Empirical evidence suggests that one explanation for a certain sort of time-bias—near-bias—is diminution in self-connectedness between current person-stages and temporally farther future stages. In this paper we extend this research in two directions. First, we explore the association between self-connectedness towards past person-stages and retrospective near-bias, with the aim of determining whether we can explain retrospective near-bias in terms of diminished feelings of connectedness between current person-stages and temporally farther past stages. Second, we explore the association between (...) future-bias and asymmetries in self-connectedness with future stages as compared with equidistant past stages. If current stages feel more connected to future stages than equidistant past ones, then this asymmetry could explain our bias towards future over past person-stages. We aim to determine whether this is so, in part as a way to try and better understand the mechanisms that underlie time-biases, but also in order to better evaluate the normative status of these preferences. That is because on many views, the strength of certain inter-stage connections grounds there being an egoistic concern relation obtaining between stages, whose strength, in turn, determines whether that stage has prudential reason to have (or not) time-biased preferences. Since self-connectedness may be evidence of, or partly constitutive of, such inter-stage connections, it may be that if asymmetries in, or diminution of, self-connectedness, explains time-biased preferences, it also normatively licenses those preferences. (shrink)

Phineas Gage’s story is typically offered as a paradigm example supporting the view that part of what matters for personal identity is a certain magnitude of similarity between earlier and later individuals. Yet, reconsidering a slight variant of Phineas Gage’s story indicates that it is not just magnitude of similarity, but also the direction of change that affects personal identity judgments; in some cases, changes for the worse are more seen as identity-severing than changes for the better of comparable magnitude. (...) Ironically, thinking carefully about Phineas Gage’s story tells against the thesis it is typically taken to support. (shrink)

When persons can branch by symmetric copying, a structural problem emerges for rights and responsibilities that presuppose a unique diachronic bearer. These include, inter alia, voting, property, and criminal liability. I show that three appealing commitments are jointly unsatisfiable in symmetric fission. They are Nonproliferation (copying should not multiply exclusive entitlements), Non-Arbitrariness (like cases must not be treated unalike absent person-relevant justification), and Preservation (pre-copy entitlements persist to exactly one continuer). I develop three response paths, ranging from explicit legal (...) stipulation to treating fission as the death of the original person. Much digital rights discourse inherits frameworks from debates about animal personhood, but heretofore unremarked upon is the salient distinction, which is not human versus non-human, but copyable versus non-copyable. Unlike biological organisms, copyable persons break the architecture of diachronic recognition. The familiar rights structure must be rebuilt on new foundations or abandoned where branching is possible. -/- Keywords: personal identity; symmetric fission; copyable persons; digital minds; recognition; AI personhood; political equality; non-arbitrariness. (shrink)

Recent epistemology has focused almost exclusively on propositional knowledge. This paper considers an underexplored area of epistemology, namely knowledge of persons: if propositional knowledge is a state of mind, consisting in a subject's attitude to a (true) proposition, the account developed here thinks of interpersonal knowledge as a state of minds, involving a subject's attitude to another (existing) subject. This kind of knowledge is distinct from propositional knowledge, but it exhibits a gradability characteristic of context-sensitivity, and admits of shifty thresholds. (...) It is supported by a wide range of unexplored linguistic data and intuitive cases; and it promises to illuminate debates within epistemology, philosophy of religion, and ethics. (shrink)

The personal identity relation is of great interest to philosophers, who often consider fictional scenarios to test what features seem to make persons persist through time. But often real examples of neuroscientific interest also provide important tests of personal identity. One such example is the case of Phineas Gage – or at least the story often told about Phineas Gage. Many cite Gage’s story as example of severed personal identity; Phineas underwent such a tremendous change that Gage “survived as a (...) different man.” I discuss a recent empirical finding about judgments about this hypothetical. It is not just the magnitude of the change that affects identity judgment; it is also the negative direction of the change. I present an experiment suggesting that direction of change also affects neuroethical judgments. I conclude we should consider carefully the way in which improvements and deteriorations affect attributions of personal identity. This is particularly important since a number of the most crucial neuroethical decisions involve varieties of cognitive enhancements or deteriorations. (shrink)

‘One person, one vote’ (OPOV) is an important slogan in democratic movements, a principle that undergirds a landmark series of cases in US constitutional law, and a widely accepted axiom of democratic theory in philosophy and political science. It is taken to be sacrosanct; some even state that OPOV “is, like the injustice of chattel slavery, a ‘fixed point’” (Kolodny 2023: 291). This is a rare distinction for an ideal. For all the ink spilt on Rawls’ Difference Principle, no (...) one printed it on the pamphlets and placards of trade unionist, decolonial, and anti-Apartheid protests; it never appears in US Supreme Court decisions; and none of its defenders would say that denying it is akin to accepting slavery. But despite this, OPOV has proved remarkably hard to pin down. It is not meant to be a mere slogan. It is meant to explain why practices of plural voting and vote dilution are inegalitarian. But there is no consensus and little debate about what it means. Many leave the principle undefined. Others say OPOV means anonymity, or equal voting weight, or equal representation, or equal voting power. These accounts differ significantly. But little is said about one should be preferred to its rival. -/- My goal is to convince you that the meaning of OPOV poses a deep, urgent problem, for which we have no adequate solution. I will argue that all current accounts of OPOV should be rejected. The key upshot will be that we need, but lack, a good explanation of the datum that practices of plural voting and vote dilution robustly fail a minimal condition for political equality. In closing, I’ll explain why my arguments also push us towards embracing what has often been considered a radical and overly demanding implication: namely, that all district-based systems—including those used in the US House of Representatives, Senate, and Electoral College—violate OPOV. (shrink)

