Personal Identity
PHIL 5400/6400

Required textbooks:

Electronic devices are not permitted in the classroom, and you will be required to bring the textbooks to class; this means you need to have physical copies of these books. However, the first four on the list (and also the optional textbook) have been in print for quite a while; if you start looking early, you're likely to find inexpensive used copies.

• Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons
• Thomas Nagel, The Possibility of Altruism
• Jonathan Lear, Love and Its Place in Nature
• Peter Strawson, Individuals

Optional textbooks:

• Bernard Williams, Problems of the Self
  (We'll read about half of this, defaultly from the journals in which the papers were originally published; if you can find an inexpensive used copy, it might be more convenient for you to get the book itself. I can vouch for the rest of the chapters also being worth reading.)
• Eric Olson, The Human Animal (We'll read one chapter in class, but if we do presentations, I'll assign presenters further chapters. This is an expensive book.)

Additional readings will be made available through the Marriott Library reserve desk. (See Marriott's Course Reserve How to Guide for an intro to using the library reserves.) For best results with JSTOR, either click on a JSTOR link while you're on-campus or click through to the journal from the Marriott catalog, log in, and search JSTOR for the item.

Reading Assignments:

1. Jan. 13: Monty Python Presents, Medical Experiments:

   Optional prereading: Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons, sec. 89 (pp. 253-261).

2. Jan. 20: Could You Be Just Any Body?

   Reading: Bernard Williams, "The Self and the Future" (Philosophical Review 79(2), Apr. 1970, pp. 161-180; ch. 4 in Problems of the Self); Williams, "Imagination and the Self" (ch. 3 in Problems of the Self, on online reserve); David Velleman, "Self to Self" (Philosophical Review 105(1), Jan. 1996, pp. 39-76).
   
   You probably want to read these pieces in the above order, and I recommend the following reading mode for "Imagination and the Self": up to p. 34, lightly; pp. 35-39, medium; 40-45, full focus.

3. Jan. 27: IDology: Watching the 'Method of Cases' at Work.

   Reading: Parfit, Reasons and Persons, pp. 199-280 (plus 281, first three paragraphs).
   Optional reading: Bernard Williams, "Personal Identity and Individuation" (ch. 1 in Problems of the Self).

4. Feb. 3: Writing that Stands in Relation R to Reasons and Persons.

   Reading: Williams, "Persons, Character and Morality," from the last para. on p. 6 through the first para. on p. 8 (online reserve; the paper is in his Moral Luck). Jennifer Whiting, "Friends and Future Selves". Christine M. Korsgaard, "Personal Identity and the Unity of Agency: A Kantian Response to Parfit". Robert Nozick, Philosophical Explanations (online reserve), pp. 29-47, 62-70 (pp. 47-62 optional).
   Optional reading: Tamar Gendler, "Personal Identity and Thought-Experiments"; Kathleen Wilkes, Real People, pp. 36-38 (online reserve); Susan Wolf, "Self-Interest and Interest in Selves"; Ernest Sosa, "Surviving Matters"; Jorge Luis Borges, "Funes, His Memory" (available shortly).

5. Feb. 10: Two-Front Arguments vs. the Self-Interest Theory.

   Reading: Parfit, Reasons and Persons, pp. 117-195, 281-336. (For the second lap, I recommend reading it like so: pp. 281-320, lightly; 307-320, full focus; 321-326, lightly; sec. 110 [pp. 326-329], full focus; 329-336, lightly.) Guy Rohrbaugh, "Artworks as Historical Individuals".
   Optional reading: Carol Rovane, "Branching Self-Consciousness"; and for while you're writing your papers: George Orwell, "Politics and the English Language" (online reserve).

6. Feb. 17: Animal, Vegetable, or Artifact?

   Reading: David Wiggins, Sameness and Substance, ch. 6 (online reserve).
   Followon reading, for students with way too much time on their hands: Mary Jane West-Eberhard, Developmental Plasticity and Evolution.

