scholarly journals The No-self Theory: Hume, Buddhism, and Personal Identity

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Giles
Keyword(s):  
Personal Identity ◽  
David Hume ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
The Self ◽  
Self Image ◽  
New Interpretation ◽  
Constructed Self ◽  
Over Time

The problem of personal identity is often said to be one of accounting for what it is that gives persons their identity over time. However, once the problem has been construed in these terms, it is plain that too much has already been assumed. For what has been assumed is just that persons do have an identity. One of the first Western thinkers to argue for the non-existence of the self was David Hume, the 18th century empiricist philosopher who argued that the self was a fiction. A new interpretation of Hume's no-self theory is put forward by arguing for an eliminative rather than a reductive point of view of personal identity, and by approaching the problem in terms of phenomenology, Buddhist critiques of the notion of the self, and the idea of a constructed self-image. It is concluded that there is no such thing as the self.

How Personal Theories of the Self Shape Beliefs about Personal Continuity and Transformative Experience

2020 ◽  
pp. 52-72
Author(s):  
Sarah Molouki ◽  
Stephanie Y. Chen ◽  
Oleg Urminsky ◽  
Daniel M. Bartels
Keyword(s):  
Personal Identity ◽  
Experimental Work ◽  
Developmental Trajectory ◽  
The Self ◽  
Self Concept ◽  
Personal Change ◽  
Transformative Experience ◽  
Transformative Experiences ◽  
Over Time

This chapter summarizes experimental work exploring how individual beliefs about the personally disruptive character of transformative experiences are influenced by intuitive theories of what a self fundamentally is, at the current moment and over time. Judgments of disrupted personal identity are influenced by views of the causal centrality of a transformed trait to a person’s self-concept, with changes in more central features perceived as more disruptive to self-continuity. Furthermore, the type of change matters: unexpected or undesirable changes to personal features are viewed as more disruptive to self-continuity than changes that are consistent with a person’s expected developmental trajectory. The degree to which an individual considers a particular personal change to be disruptive will affect how he or she makes decisions about, reacts to, and copes with this experience.

The History of Science as European Self-Portraiture

2006 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 523-536 ◽  
Author(s):  
LORRAINE DASTON
Keyword(s):  
History Of Science ◽  
Scientific Revolution ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
World History ◽  
The Self ◽  
Self Image ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
History Of

Since the Enlightenment, the history of science has been enlisted to show the unity and distinctiveness of Europe. This paper, written on the occasion of the award of the 2005 Erasmus Prize to historians of science Simon Schaffer and Steven Shapin, traces the intertwined narratives of the history of science and European modernity from the 18th century to the present. Whether understood as triumph or tragedy (and there have been eloquent proponents of both views), the Scientific Revolution has been portrayed as Europe's decisive break with tradition – the first such break in world history and the model for all subsequent epics of modernization in other cultures. The paper concludes with reflections on how a new history of science, exemplified in the work of Shapin and Schaffer, may transform the self-image of Europe and conceptions of truth itself.

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.

‘Le petit coq gaullois’ or ‘the global diplomat’?

2011 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-70 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Hellman
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
International System ◽  
The United States ◽  
Us Foreign Policy ◽  
The Self ◽  
Self Image ◽  
The Press ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Intellectual Elites ◽  
Over Time

•The aim of this article is to explore the extent to which the self-image of France expressed in relation to the United States has changed with changes in US foreign policy and paradigmatic changes in the international system. The article explores how the French political and intellectual elites related to the USA in the discourse of Le Monde and Le Figaro in 1984, 1994, 2004 and 2009. The analysis indicates that France’s self-image is connected to multilateralism, liberalism and cultural protectionism. The stabilizing effect of political culture is suggested as an explanation for the fact that the press represented France’s self-image in a more or less similar manner while different roles were ascribed to the USA over time. •

scholarly journals English drama at the German theatre in Ljubljana in the last decades of the Habsburg monarchy

2012 ◽  
Vol 45 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 33-52
Author(s):  
Margarete Rubik
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
The Self ◽  
English Drama ◽  
Habsburg Monarchy ◽  
Late 19Th Century ◽  
Self Image ◽  
Late 18Th Century ◽  
German Newspaper ◽  
English Culture

This article examines the English repertoire of the German theatre in Ljubljana in the last decades of the Habsburg monarchy and its reception by the local German newspaper, Laibacher Zeitung. It considers only drama, not operas or operettas. The English plays were, of course, performed in translation, in German, as opposed to the plays performed in the Slovenian language from the late 18th century on and especially within the Dramatično društvo circle established in 1867. The choice of performances gives interesting insights into the late 19th century attitude towards English culture as well as the self-image fostered by the German stage in Ljubljana.

scholarly journals Pepys reading: passion for books in an English man’s diary of the 17th century

2021 ◽  
pp. 188-242
Author(s):  
Anna Stogova
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
17Th Century ◽  
Considerable Effect ◽  
The Self ◽  
Ideal Model ◽  
Self Image ◽  
Social Prestige ◽  
Under Construction ◽  
Traditional Image

The article touches upon the Early Modern practices of reading, which are subject of much debate in contemporary scholarship. The traditional image of man’s reading before the 18th century implied serious approach to books and the use of information found there for self-education, self-edification, and acquisition of social prestige. The analysis of the diary by Samuel Papys (1660-1669), a Navy Office clerk, demonstrates that this ideal model did not have considerable effect on representations of the experience of reading in texts that constructed a “story of self”. Not only the practices of reading varied greatly, but the category chosen by Pepys to define this experience was the category of pleasure directly linked to the “self-image” under construction.