Our aim in this entry is to articulate the state of the art in the moral psychology of personal identity. We begin by discussing the major philosophical theories of personal identity, including their shortcomings. We then turn to recent psychological work on personal identity and the self, investigations that often illuminate our person-related normative concerns. We conclude by discussing the implications of this psychological work for some contemporary philosophical theories and suggesting fruitful areas for future work on personal identity.

What’s the difference between those psychological posits that are ‘me” and those that are not? Distinguishing between these psychological kinds is important in many domains, but an account of what the distinction consists in is challenging. I argue for Psychological Constructionism: those psychological posits that correspond to the kinds within folk psychology are personal, and those that don’t, aren’t. I suggest that only constructionism can answer a fundamental challenge in characterizing the personal level – the plurality problem. The things that (...) plausibly qualify as personal are motley. Other attempts at accounting for the personal level either cannot accommodate this plurality, or cannot explain what unifies the personal. Given arguments others have given for a pluralistic conception of folk psychology, constructionism explains and predicts this plurality in a systematic and unified way, thereby solving the plurality problem. (shrink)

There has been a growing interest in research concerning memory modification technologies (MMTs) in recent years. Neuroscientists and psychologists are beginning to explore the prospect of controllable and intentional modification of human memory. One of the technologies with the greatest potential to this end is optogenetics—an invasive neuromodulation technique involving the use of light to control the activity of individual brain cells. It has recently shown the potential to modify specific long-term memories in animal models in ways not yet possible (...) with other MMTs. As the therapeutic potential of optogenetics has already prompted approval of the first human trials, it is especially important and timely to consider the opportunities and dangers this technology may entail. In this article, we focus on possible consequences of optogenetics as an MMT by analyzing fundamental threats potentially associated with memory modifications: the potential disruption of personality and authenticity. (shrink)

In Reasons and Persons, Parfit (1984) posed a challenge: provide a satisfying normative account that solves the Non-Identity Problem, avoids the Repugnant and Absurd Conclusions, and solves the Mere-Addition Paradox. In response, some have suggested that we look toward person-affecting views of morality for a solution. But the person-affecting views that have been offered so far have been unable to satisfy Parfit's four requirements, and these views have been subject to a number of independent complaints. This paper describes (...) a person-affecting account which meets Parfit's challenge. The account satisfies Parfit's four requirements, and avoids many of the criticisms that have been raised against person-affecting views. (shrink)

Many philosophers think that we should use a lottery to decide who gets a good to which two persons have an equal claim but which only one person can get. Some philosophers think that we should save identified persons from harm even at the expense of saving a somewhat greater number of statistical persons from the same harm. I defend a principled way of justifying both judgements, namely, by appealing to the decreasing marginal moral value of survival chances. I (...) identify four desiderata that, I contend, any such justification should satisfy, and explain how my account meets these desiderata, unlike some previous accounts. (shrink)

This essay explores Friedrich Nietzsche’s concepts of Eternal Recurrence and Amor Fati from a personal philosophical perspective, examining how these ideas illuminate the meaning of human existence, ethical self-realization, and the creative affirmation of life. The doctrine of Eternal Recurrence presupposes that every human experience—whether positive or negative—repeats infinitely, while Amor Fati transforms this repetition into an active ethical practice of loving and affirming one’s destiny. By connecting these concepts with my own reflections and lived experiences, I attempt to understand (...) life as an integrated totality that includes both suffering and joy, failure and success, loss and creation. The essay further discusses how ethical choice and self-realization can be achieved within this cyclical view of existence and how Nietzsche’s thought can be applied to the moral and existential challenges of modern life. Keywords Eternal Recurrence; Amor Fati; Will to Power; Nietzsche; Ethical Self-Realization; Existential Responsibility; Affirmation of Life; Personal Philosophy; Non-Dualism; Value Creation. (shrink)

In this paper I outline and defend a new approach to personal-identity—personal-identity non-cognitivism—and argue that it has several advantages over its cognitivist rivals. On this view utterances of personal-identity sentences express a non-cognitive attitude towards relevant person-stages. The resulting view offers a pleasingly nuanced picture of what we are doing when we utter such sentences.

We all could have had better lives, yet often do not wish that our lives had gone differently, especially when we contemplate alternatives that vastly diverge from our actual life course. What, if anything, accounts for such conservative retrospective attitudes? I argue that the right answer involves the significance of our personal attachments and our biographical identity. I also examine other options, such as the absence of self-to-self connections across possible worlds and a general conservatism about value.