7. Feb. 24: Bodies, the Logic of Life, and Remnants.

   Reading: Eric Olsen, The Human Animal, ch. 3 ("Why We Need Not Accept the Psychological Approach"; online reserve). Michael Thompson, "The Representation of Life" (online reserve); Mark Johnston, "Human Beings".
   Optional reading: Chrisoula Andreou, "Getting on in a Varied World," Social Theory and Practice 32 (2006): 61-73; Parisa Moosavi, "Natural Goodness without Natural History", Philosophy and Phenomenological Research (2020, currently still "Early View"). Mark Johnston, "'Human Beings' Revisited: My Body is Not an Animal" (in the reserve listing, look for Oxford Studies in Metaphysics, vol. 3); review Whiting, "Friends and Future Selves".

8. Mar. 3: Persimmons and Pencil Sharpeners.

   Reading: Thomas Nagel, The Possibility of Altruism, pp. 3-76. (I recommend you read it like so: start on p. 27, you can skim ch. 7 [pp. 46-56], and then wrap around and read pp. 3-23 last.)
   Optional reading: Kathleen Wilkes, Real People, ch. 4 ("Fugues, Hypnosis, and Multiple Personality"). Cei Maslen, "A Defense of Humeanism from Nagel's Persimmon".

TOPICS FOR THE SECOND PAPER HAVE BEEN DISTRIBUTED -- MAKE SURE YOU HAVE A COPY

Have a great Spring Break!

9. Mar. 17: American Tourists in Italy.

   Reading: Review Nagel, Possibility, pp. 3-76. (We'll focus on his factoring argument, and then on his distinction between 'justification' and 'explanation/interpretation'.) Peter Strawson, Individuals, through p. 38.
   Optional reading: Marya Schectman, Staying Alive, secs. 4.2-6.2. (Available in the Philosophy Department office.)

10. Mar. 24: My Life as a Geodetic Mark.

    Reading: Peter Strawson, Individuals, thru p 116.
    Optional reading: Ross Harrison, On What There Must Be, ch. 4 (= "Time"; online reserve); Williams, "Are Persons Bodies?" (ch. 5 of Problems of the Self); Williams, "Strawson on Individuals" (ch. 7 of Problems of the Self); Eric Olson, The Human Animal, chs. 5-6.

11. Mar. 31: Psychological Trajectories.

    Reading: Review Strawson, ch. 3 ("Persons"); Bernard Williams, "The Makropulos Case" (in Problems of the Self (e-reserve; look inside the online book); Jonathan Lear, Love and Its Place in Nature, ch. 1.
    Optional reading: Wiggins, "A Sensible Subjectivism?" (available in the Philosophy Department office); John McDowell, "Values and Secondary Qualities" (photocopy available in the Philosophy Department office). Capek, "The Makropulos Case" (photocopy available in the Philosophy Department office).

12. Apr. 7: Elements of a Self.

    Reading: Jonathan Lear, Love and Its Place in Nature, chs. 2-4.
    Optional reading: George Ainslie, Picoeconomics; Galen Strawson, "Against Narrativity". Followon reading (not on reserve): Lear, Freud; Patricia Kitcher, Freud's Dream (for a different view).

13. Apr. 14: Transcendental Deductions Meet Developmental Psychology.

    Reading: Finish Lear, Love and Its Place in Nature.
    Optional reading: Nagel, The Possibility of Altruism, Part III. J. J. C. Smart, "Philosophical Problems of Cosmology"; Sherri Roush, "Copernicus, Kant, and the Anthropic Cosmological Principles"; Ian Stewart, "The Anthropomurphic Principle".

14. Apr. 21: New Horizons, Old Horizons, and Methodological Lessons.

    Optional reading: Thomas Pradeu, The Limits of the Self, ch. 6 ("What Is an Organism? Immunity and the Individuality of the Organism" -- online reserve); reserve typescript (available in the Philosophy Department).