I Am You: The Metaphysical Foundations for Global Ethics

ISBN-13: 9781402029998 / Angielski / Twarda / 2005 / 659 str.

Daniel Kolak; D. Kolak

Opis

Borders enclose and separate us. We assign to them tremendous significance. Along them we draw supposedly uncrossable boundaries within which we believe our individual identities begin and end, erecting the metaphysical dividing walls that enclose each one of us into numerically identical, numerically distinct, entities: persons. Do the borders between us - physical, psychological, neurological, causal, spatial, temporal, etc. - merit the metaphysical significance ordinarily accorded them? The central thesis of I Am You is that our borders do not signify boundaries between persons. We are all the same person. Variations on this heretical theme have been voiced periodically throughout the ages (the Upanishads, Averroes, Giordano Bruno, Josiah Royce, Schrodinger, Fred Hoyle, Freeman Dyson). In presenting his arguments, the author relies on detailed analyses of recent formal work on personal identity, especially that of Derek Parfit, Sydney Shoemaker, Robert Nozick, David Wiggins, Daniel C. Dennett and Thomas Nagel, while incorporating the views of Descartes, Leibniz, Wittgenstein, Schopenhauer, Kant, Husserl and Brouwer. His development of the implied moral theory is inspired by, and draws on, Rawls, Sidgwick, Kant and again Parfit. The traditional, commonsense view that we are each a separate person numerically identical to ourselves over time, i.e., that personal identity is closed under known individuating and identifying borders - what the author calls Closed Individualism - is shown to be incoherent. The demonstration that personal identity is not closed but open points collectively in one of two new directions: either there are no continuously existing, self-identical persons over time in the sense ordinarily understood - the sort of view developed by philosophers as diverse as Buddha, Hume and most recently Derek Parfit, what the author calls Empty Individualism - or else you are everyone, i.e., personal identity is not closed under known individuating and identifying borders, what the author calls Open Individualism. In making his case, the author: - offers a new explanation both of consciousness and of self-consciousness - constructs a new theory of Self - explains psychopathologies (e.g. multiple personality disorder, schizophrenia) - shows Open Individualism to be the best competing explanation of who we are - provides the metaphysical foundations for global ethics. The book is intended for philosophers and the philosophically inclined - physicists, mathematicians, psychiatrists, psychologists, linguists, computer scientists, economists, and communication theorists. It is accessible to graduate students and advanced undergraduates.