Many philosophers hypothesize that our concept of personal identity is partly constituted by the one-person-one-place rule, which states that a person can only be in one place at a time. This hypothesis has been assumed by the most influential contemporary work on personal identity. In this paper, we report a series of studies testing whether the hypothesis is true. In these studies, people consistently judged that the same person existed in two different places at the same time. (...) This result undermines some widely held philosophical assumptions, supports others, and fits well with recent discoveries on identity judgments about inanimate objects and non-human animals. (shrink)

While friendship, love, and familial bonds at their best are widely regarded as central to human flourishing, it is an open question why they benefit us. Reductionist accounts regard good relationships as only instrumentally or derivatively good for us. However, there may also be a non-contingent connection between good personal relationships and what is good for a person. I focus on three kinds of Anti-Reductionist claim and their implications. -/- First, some philosophers hold that personal relationships can be in (...) themselves good or bad for us, and thus constituents of well-being or ill-being. In particular, some relationships consist in interaction that manifests a kind of mutual recognition or fitting affection. I examine objective list and perfectionist arguments for taking involvement in such relationships to be a basic welfare good. Second, others argue that some relationships change the scope of our self-interest, so that things that happen to our loved ones are also in themselves good or bad for us. I argue that on this issue, a kind of reductionist account appealing to personal investment is more plausible. And finally, it could be that some relationships are a source of or precondition for a form of meaning in life – after all, it’s common to think that our loved ones give us a reason to live. I suggest that this may be because the kind of transformative intimacy involved in deep personal relationships makes us matter to someone who matters in a different way than achievements that produce great intrinsic value. (shrink)

According to second‐personal approaches to moral obligation, the distinctive normative features of moral obligation can only be explained in terms of second‐personal relations, i.e. the distinctive way persons relate to each other as persons. But there are important disagreements between different groups of second‐personal approaches. Most notably, they disagree about the nature of second‐personal relations, which has consequences for the nature of the obligations that they purport to explain. This article aims to distinguish these groups from each other, highlight their (...) respective advantages and disadvantages, and thereby indicate avenues for future research. (shrink)

The literature acknowledges a distinction between immoral, amoral and moral management. This paper makes a case for the employee (at any level) as a moral agent, even though the paper begins by highlighting a body of evidence which suggests that individual moral agency is sacrificed at work and is compromised in deference to other pressures. This leads to a discussion about the notion of discretion and an examination of a separate, contrary body of literature which indicates that some individuals in (...) corporations may use their discretion to behave in a socially entrepreneurial manner. My underlying assumption is that CSR isn’t solely driven by economics and that it may also be championed as a result of a personal morality, inspired by employees’ own socially oriented personal values. A conceptual framework is put forward and it is suggested that individuals may be categorized as Active or Frustrated Corporate Social Entrepreneurs; Conformists or Apathetics, distinguished by their individualistic or collectivist personal values. In a discussion of the nature of values, this paper highlights how values may act as drivers of our behavior and pays particular attention to the values of the entrepreneur, thereby linking the existing debate on moral agency with the field of corporate social responsibility. (shrink)

This chapter has two objectives. One is to explore possible social epistemological approaches to self-knowledge. These are outlined in the first section, which is primarily historical and exploratory yet critical. The second objective is to propose a view of first-person authority as an intrinsically social phenomenon. The second section argues that first-person authority is a different phenomenon than self-knowledge, although the two are linked in important ways. Thus, instead of arguing for a social epistemological approach to self-knowledge, the (...) chapter proposes that a promising way to understand its social aspects is to focus on a related but different phenomenon, namely first person authority. (shrink)

This chapter argues that virtue ethics offers a promising framework for understanding the nature and value of personal relationships. Unlike consequentialism and deontology, virtue ethics prioritizes the agent’s own perspective, focusing on human flourishing, the importance of emotional life, and the development of moral character. In particular, I argue that, especially when supplemented by the idea of relational virtues—such as filial piety and the virtue of friendship—virtue ethics offers a plausible account that captures the unique ethical significance of personal relationships. (...) Additionally, I argue, the idea of virtuous relational activity helps justify partiality towards one’s intimates from a virtue-ethical perspective. I conclude by suggesting how virtue-ethical approach, supplemented by the idea of relational virtue, can further enrich our understanding of ethics in personal relationships. Overall, this chapter aims not only to survey existing approaches but also to structure and extend the emerging virtue-ethical discourse on the normativity of personal relationships. (shrink)

In our article (Zawadzki and Adamczyk 2021), we analyzed threats that novel memory modifying interventions may pose in the future. More specifically, we discussed how optogenetics’ potential for reversible erasure/deactivation of memory “may impact authenticity by producing changes at different levels of personality.” Our article has received many thoughtful open peer commentaries for which we would like to express our great appreciation. We have identified two main threads of objections. They are related to the potential applicability of optogenetics as a (...) therapeutic memory modification technology (MMT) in humans—applicability thread, and the normative value of authenticity, that is, the assumption that preserving authenticity is valuable (either in general or in the particular approach we adopted)—normative thread. Both of these threads concern fundamental issues: The former deals with the scientific credibility of the case vignette on which our discussion is based, and the latter deals with the normative weight of our considerations. We think that addressing both of them can be instructive in a broader context as they reflect a more general disagreement among neuroethicists about the very purpose and method of our discipline. (shrink)

