = an entity that has the moral right of self-determination.
The problem with animalism is that there seems to be something more fluid within the body that, for a variety of reasons can hate hie/her body. This brings us to the transgender issue and transgender-related topics.
Locke disagrees with Animalism. For Locke, ous identity lies in something more fluid. In fact, the problem begins with Biblical texts asserting that we will have the same body at the Resurrection as we did in this life. Locke explicitly tells us that the case of the prince and the cobbler shows us the resolution of the problem of the resurrection. The case is one in which the soul of the prince with all of its princely thoughts is transferred from the body of the prince to the body of the cobbler, the cobbler's soul having departed. The result of this exchange, is that the prince still consider himself the prince, even though he finds himself in an altogether new body. Locke's distinction between man and person makes it possible for the same person to show up in a different body at the resurrection and yet still be the same person. Locke focuses on the prince with all his princely thoughts because, on his view, it is consciousness which is crucial to the reward and punishment which is to be meted out at the Last Judgment.
The Soul Theory:
To say that one has a soul, acording to the Soul Theory is to say that the basis for one's memories and feelings and desires -the whole basis for one's personality- is made possible by an entity known as the soul. The idea here is that even if one loses this memory or that, or even if one's personality changes, that which underlies these things -- the soul -- remains unchanged and as such provides the basis for saying that it is the same person over time.
One counterargument against the Sopul Theory is Leibniz's King of China:
Leibniz asks if we would be willing to have our souls switched into the body of Bill Gates (to update the example) if it meant that all of the "pins" were switched (so Bill Gates' pins are put into your pincushion and your pins are put into his pincushion). By Soul Theory, you would become very rich, even though you would have all of the memories and desires of Bill Gates. Leibniz thinks that no one would agree to this switch, proving that no one finds it intuitive that "same soul" is a sufficient condition for personal identity.
The text makes an interesting point, the soul doesn't explain anything that you wouldn't know by looking at people's behavior. That is to say, what we call "soul" is generally the character of the individual.
Let's complicate things a bit: What sort of things are you and I and other human people?
For instance, are we made up entirely of matter, just as stones are, or partly or wholly of something else? And if we are made of matter, what matter is it? (Just the matter that makes up our bodies, or might we be larger or smaller than our bodies?) Where, in other words, do our spatial boundaries lie? More fundamentally, what fixes those boundaries? Are we substances - that is, independent beings—or is each of us a state or an aspect of something else, or perhaps some sort of process or event?
Generally speaking, we take identity to be that what makes you unique as an individual and different from others. Let's take a look at some views:
Animalism is the idea that you are your body. If we are "animals," we have the persistence conditions of animals. And animals appear to persist by virtue of some sort of brute physical continuity. So Animalism seems to imply a somatic version of you.
Careful! Being a person however is only a temporary property. A person is the kind of entity that has the moral right to make its own life-choices, to live its life without (unprovoked) interference from others. In general PERSON = an entity that has the moral right of self-determination.
The problem with animalism is that there seems to be something more fluid within the body that, for a variety of reasons can hate hie/her body. This brings us to the transgender issue and transgender-related topics.
Locke disagrees with Animalism. For Locke, ous identity lies in something more fluid. In fact, the problem begins with Biblical texts asserting that we will have the same body at the Resurrection as we did in this life. Locke explicitly tells us that the case of the prince and the cobbler shows us the resolution of the problem of the resurrection. The case is one in which the soul of the prince with all of its princely thoughts is transferred from the body of the prince to the body of the cobbler, the cobbler's soul having departed. The result of this exchange, is that the prince still consider himself the prince, even though he finds himself in an altogether new body. Locke's distinction between man and person makes it possible for the same person to show up in a different body at the resurrection and yet still be the same person. Locke focuses on the prince with all his princely thoughts because, on his view, it is consciousness which is crucial to the reward and punishment which is to be meted out at the Last Judgment.
To say that one has a soul, acording to the Soul Theory is to say that the basis for one's memories and feelings and desires -the whole basis for one's personality- is made possible by an entity known as the soul. The idea here is that even if one loses this memory or that, or even if one's personality changes, that which underlies these things -- the soul -- remains unchanged and as such provides the basis for saying that it is the same person over time.
One counterargument against the Sopul Theory is Leibniz's King of China:
Leibniz asks if we would be willing to have our souls switched into the body of Bill Gates (to update the example) if it meant that all of the "pins" were switched (so Bill Gates' pins are put into your pincushion and your pins are put into his pincushion). By Soul Theory, you would become very rich, even though you would have all of the memories and desires of Bill Gates. Leibniz thinks that no one would agree to this switch, proving that no one finds it intuitive that "same soul" is a sufficient condition for personal identity.
The text makes an interesting point, the soul doesn't explain anything that you wouldn't know by looking at people's behavior. That is to say, what we call "soul" is generally the character of the individual.
Monday, October 4, 2010
Philosophy Club (minutes)
Philosophy Club's feedback #1, here. As you can see on the Dali-like poster above, future meetings of the club will take place in room 1565.
