Human Nature, Personal Identity, and Eschatology

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Taliaferro
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Personal Identity

Deciphering Hume

2020 ◽  
Vol 57 (1) ◽  
pp. 202-215
Author(s):  
Evgeniy N. Blinov ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Present Article ◽  
Personal Identity ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Radical Empiricism ◽  
Treatise Of Human Nature ◽  
Gradual Shift ◽  
Human Understanding ◽  
Philosophical Project

The present article analyzes an ambitious attempt to revisit and reevaluate Hume’s metaphysical project in the early 21th century, proposed by Vadim Vasilyev. His claim is to demonstrate that the problems raised by the author of Treatise of Human Nature and Enquiry concerning Human Understanding are far from being completely resolved and could provide us some valuable hints into the problems of contemporary analytical metaphysics. Against a widespread consensus that the evolution in Hume’s had been insignificant, Vasilyev maintains that his philosophical project underwent crucial transformations. He provides evidence of a gradual shift from a radical empiricism to a moderate rationalism by re-examining some classical problems of Hume’s studies and providing a critical analysis of the problems of causality and personal identity. This review provides some arguments for and against Vasilyev’s claims.

Ancient Concepts of Personal Identity

2009 ◽  
pp. 259-270
Author(s):  
Christopher Gill
Keyword(s):  
Social Identity ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Moral Education ◽  
Personal Identity ◽  
The Body ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
True Self ◽  
Human Identity ◽  
Body And Soul ◽  
The City

The burgeoning science of human nature recognized the implications for human identity. In the later fifth or early fourth centuries BCE philosophers started to develop a systematically dualistic account of human beings as composites of body and soul. In this view, the body is something that embeds the person in a particular community, and the soul is the true ‘self’, the locus of desires and beliefs which those communities could shape. This article suggests that personal identity is for these thinkers social identity, and it is no coincidence that Plato's utopian designs for a polis in the Republic are largely structured around rethinking the educational curriculum, or, conversely, that Protagoras assigns the central role in moral education to the city as a whole.

SELF AGAINST CHILDHOOD: THE CONTRIBUTIONS OF ALICE MEYNELL TO A PSYCHO-PHYSIOLOGY OF MEMORY

2006 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 249-268
Author(s):  
Linda M. Austin
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Personal Identity ◽  
David Hume ◽  
The Self ◽  
Treatise Of Human Nature ◽  
Spinal Chord ◽  
Metaphysical Notion ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
The Brain

THE IDEA OF THE SELFin its various constructions–political, economic, psychological–has always been shadowed by an English tradition of skepticism about the persistence of a conscious and stable identity. Voiced most disconcertingly by David Hume in his section, “Of personal identity” fromA Treatise of Human Nature(1739–40; I.iv.vi), this attitude was significantly advanced during the second half of the nineteenth century by a group of physiological psychologists who argued for the corporeal basis of mental functions, including memory. Henry Maudsley and George Henry Lewes, among others, challenged the metaphysical notion of a mind and drew instead from controversial and often suppressed theories of neuroscience to describe the physiological operation of memory. These theories, which located impressions and sensations in the brain or spinal chord, produced a form of identity that could endure alterations of consciousness. They offered, in addition, a new understanding of an adult's physical connection to the personal past.

The Concept of Self

2020 ◽  
pp. 153-196
Author(s):  
Gopi Chand Narang
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Personal Identity ◽  
Cohesive Force ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Relationship With God ◽  
Significant Aspect

One significant aspect of the Urdu ghazal is that it is not simply a lyrical accretion of feelings and emotions—it contains ideas, thoughts, and philosophical viewpoints. This chapter examines the Urdu ghazal in light of various streams of thought about human nature, about personal identity (self), and about human beings’ relationship with God. Besides being a source of enjoyment, the Urdu ghazal also served as a cohesive force for promoting pluralistic culture of India, while at the same time further bonding its intrinsic ethnic multiplicity.

Mind, bundle theory of

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stewart Candlish
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Personal Identity ◽  
Empirical Work ◽  
The Self ◽  
Bundle Theory ◽  
Treatise Of Human Nature ◽  
Additional Burden ◽  
The Mind

This theory owes its name to Hume, who described the self or person (which he assumed to be the mind) as ’nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement’ (A Treatise of Human Nature I, IV, §VI). The theory begins by denying Descartes’s Second Meditation view that experiences belong to an immaterial soul; its distinguishing feature is its attempt to account for the unity of a single mind by employing only relations among the experiences themselves rather than their attribution to an independently persisting subject. The usual objection to the bundle theory is that no relations adequate to the task can be found. But empirical work suggests that the task itself may be illusory. Many bundle theorists follow Hume in taking their topic to be personal identity. But the theory can be disentangled from this additional burden.