The study aimed at identifying the personal variables and their effect in promoting job creation in Gaza Strip through business incubators. The researchers used the descriptive analytical approach to achieve the study objectives. The study population consisted of 92 of the pilot projects benefiting from the three business incubators in Gaza Strip (Palestinian Information Technology Incubator, UCAS Technology Incubator and Business and Technology Incubator). The study reached a number of results, the most important of which are the existence of statistically (...) significant differences on entrepreneurship attributed to each age as most of them are between the ages of 22-30, Gender for males, business incubator, scientific qualification for the specialties of information technology and engineering, and years of experience. Based on the findings, the researchers recommend focusing on university students in guiding them towards entrepreneurship and helping new graduates to start entrepreneurship. And to guide students to scientific disciplines that help them in entrepreneurship after graduation, whether starting a small business or self-employment, support females to entrepreneurship as most of the entrepreneurs are male, in addition to stimulating males as well. (shrink)

A paper of Roger Crisp’s four years ago contained arguments that seemed to imply that having deep personal relationships does not constitute an element of well‐being. The lesson to draw from that paper of Crisp’s, according to a recent journal article of mine, is that one’s having a deep personal relationship does constitute an element of one’s well‐being on condition that one’s affection for the other person is merited. Crisp’s paper earlier in this issue of Ratio responds to my (...) arguments. Here I reply to new questions that Crisp poses or provokes. (shrink)

There are different ways of dividing psychology into subdisciplines. The purpose of the present paper is to explore one specific meta-perspective on psychological science, seen as having three main branches: person psychology, population psychology, and mechanism psychology, linked to three different levels of research. Person-level research focuses on psychological phenomena as experienced and enacted by individual persons in their interaction with other persons and other parts of the environment, and in their development over time. Population-level research focuses on (...) populations of individuals, frequencies of various psychological phenomena in a population, risk factors, and population-level effects of various psychological interventions. Mechanism-level research focuses on psychological func-tioning as explained in terms of neurophysiological mechanisms and information processes at a sub-personal level. It is argued that the failure to differentiate clearly between research questions at these three levels lead to questionable research practices. Most notably, a failure to differentiate clearly between the population level and the person level leads to problem-method mismatches in the form of re-searchers trying to answer questions about persons by research on populations. Also, because of a failure to differentiate between the person level and the mechanism level, explanations in terms of sub-personal mechanisms are too often seen as providing answers about what occurs at the person level, thereby failing to study persons as intentional agents in interaction with other persons and other parts of the environment. It is argued that a clear differentiation between three levels of psychological science – population, person, and mechanism – may contribute to an increased clarity in these matters and may thereby contribute to the development and maturation of psychological science. (shrink)

What is it for a person to have style? Philosophers working in action theory, ethics, and aesthetics are surprisingly quiet on this question. I begin by considering whether theories of artistic style shed any light on it. Many philosophers, artists, and art historians are attracted to some version of the view that artistic style is the expression of personality. I clarify this view and argue that it is implausible for both artistic style and, suitably modified, personal style. In fact, (...) both theories of style crack along the same line, which suggests that they can indeed be mutually illuminating. I articulate and defend a view of personal style according to which, roughly, having style is a matter of expressing one’s ideals. I show how this illuminates the widely neglected value of personal style and propose a new, analogous theory of individual artistic style: artistic style is the expression of the ideals the artist has for her art. (shrink)

In a previous paper (Lundh, 2023), it was argued that psychological science can be seen as having three main branches, corresponding to three levels of research: research at the person level, at the population level, and at the mechanism level. The purpose of the present paper is to discuss the critique that has been raised against this model by Lamiell (2024) and Nilsson (2024) and to elaborate and specify the three-branch model in more detail. This is done by an (...) incorporation of Nilsson’s concept of person-sensitivity into the model, and by a clearer differentiation between the two contrasts involved: (1) the methodological focus either on individual persons or on populations of individuals; and (2) the theoretical focus either on whole-person functioning or on sub-personal mechanisms. (shrink)

The unusually loyal supporters of Donald Trump are often described as a cult. How can we understand this extreme phenomenon in U.S. politics? We develop theoretical expectations and use the Big Five personality dimensions to investigate whether Trump's most loyal supporters share personality characteristics that might make them inclined to cult-like support. We find that (1) Trump's supporters share high levels of Conscientiousness; (2) this is substantively and statistically distinguishable from the commonly identified association between Conscientiousness and Conservatism; and (3) (...) the association is highly robust to a range of sensitivity tests. Our main findings are robust across two surveys. Study 1 is an online survey conducted in 2021 designed specifically for this project. Study 2 is the 2016 American National Election Study (ANES). (shrink)

When involved in a disagreement, a common reaction is to tell oneself that, given that the information about one’s own epistemic standing is clearly superior in both amount and quality to the information about one’s opponent’s epistemic standing, one is justified in one’s confidence that one’s view is correct. In line with this natural reaction to disagreement, some contributors to the debate on its epistemic significance have claimed that one can stick to one’s guns by relying in part on information (...) about one’s first-order evidence and the functioning of one’s cognitive capacities. In this article, I argue that such a manoeuvre to settle controversies encounters the problem that both disputants can make use of it, the problem that one may be wrong about one’s current conscious experience, and the problem that it is a live possibility that many of one’s beliefs are the product of epistemically distorting factors. I also argue that, even if we grant that personal information is reliable, when it comes to real-life rather than idealized disagreements, the extent of the unpossessed information about one’s opponent’s epistemic standing provides a reason for doubting that personal information can function as a symmetry breaker. (shrink)

