Dear all,
This Thursday at the Serious Metaphysics Group, Sahanika Ratnayake will be presenting 'Multiple Persons' (abstract below). As usual, 1.00-2.30pm at the philosophy faculty board room - feel free to bring lunch along. Best wishes, Li Li Abstract The concept 'person' or the idea of personhood over time can be seen to involve an important evaluative dimension as the concept plays a role in a number of issues that are of wider normative or practical importance. Accounts of personhood are used to justify prudential reasoning, punishment and to underpin accounts of moral and legal responsibility. I argue that given the evaluative dimension, there are cases where we would want to say that it is possible to be multiple persons across a single lifetime. Hitherto, the possibility of multiple persons or breaks in the continuity of a life, have only been mentioned within the context of unusual cases such as episodes of mental illness and religious conversion. The more commonplace experiences of migrants and the experiences of individuals who identify as being part of the LGBT spectrum, could also motivate an account of multiple persons. All these experiences involve extensive changes, whether that be geographical, cultural or even in the case of trans individuals, changes in the body they occupy. The chasm that exists between earlier and later experiences is usefully conceptualised in terms of multiple persons for the purposes of making certain evaluations. I suggest that there is a tension in our account of diachronic personal identity, in particular with Neo-Lockean accounts, between the presupposition of unity across a lifetime (i.e. that we are the same person throughout our lives) and the evaluative dimension of personhood. If we are to take the latter seriously, we need to be open to the possibility of multiple persons given the ubiquity of individuals who have radically discontinuous psychological states as a result of typical life experiences. -- Li Li Tan PhD (Probationary) in Philosophy St Catharine's College _____________________________________________________ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