Hume on Personal Identity

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Galen Strawson
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Personal Identity ◽  
Bundle Theory ◽  
Treatise Of Human Nature ◽  
Phenomenological Account ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Self Examination

This paper considers Hume’s account of personal identity in his Treatise of Human Nature. It argues for three connected claims. (1) Hume does not endorse a “bundle theory” of mind, according to which the mind or self is simply a “bundle” of perceptions; he thinks that “the essence of the mind [is] unknown to us.” (2) Hume does not deny the existence of subjects of experience; he does not endorse a “no self” or “no ownership” view. (3) Hume does not claim that the subject of experience is not encountered in experience. The paper also examines Hume’s phenomenological account of self-experience—of what he comes across when he engages in mental self-examination by “entering intimately into what I call myself”—and his psychological account of how we come to believe in the existence of a persisting self as a result of the mind’s “sliding easily” along certain series of perceptions.

scholarly journals SEIS PERCEPCIONES EN BUSCA DE UN YO: TEATRO Y SUBJETIVIDAD EN DAVID HUME Y LUIGI PIRANDELLO

2017 ◽  
pp. 59-80
Author(s):  
Germán Osvaldo Prósperi
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Personal Identity ◽  
David Hume ◽  
Luigi Pirandello ◽  
Treatise Of Human Nature

En este artículo nos proponemos mostrar, por un lado, que resulta factible (y esclarecedor) explicar el capítulo “Of personal identity” del Treatise of Human Nature de David Hume a partir de la obra Sei personaggi in cerca d’autore de Luigi Pirandello, así como esta última obra a partir del texto de Hume; y, por otro lado, que tomando como eje la comparación de la mente con el teatro que propone Hume en dicho capítulo es también posible individuar, según el modo en el que se piensa la relación del pensamiento y la experiencia con el sujeto, dos grandes corrientes en la filosofía moderna: una que podríamos denominar teatro de Autor y otra teatro sin Autor.

From the Nature of Persons to the Structure of Morality

2001 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 531-565 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Noggle
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Personal Identity ◽  
John Rawls ◽  
Moral Theory ◽  
Moral Claim ◽  
Human Soul ◽  
True Nature ◽  
Human Motivation ◽  
Norman Daniels ◽  
Moral Theories

Intuitionism—in some form or another—is the most widely recognized and thoroughly discussed method of justification for moral theories. It rests on the claim that a moral theory must not deviate too much from our pre-theoretical moral convictions (or at least those that we are prepared to hold on reflection). In some form or another, this methodology goes back at least as far as Aristotle, and has been discussed, refined, and defended by such contemporary philosophers as John Rawls and Norman Daniels.There is, however, another methodology for constructing and defending moral theories. It draws on premises about human nature or the nature of persons to support conclusions about the nature and structure of morality. This method—which I will call the nature to morality methodology—evaluates a moral claim or moral theory on the basis of its relation to some (alleged) facts about the kind of beings we are. For brevity, I will use the term ‘nature-claims’ to refer to claims about human nature or the nature of persons, and the term ‘nature-facts’ to refer to true nature-claims. The nature-claims that have been used to support or criticize various moral theories include claims about human motivation, personal identity, the human soul, and the conceptual features of personhood or rational agency.

scholarly journals "Thus Saith the Lord": Edwardsean Anti-criterialism and the Physicalist Problem of Resurrection Identity

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 115-135
Author(s):  
Christopher Woznicki
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Personal Identity ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Jonathan Edwards ◽  
Christian Faith ◽  
Bodily Resurrection

The doctrine of bodily resurrection is a core tenet of Christian faith, yet it is a doctrine fraught with several philosophical problems, the most significant of which concerns the persistence of personal identity. This is especially true for physicalist accounts of human nature. Here I put forth a possible solution to the problem of resurrection identity. Turning to the theology of the 18th century American colonial theologian, Jonathan Edwards, as a resource, I argue for what I am calling “Edwardsean Anti-Criterialism.” This is a form of anti-criterialism in which pre- and post-resurrection bodies are identical because God treats these bodies a metaphysically one. After providing a sketch of this view I defend Edwardsean Anti-Criterialism from two objections and provide three reasons why Christians might be inclined to accept this proposal.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document