There has been a call for a potentially revolutionary change to our existing understanding of the psychological concept of personal identity. Apparently, people can psychologically represent people, including themselves, as multiple individuals at the same time. Here we ask whether the intransitive judgments found in these studies truly reflect the operation of an intransitive concept of personal identity. We manipulate several factors that arbitrate between transitivity and intransitivity and find most support for transitivity: in contrast to prior work, most participants (...) do not make intransitive judgments when there is any reason to favor one individual over another. People change which single individual they personally identify with, depending on which individual competes more strongly or weakly for identity, rather than identifying with both individuals. Even when two individuals are identical and therefore both entitled to be the same person, we find that people make more transitive judgments once they understand the practical commitments of their responses (Experiment 4), and report not being able to actually imagine two perspectives simultaneously when reasoning about the scenario (Experiment 5). In short, we suggest that while people may make intransitive judgments, these do not reflect that they psychologically represent identity in an intransitive manner. (shrink)

Human beings are inherently symbol-making, and this symbolic capacity is central to African philosophical and religious thought. In African traditions, symbolism is not a mere aesthetic element but a foundational ontological structure through which identity, personhood, and communal belonging are understood. Symbols— manifested in names, rituals, proverbs, totems, and cosmologies—do not merely reflect reality but actively construct it. Personality, in this context, transcends individual psychology; it is a culturally embedded phenomenon shaped by spiritual, communal, and metaphysical dimensions. While much has (...) been written on African symbolism and identity, the symbolic constitution of personality remains underexplored. This paper examines how symbols function in articulating personality within African thought, serving as mediums for ethical expression, metaphysical insight, and communal norms. Drawing on textual and oral traditions, it explores how symbolic forms mediate divine-human relations, encode moral expectations, and sustain social cohesion. The study argues that the African notion of the person is that of homo symbolism-a being whose existence is inseparable from symbolic representation. Amid globalization and cultural homogenization, the resilience of African symbolic systems underscores their importance. The paper concludes by calling for the revitalization of indigenous epistemologies through culturally responsive education, intergenerational knowledge transmission, and contextual theologies. (shrink)

On person-affecting views in population ethics, the moral import of a person’s welfare depends on that person’s temporal or modal status. These views typically imply that – all else equal – we’re never required to create extra people, or to act in ways that increase the probability of extra people coming into existence. -/- In this paper, I use Parfit-style fission cases to construct a dilemma for person-affecting views: either they forfeit their seeming-advantages and face fission (...) analogues of the problems faced by their rival impersonal views, or else they turn out to be not so person-affecting after all. In light of this dilemma, the attractions of person-affecting views largely evaporate. What remains are the problems unique to them. (shrink)

The development of AI tools, such as large language models and speech emotion and facial expression recognition systems, has raised new ethical concerns about AI’s impact on human relationships. While much of the debate has focused on human-AI relationships, less attention has been devoted to another class of ethical issues, which arise when AI mediates human-to-human relationships. This paper opens the debate on these issues by analyzing the case of romantic relationships, particularly those in which one partner uses AI tools, (...) such as ChatGPT, to resolve a conflict and apologize. After reviewing some possible, non-exhaustive, explanations for the moral wrongness of using AI tools in such cases, I introduce the notion of second-person authenticity: a form of authenticity that is assessed by the other person in the relationship (e.g., a partner). I then argue that at least some actions within romantic relationships should respect a standard of authentic conduct since the value of such actions depends on who actually performs them and not only on the quality of the outcome produced. Therefore, using AI tools in such circumstances may prevent agents from meeting this standard. I conclude by suggesting that the proposed theoretical framework could also apply to other human-to-human relationships, such as the doctor-patient relationship, when these are mediated by AI; I offer some preliminary reflections on such applications. (shrink)

Daniel Dennett's distinction between personal and subpersonal explanations was fundamental in establishing the philosophical foundations of cognitive science. Since it was first introduced in 1969, the personal/subpersonal distinction has been adapted to fit different approaches to the mind. In one example of this, the ‘Pittsburgh school’ of philosophers attempted to map Dennett's distinction onto their own distinction between the ‘space of reasons’ and the ‘space of causes’. A second example can be found in much contemporary philosophy of psychology, where Dennett's (...) distinction has been presumed to be equivalent to Stephen Stich's distinction between doxastic and subdoxastic states. Both these interpretations of the personal/subpersonal distinction, and also Dennett's own philosophical views of the mind, go beyond the personal/subpersonal distinction itself. They each involve supplementing the distinction between personal and subpersonal explanations with metaphysical claims about the relationship between the two kinds of explanation and the entities they posit. (shrink)