Deep Brain Stimulation, Continuity over Time, and the True Self

2016 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 647-658 ◽  
Author(s):  
SVEN NYHOLM ◽  
ELIZABETH O’NEILL
Keyword(s):  
Anorexia Nervosa ◽  
Deep Brain Stimulation ◽  
Personal Identity ◽  
Brain Stimulation ◽  
The Self ◽  
True Self ◽  
Treatment Refractory ◽  
Over Time ◽  
Deep Brain

Abstract:One of the topics that often comes up in ethical discussions of deep brain stimulation (DBS) is the question of what impact DBS has, or might have, on the patient’s self. This is often understood as a question of whether DBS poses a threat to personal identity, which is typically understood as having to do with psychological and/or narrative continuity over time. In this article, we argue that the discussion of whether DBS is a threat to continuity over time is too narrow. There are other questions concerning DBS and the self that are overlooked in discussions exclusively focusing on psychological and/or narrative continuity. For example, it is also important to investigate whether DBS might sometimes have a positive (e.g., a rehabilitating) effect on the patient’s self. To widen the discussion of DBS, so as to make it encompass a broader range of considerations that bear on DBS’s impact on the self, we identify six features of the commonly used concept of a person’s “true self.” We apply these six features to the relation between DBS and the self. And we end with a brief discussion of the role DBS might play in treating otherwise treatment-refractory anorexia nervosa. This further highlights the importance of discussing both continuity over time and the notion of the true self.

scholarly journals New Ethics’ Transcendence of the Illusion of Personal Identity

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Young Hyeon Lee
Keyword(s):  
Personal Identity ◽  
David Hume ◽  
The Self ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
Important Message ◽  
One Step ◽  
Identity Consistency ◽  
Objective Basis ◽  
Set Up ◽  
New Framework

As the humanity was entering modern times, the notion of personal identity came into the limelight among many philosophers, giving rise to a range of related theories and concepts. Of them, the skepticism about personal identity advanced by David Hume is still sending us an important message. Dealing with the notion of personal identity, he introduced the three relations of resemblance, contiguity, and causation, but renounced them as having any objective basis from which to develop them into viable principles for explaining our notions of personal identity. However, in dealing with the problem of personal identity, consistency of standards is more important than their objectivity, and the difficulties facing the humanity providing accurate answers to compelling questions such as those about the self and death are basically ascribable to our failure to provide consistent standards. Applying a consistent standard, it becomes clear that non-identity among others and personal identity are incompatible, and this points to the need for a shift of perspective in ethics. This paper concludes that the relations among humans and many different points in time within a self are fundamentally the same, and going one step further, intends to set up a new framework of ethics including a concept of the universal effect of existence.

A Legacy of Ethical Atomism

1983 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 193-208
Author(s):  
P.J. Benson
Keyword(s):  
Personal Identity ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
David Hume ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Broad Group ◽  
Modern Moral Philosophy ◽  
Over Time

I want to deal in this essay with the group of philosophers that G.E.M. Anscombe includes under the term ‘modern moral philosophy’ in her essay by that name. The stars of this group are Hobbes, Hume, Adam Smith, Mill, Sidgwick, Moore. I mean to include as well generally the last hundred years of emotivists, utilitarians, and those theorists who have emphasized universalizability in its various versions. For reasons which I hope will soon become clear, I will refer to this broad group as the ‘atomistic tradition.’ I will be assuming, though not often saying, that the most forthright and thorough spokesman of the tradition is David Hume who, in his purely skeptical moments, was so atomistic and extensionalist that he even denied personal identity over time. Anything less than that is not purely atomistic.

Governing urban diversity through myths of national sameness – a comparative analysis of Denmark and Sweden

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tina Gudrun Jensen ◽  
Rebecka Söderberg
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Comparative Approach ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Self Image ◽  
Integration Policies ◽  
Cultural Texts ◽  
The City ◽  
Over Time ◽  
Urban Diversity

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore problematisations of urban diversity in urban and integration policies in Denmark and Sweden; the paper aims to show how such policies express social imaginaries about the self and the other underlying assumptions of sameness that legitimise diverging ways of managing urban diversity and (re)organising the city.Design/methodology/approachInspired by anthropology of policy and post-structural approaches to policy analysis, the authors approach urban and integration policies as cultural texts that are central to the organisation of cities and societies. With a comparative approach, the authors explore how visions of diversity take shape and develop over time in Swedish and Danish policies on urban development and integration.FindingsSwedish policy constructs productiveness as crucial to the imagined national sameness, whereas Danish policy constructs cultural sameness as fundamental to the national self-image. By constructing the figure of “the unproductive”/“the non-Western” as the other, diverging from an imagined sameness, policies for organising the city through removing and “improving” urban diverse others are legitimised.Originality/valueThe authors add to previous research by focussing on the construction of the self as crucial in processes of othering and by highlighting how both nationalistic and colour-blind policy discourses construct myths of national sameness, which legitimise the governing of urban diversity. The authors highlight and de-naturalise assumptions and categorisations by showing how problem representations differ over time and between two neighbouring countries.

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