Personal Identity

Book Overview

This volume brings together the vital contributions of distinguished past and contemporary philosophers to the important topic of personal identity. The essays range from John Locke's classic... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0520029607
• ISBN13: 9780520029606
• Release Date: June 1975
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Length: 246 Pages
• Weight: 0.79 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.4" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

A Nice, Albeit Somewhat Outdated, Anthology

This is a first-rate anthology on personal identity that includes important historical work and recent (up to the 70s) discussions of the relevant issues. It begins with an informative introduction by Perry. The introduction presents the basic problem and the way philosophers traditionally have thought about it. Then Perry gives a summary of most important points made in the historical material included in the anthology. What is the question of personal identity? Basically, it's the question of what makes a person one and the same person through time. I assume I'm very same person I was two days ago, two months ago, two years ago, two decades ago, etc. Given that I've changed a great deal over that period of time, how could this be? It seems like I, the very person sitting here and typing this now, was once an undergraduate planning to go to grad school, once a high school student getting ready for college, once a elementary school kid, and once a newborn baby. But it's clear that I don't look or think a lot like those previous people who appear to be one and the same as I am. There's been a lot of physical and psychological change over time, and yet I think I'm the very same person I was at those various times. How could that be?And this is a philosophical issue that seems to have practical ramifications. It appears to have consequences for how we understand ourselves and other people: Does a person survive radical amnesia? How about brain death? Could a person survive after bodily death? Could there be multiple people in the same body at the same time? If a person's memories, beliefs, desires, etc. change so that there's little or no connection to her previous self, is she really the same person at all anymore? Consequences for how we relate to people: If my friend suffers from amnesia and never recovers his prior memories, is he really still my friend (is he still the same person I knew before)? If my mother is dying from a disease that has left her little more than a body rotting away in a hospital bed, is she still really my mother (i.e. the same person who raised me)? And moral consequences: Is a fetus a person? If a person's psychology has radically changed over time, is it still fair to hold her responsible for things she did long ago (maybe she's no longer the person who did whatever we want to hold her responsible for)? Now, clearly, it's pointless to try to summarize even the most important ideas that you'll find in the readings collected here. There are too many positions, too many important arguments, and too many interesting issues to say much of importance about the anthology as a whole. But I will try to give you some sense of the contents here.The first reading is from the seminal work on this topic, namely Locke's discussion in his Essay concerning Human Understanding. In a few justly famous thought experiments, Locke argues against the view that personal identity consists in identity of immaterial s

Personal Identity, ed. John Perry

This is a terrific collection of works on problems concerning personal identity (what are the criteria for personal identity? is personal identity presupposed by the criterion of memory? does personal identity matter?) including both historical pieces (Locke, Hume, Butler, Reid) and contemporary ones (Grice, Williams, Perry, Parfit.) It's a great introduction to the issues, but an introduction you'll not want to leave behind.