The main theory at the core of this monograph is that the person is an entity ontologically new, since she is able to perform an act of self-transcendence, which is meant as her critical distancing from her own “self”, understood as subject of social recognition (Anerkennung), in order to open to the encounter with the world (Weltoffenheit). This allows us to consider a person in a new way, different both from confessional interpretations that see her only as a (...) center of the spirit and from reductivistic views. Schelling examines the act of self-transcendence through the concept of ecstasy, whereas Scheler associates it with the phenomenological reduction. The act of self-transcendence, that Schelling sees as originated by the “hunger of being”, is at the roots of the formation process of a person (Bildung): the person takes her shape by exiting from her own self-referential dimension and encountering otherness. If considered from this viewpoint, Plato’s “epimeleia heautou” exceeds an intimistic perspective: the “care” is no more a solipsistic self-care, but rather becomes the care through which the person transcends her own self to open to the relationships with otherness. It turns, therefore, into a care for world-openness (care for Weltoffenheit). The transformation of the individual and of society so becomes the double-faced aspect of the same process. The development of this set of problems occurs through a dialogue with Schelling’s and Scheler’s positions, but it is also supported by a historical-philosophical investigation, that for instance provides evidence of the influences of Schelling’s Berlin period on Scheler’s last theories and on the philosophical anthropology of the 20th century. Schelling was the first to conceive the concept of “eccentricity” in an anthropological sense, since until then the term had been confined to Kepler’s astronomy. Consequently, the planets’ elliptic (eccentric) movement heightens to an emblematic metaphor of human nature and freedom. The monograph also examines a possible convergence between Plato’s epimeleia heautou and Scheler’s phenomenological reduction. The book ends with a chapter on the topic of Vorbild. The exemplary testimony, that is Vorbild, becomes witnessing evidence immune from any pedagogical-moralistic intent: in fact, if it should relapse into the rhetoric of the “wish to give a good example”, it would immediately conform to the opposite logic of the model. A model is universal in so far as it makes everyone more like the others, nullifying the diversity, whereas exemplariness is universal in so far as it makes everyone more unique and motivates each one to follow her own characteristic path of existential trans-formation. Exemplarity doesn’t convey any contents, but rather encourages a kind of solidaristic involvement. Yet there are also negative exemplarities (Gegenbild) that place obstacles in the formation and block the existence of the personal center. (shrink)

I argue for the moral relevance of a category of individuals I characterize as far-persons. Following Gary Varner, I distinguish near-persons, animals with a " robust autonoetic consciousness " but lacking an adult human's " biographical sense of self, " from the merely sentient, those animals living "entirely in the present." I note the possibility of a third class. Far-persons lack a biographical sense of self, possess a weak autonoetic consciousness, and are able to travel mentally through time a distance (...) that exceeds the capacities of the merely sentient. Far-persons are conscious of and exercise control over short-term cognitive states, states limited by their temporal duration. The animals in question, human and nonhuman, consciously choose among various strategies available to them to achieve their ends, making them subjects of what I call "lyrical experience:" brief and potentially intense pleasures and pains. But their ends expire minute-by-minute, not stretching beyond, I say metaphorically, the present hour. I conclude by discussing the moral status of far-persons. (shrink)

When talking about personal identity in the context of medical ethics, ethicists tend to borrow haphazardly from different philosophical notions of personal identity, or to abjure these abstract metaphysical concerns as having nothing to do with practical questions in medical ethics. In fact, however, part of the moral authority for respecting a patient’s self-regarding decisions can only be made sense of if we make certain assumptions that are central to a particular, psychological picture of personal identity, namely, that patients will (...) remain psychologically connected to a certain degree with their future selves. I draw this out, show problems with approaches in medical ethics based on alternate theories of personal identity that do not recognise this, and explore some important implications. Namely, I show how this recognition can better explain the circumstances under which we should respect advance directives and why, and how it can better make sense of patient fears that they will not "survive" personality-altering deep brain stimulation procedures, and provide guidance on approaching patient decisions concerning this type of procedure in a manner that captures and addresses such concerns. (shrink)

Peter Strawson holds that on a proper conception of personhood, the problem of Other Minds does not arise. I suggest that the viability of his proposal depends on a particular account of person perception. I argue that neither the theory theory nor the simulation theory of mindreading constitutes a suitable basis for this account. I then go on to defend Peter Hobson's notion of 'feeling perception' as an intersubjectivist alternative that, if properly developed, delivers a basis for a viable (...) account of person perception. In developing that alternative, I draw on John Campbell's suggestion that self-understanding is constituted, in part, by an understanding of oneself as a cause of many events. (shrink)

This paper argues that impersonal versions of utilitarianism involve an objectionable axiology that does not take personal good seriously. Rather than attributing ethical significance to personal good, they only consider it to be ethically relevant. As a result, they end up sub-ordinating and sacrificing personal good for the sake of impersonal good and thereby treat persons as mere containers of impersonal good. This gives rise to particularly troubling implications in variable-population cases. The paper then evaluates the prospects for person-affecting (...) versions of utilitarianism. It argues that same-number person-affecting utilitarianism is the only version of utilitarianism that neither involves an objectionable axiology nor requires problematic metaphysical commitments. (shrink)