Spis treści

Preliminary Acknowledgments. 1. PERSONAL BORDERS. 1.1. Individuation, Identification, and Identity: Take One. 1.2 Closed Individualism, Empty Individualism, and Open Individualism: The Three Views of Personal Identity. 1.3 Philosophical Explanations. 1.4 The Apparent Excluders of the Open Individual View Of Personal Identity. 1.5 Dissolving Our Boundaries. 1.6 Philosophy Without Proof. 1.7 Isn’t Open Individualism Already Known to be False?. 1.8 Consciousness and the Cosmic Towers: a Parable. 2. BORDER CONTROL. 2.1 Apparent Excluder (1): The Fact of Exclusive Conjoinment. 2.1.1 Consciousness Explained: The Dream Analog As a Conceptual Boundary Dissolve of the Metaphysical Significance of the FEC Border. 2.1.1.1 Consciousness Refined: The Dream Analog and I, The Subject-In-Itself. 2.1.2 The Relata of the FEC Relation: Subject and Object, Three Caveats. 2.1.3 World Boundaries and I, Take One; or, The One and the Many, Take Three: Letting the Nullteilig Out of Klein’s Bottle. 2.1.4 The Causal Barrier. 2.2 Apparent Excluder (2): Alter Subject Identification. 2.2.1 The Epistemological Barrier. 2.2.2 In Search of Zombies: Is FEC + ASI An Inter-Personal Boundary?. 2.2.3 Dream Analog II: Can a Person Be the Subject of More Than One (Disjoint) Set of Experiences Simultaneously?. 2.2.3.1 Arguing With Myself Over Everything and Nothing: Non-pathological Phrenic Amnesia, Shuffled Memories, and Multiphrenia. 2.2.3.2 Askew Modalities: Weak (Closed World) Nonlocality, Strong (Many Worlds) Nonlocality, and Ultra-Strong (Open World) Nonlocality. 2.2.3.3 Time and Consciousness: Some Objections to Dream Analog II. 2.3 Is the Dream Analog Self-Defeating?. 2.4 The Problem of Other Persons: An Implication For the Problem of Other Minds. 2.5 The Problem of Personal Non-Identity. 3. PHYSIOLOGICAL BORDERS. 3.1 Moving Beyond Subjective Experience. 3.2 Apparent Excluder (3): The Physiological Border. 3.2.1 Physiological vs. Psychological Individuation and Identification.3.2.2 The Physiological Substance Dissolve. 3.3 The Persistence of Closed Individualism. 3.4 Thought Experiments About Persons. 3.5 The Contemporaneous Physiological Dissolve. 4. NEUROLOGICAL BORDERS. 4.1 The Bodily Dissolve. 4.2 The Brain Dissolve. 4.3 The Tie-Breaker Condition and The Closed Individual View. 4.4 How Bizarre is Nozick’s Tie?. 4.5 Can Two Different Brains Be the Same Person?. 5. SPATIAL BORDERS. 5.1 Can One Person Be Two Different Human Beings?. 5.2 The Teletransporter. 5.3 Apparent Excluder (4): The Spatial Border. 5.4 Fission With Identity: Are You An Open Individual?. 6. PSYCHOLOGICAL BORDERS. 6.1 Apparent Excluder (5): The Psychological Boundary. 6.2 Personas, Personalities, and the Subject, Take Zero: Borges Nor I. 6.3 Primary, Secondary, Tertiary and Quartic Identification: The Fourfold e/d Manifold. 6.4 The Subject, Take One: Freedom From the Self. 6.5 The Subject, Take Two: Self and Other. 6.6 The Subject, Take Three: Cogito, Ergo Quis Est?. 6.6.1 Self-Consciousness Explained: The Intuition of Personal Identity (I Am I). 6.6.2 Self-Consciousness Liberated: Averroës Strikes Again for the First Time. 6.6.3 The Self and I: Identity for Identity’s Sake. 6.7 Dissolving Our Selves: The Analysis and Synthesis of Multiple Personality Disorder. 6.7.1 Personas, Personalities, and Selves: From a Metaphysical and Metapsychological Point of View. 6.7.2 FEC, Emotions, and Metaphysical Reversal. 6.7.3 Altering Ourselves Philosophically. 6.8 The Memory Dissolve. 6.9 The Physiological Border Retreat. 6.10 The Omni Dissolve: Daniel Kolak Through Krishnamurti Becomes Ann-Margret. 6.11 Apparent Excluder (6): The Unity of Consciousness Dissolve. 7: CAUSAL BORDERS. 7.1 Apparent Excluder (7): The Causal Border. 7.2 One Small Step For Personkind. 7.3 The Causal Dissolve. 8: METAPHYSICAL BORDERS. 8.1 The Metaphysical Substance Border. 8.2 The Soul Dissolve. 8.3 Metaphysical Subjectivism. 8.4 The Transcendent Illusion, the

Blurb

Borders enclose and separate us. We assign to them tremendous significance. Along them we draw supposedly uncrossable boundaries within which we believe our individual identities begin and end, erecting the metaphysical dividing walls that enclose each one of us into numerically identical, numerically distinct, entities: persons. Do the borders between us—physical, psychological, neurological, causal, spatial, temporal, etc.—merit the metaphysical significance ordinarily accorded them? The central thesis of I Am You is that our borders do not signify boundaries between persons. We are all the same person. Variations on this heretical theme have been voiced periodically throughout the ages (the Upanishads, Averroës, Giordano Bruno, Josiah Royce, Schrödinger, Fred Hoyle, Freeman Dyson). In presenting his arguments, the author relies on detailed analyses of recent formal work on personal identity, especially that of Derek Parfit, Sydney Shoemaker, Robert Nozick, David Wiggins, Daniel C. Dennett and Thomas Nagel, while incorporating the views of Descartes, Leibniz, Wittgenstein, Schopenhauer, Kant, Husserl and Brouwer. His development of the implied moral theory is inspired by, and draws on, Rawls, Sidgwick, Kant and again Parfit. The traditional, commonsense view that we are each a separate person numerically identical to ourselves over time, i.e., that personal identity is closed under known individuating and identifying borders—what the author calls Closed Individualism—is shown to be incoherent. The demonstration that personal identity is not closed but open points collectively in one of two new directions: either there are no continuously existing, self-identical persons over time in the sense ordinarily understood—the sort of view developed by philosophers as diverse as Buddha, Hume and most recently Derek Parfit, what the author calls Empty Individualism—or else you are everyone, i.e., personal identity is not closed under known individuating and identifying borders, what the author calls Open Individualism. In making his case, the author:

 

* offers a new explanation both of consciousness and of self-consciousness

 

* constructs a new theory of Self

 

* explains psychopathologies (e.g. multiple personality disorder, schizophrenia)

 

* shows Open Individualism to be the best competing explanation of who we are

 

* provides the metaphysical foundations for global ethics.

 

The book is intended for philosophers and the philosophically inclined—physicists, mathematicians, psychiatrists, psychologists, linguists, computer scientists, economists, and communication theorists. It is accessible to graduate students and advanced undergraduates.