A number of theorists have argued that Scanlon's contractualist theory both "gets around" and "solves" the non-identity problem. They argue that it gets around the problem because hypothetical deliberation on general moral principles excludes the considerations that lead to the problem. They argue that it solves the problem because violating a contractualist moral principle in one's treatment of another wrongs that particular other, grounding a person-affecting moral claim. In this paper, I agree with the first claim but note that (...) all it shows is that the act is impersonally wrong. I then dispute the second claim. On Scanlon's contractualist view, one wrongs a particular other if one treats the other in a way that is unjustifiable to that other on reasons she could not reasonably reject. We should think of person-affecting wronging in terms of the reasons had by the actual agent and the actual person affected by the agent's action. In non-identity cases, interpersonal justifiability is therefore shaped both by the reason to reject the treatment provided by the bad suffered and the reason to affirm the treatment provided by the goods had as a result of existing. I argue it would be reasonable for the actual person to find the treatment justifiable, and so I conclude that Scanlon's contractualist metaethics does not provide a narrow person-affecting solution to the non-identity problem on its own terms. I conclude that the two claims represent a tension within Scanlon's contractualist theory itself. (shrink)

This paper explores the implications of extended and distributed cognition theory for our notions of personal identity. On an extended and distributed approach to cognition, external information is under certain conditions constitutive of memory. On a narrative approach to personal identity, autobiographical memory is constitutive of our diachronic self. In this paper, I bring these two approaches together and argue that external information can be constitutive of one’s autobiographical memory and thus also of one’s diachronic self. To develop this claim, (...) I draw on recent empirical work in human-computer interaction, looking at lifelogging technologies in both healthcare and everyday contexts. I argue that personal identity can neither be reduced to psychological structures instantiated by the brain nor by biological structures instantiated by the organism, but should be seen as an environmentally-distributed and relational construct. In other words, the complex web of cognitive relations we develop and maintain with other people and technological artifacts partly determines our self. This view has conceptual, methodological, and normative implications: we should broaden our concepts of the self as to include social and artifactual structures, focus on external memory systems in the (empirical) study of personal identity, and not interfere with people’s distributed minds and selves. (shrink)

Employers sometimes use personality tests in hiring or specifically look for candidates with certain personality traits such as being social, outgoing, active, and extraverted. Therefore, they hire based on personality, specifically extraversion in part at least. The question arises whether this practice is morally permissible. We argue that, in a range of cases, it is not. The common belief is that, generally, it is not permissible to hire based on sex or race, and the wrongness of such hiring practices is (...) based on two widely accepted principles: the Relevance Principle and the Fairness Principle. The Relevance Principle states that hiring should be based on what is relevant to job performance, while the Fairness Principle states that hiring should be based on features that individuals can control. Since hiring based on sex or race violates these principles, it is wrong. However, we argue that, in a range of cases, hiring based on extraversion also violates these principles, and assuming the validity of the Relevance and the Fairness Principles, it follows that personality discrimination is morally wrong in those cases. (shrink)

My aim in this article is twofold: on the one hand, I present Rehberg’s critique of Kant’s 1793 essay regarding some fundamental issues in his moral and legal theory; on the other hand, I outline possible responses to these objections found in Kant’s final system of morals. Part of these answers can be traced to the way in which Kant refines his conception of public right and the republican ideal, especially the notion of innate freedom, independence, and citizenship. They are (...) also found in the section on private right of the Doctrine of Right, in which he deals with topics such as private property, labor contracts, and domestic rights whose treatment is absent in previous texts. Importantly, vis-à-vis Rehberg’s criticisms, in his systematic theory of right Kant brings independence and self-mastery into his definition of innate right, but also introduces a new category of private right that accommodates dependent relationships in the domestic sphere by making them compatible with moral personality. In this way, Rehberg’s engagement with Kant’s political project allows us to examine his republican ideal in the light of an intellectual context in which philosophical efforts to discredit human freedom, social equality and material independence as desirable prospects were not an exception. (shrink)

This paper reconnects the personal and the biological by extending the reach of parental causality. First, it argues that the reproductive act is profitably understood in personal terms as an “invitation” to new life and that the egg and sperm are “ambassadors” or “delegates,” because they represent the potential mother and father and are naturally endowed with causal powers to bring about motherhood and fatherhood, two of the most significant roles a person may have. Second, it argues that even (...) though God alone can create a spiritual soul, the human parents are not just the causes of their child’s body; they are the secondary causes of the whole child. In this way, God acts as a kind of “sponsor” who enables the acceptance of the invitation issued by the parents, and he accepts it on behalf of the new human person that comes to be thanks to their invitation. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to provide a justification of punishment which can be endorsed by free will skeptics, and which can also be defended against the "using persons as mere means" objection. Free will skeptics must reject retributivism, that is, the view that punishment is just because criminals deserve to suffer based on their actions. Retributivists often claim that theirs is the only justification on which punishment is constrained by desert, and suppose that non-retributive justifications must therefore endorse (...) treating the people punished as mere means to social ends. Retributivists typically presuppose a monolithic conception of desert: they assume that action-based desert is the only kind of desert. But there are also personhood-based desert claims, that is, desert claims which depend not on facts about our actions, but instead on the more abstract fact that we are persons. Since personhood-based desert claims do not depend on facts about our actions, they do not depend on moral responsibility, so free will skeptics can appeal to them just as well as retributivists. What people deserve based on the mere fact of their personhood is to be treated as they would rationally consent to be treated if all they had in view was the mere fact of their personhood. We can work out the implications of this view for punishment by developing a hypothetical consent justification in which we select principles of punishment in the Rawlsian original position, so long as we are careful not to smuggle in the retributivist assumption that it is under our control whether we end up as criminals or as law-abiding citizens once we raise the veil of ignorance. (shrink)

Let’s say that an act requires Person-Affecting Justification if and only if some alternative would have been better for someone. So, Lucifer breaking Xavier’s back requires Person-Affecting Justification because the alternative would have been better for Xavier. But the story continues: While Lucifer evades justice, Xavier moves on and founds a school for gifted children. Xavier’s deepest values become identified with the school and its community. When authorities catch Lucifer, he claims no Person-Affecting Justification is needed: because (...) the attack set Xavier on his life’s path, it’s no longer true that the alternative would have been better by the standard of what Xavier now values most. An unappealingly paternalistic way to hold Lucifer to account is to discount Xavier’s preferences as merely adaptive. Instead, I propose understanding the persons of Person-Affecting Justification to be not persons but person stages. This allows us to hold Lucifer to account without having to discount Xavier’s actual preferences, and has interesting implications for compensatory justice, including making sense of reparations for historical wrongs. (shrink)

The distinction between personal-level and subpersonal-level attributions of cognition raises interesting questions. What is the relationship between personal-level and subpersonal-level attributions of cognition, for example? Does the personal/subpersonal distinction pick out two different kinds of cognitive processes, or does it merely reflect two different kinds of explanatory projects we might have? This piece gives an overview of the personal/subpersonal distinction and explores how the distinction is used to guide research in cognitive science and beyond.

Nancy Jecker and Andrew Ko (2017) wish to present an account of personal identity which captures what matters to the patient and places the patient at the center of medical decisions. They focus particularly on medical interventions in the brain that can cause drastic changes in personality; under what circumstances should we say the patient has 'survived' these changes? More specifically, how can we best understand the notion of survival in a way that captures what is of concern to the (...) patient? This goal is laudable, however, their chosen account of narrative identity is ill-suited to this task for one reason in particular; it does not give sufficient guidance in predicting which medical decisions are likely to be experienced as disruptive to identity. (shrink)

Awareness of, and respect for differences of gender, race, religion, language, and culture have liberated many oppressed groups from the hegemony of white, Western males. However, respect for previously denigrated collective identities should not be allowed to confine individuals to identities constructed around one main component used for political mobilisation, or to identities that depend on a priority of properties that are not optional, like race, gender, and language. In this article I want to sketch an approach for accommodating different (...) kinds of identity within a multicultural constitutional democracy. From a vantage point provided by a definition and explanation of personal identity, I want to show how people define, construct and change their personal identities to make themselves into unique individuals. Next I show how democratic political institutions and the personal identities of individuals reciprocally influence one another. In the final section I sketch ways in which diverse personal identities ought to be accommodated in multicultural constitutional democracies. The conclusion is that a society which gives its members the liberty, space, and opportunity to freely construct their own identities might avoid the formation of closed groups committed exclusively to their own sectional interests. (shrink)

In 1995, as a student of psychology inspired by natural science, I defined a logical model of personality explaining psychosis. I created (for my MA thesis, 1998 and grant research, 1999) new kind of tests assessing intelligence, creativity, prejudices, expectations to show more exact methods in psychology. During my Phd study in economics, I developed 'Maximization of Uniqueness (Originality)' model enhancing the classic utility to explain irrational motivations linking economics and psychology. Later I became computer programmer developing functional programming. According (...) to Personality model (and my experience in chess composition), I've built server and client logic of information system www.each.co.uk, and produced visual art. I presented the excerpts of 'Personality Model' in a few articles, and later as part of my art exhibitions: From Animation (Oct 2013, Holland Park, London), Parallax 12 (Feb 2015, Chelsea Town Hall, London), Fading Memory (Sep 2015, Weißenohe / Nuremberg, Germany). Another work: The Science is a subset of the Art extends Personality Model to art, society. At the end I add example and explanation of a special problem, when the higher intelligence leads to a wrong solution. It was published in Japanese Journal Problem Paradise in 1999. All presented results can be repeated. Computer testing would enable to acquire more data and more exact analysis. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to briefl y examine one of the fundamental assumptions made in contemporary liberal political philosophy, namely that persons are free and equal. Within the contemporary liberal political thought it would be considered very uncontroversial and even trivial to claim something of the following form: “persons are free and equal” or “people think of themselves as free and equal”. The widespread nature of this assumption raises the question what justifies this assumption, are there good reasons (...) for holding it? After establishing some methodological remarks, including a distinction between having freedom-equality and being free-equal and restricting the domain of discussion to include only a subset of all moral questions, namely the questions of political morality, the paper deals with some conceptual issues concerning this assumption of persons as free and equal, such as how do free-and-equal-making properties relate to person-making properties. It then moves on to examine three broad ways the free-and-equal-mak-ing properties could be established. First, necessary property approaches, which take some necessary feature of persons to be what makes them free and equal (e.g. possessing an immortal soul). Second, contingent property approaches, which take some contingent feature of persons to be what makes them free and equal (e.g heir practise of reasoning). Third, agreement based approaches, which take some agreement or contract among persons to be the basis for their being free and equal (e.g. evolutionary emergence of our treatment of others). Strengths and weaknesses of all approaches will be examined. (shrink)