Person and Self
Hauptseminar, Winter Semester 2016
Instructors: Dr. Hong Yu Wong and Dr. Krisztina Orbán (CIN)
Cross-listed in: Philosophy, Cognitive Science
Time and Location: Wednesday 2-4 pm, Forum Scientiarum, Großer Seminarraum (Doblerstraße 33, 72074 Tübingen)
Reading:
We will read classical and contemporary papers on the following topics:
1. What is the self? How is the self related to the person and the human animal?
2. Self-consciousness and self-reference, especially first-person reference, immunity to error through misidentification relative to 'I' and some recent empirical-sensitive work on bodily self-consciousness
Prerequisites:
Students are expected to have taken prior classes in philosophy of mind, philosophy of language and metaphysics at least at the Proseminar level.
Credit:
Students taking this Hauptseminar for full credit (= 12 credits) need to write 4 critical discussion notes (of about 500 words) on the readings for 4 sessions (1 discussion note for each part of the course) and 1 essay of about 3000 words.
For 6 credits, students must write 2 critical discussion notes and an essay of 2000 words.
The critical discussion notes are due by 10 am on the day of the session discussing the reading in question. The essay is due 1st of May 2017.
Registration:
Students wishing to participate in the seminar must email action.in.tuebingen@gmail.com to register. Please state your name, degree you are studying for (e.g. MA), subject (e.g. philosophy, cogsci), whether you are taking the seminar for credit and how many credits you intend to do.
TOPICS AND WEEKLY BREAKDOWN
Information Session:
October 19, 2 pm Forum Scientiarum, Großer Seminarraum
1. Introduction - Nov 2
What is the self? Notions of the self; How is the self related to the person and the human animal?
Dennett ‘Where am I?’; P.F. Strawson ‘Persons’ (chapter 2 of Individuals); Neisser ‘Varieties of Self-Knowledge’
PART I
2. Personal Identity: Lockeanism & Brain-identity theories - Nov 9
Parfit 'Personal Identity' Philosophical Review 1971 ; Williams 'The self and the future' Philosophical Review 1970
For background for sessions 2 and 3, consult Olson 'Personal Identity' Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
3. Personal Identity: Animalism - Nov 16
Snowdon 'Persons, Animals, Ourselves', in Gill (ed.) The Person and the Human Mind: Issues in Ancient and Modern Philosophy (Oxford, 1990), pp. 83–107.
Parfit 'We are not Human Animals' Philosophy 2012.
PART II
4. The First-person - Nov 23
Different ways of self-referring; Singular thought; What fixes the referent of ‘I’? Different Models for the 1st Person Pronoun: Demonstrative Model; First-person Model for ‘I’ (TRR/FRR); The Token-Reflexive Rule for ‘I’ and circularity
Bermudez 1998 (1-25); optional: Peacocke 2014 (80-86)
5. First-person thought and Essential Indexicality - Nov 30
Anscombe ‘The First Person’; Perry 'The Problem of the Essential Indexical' Nous 1979 – pp. 3-5
PART III
6. Knowledge of the referent of ‘I’ - Dec 7
Campbell ‘What Is To Know What ‘I’ Refers to?’ The Monist 2004; Anscombe ‘The First Person’
7. Immunity to error through misidentification and guaranteed right reference - Dec 14
Shoemaker 'Self-reference and self-awareness' Journal of Philosophy 1968; Anscombe ‘The First Person’
8. Self-reference and agency - Jan 18
Does focusing on the act of self-reference help to give a non-circular account of self-conscious self-reference?
O’Brien Self-Knowing Agents (2007), chapter 5 - for background see also chapter 4.
PART IV
9. Bodily Awareness and Bodily Self-consciousness - Jan 25, 2017
De Vignemont 'Embodiment, Ownership, and Disownership', Consciousness and Cognition 2011;
Optional: Wong “In and Out of Balance”, in F. de Vignemont and A. Alsmith (eds.) The Subject’s Matter: Self-Consciousness and the Body, MIT Press, forthcoming 2017.
* Special event: Embodiment workshop at MPI (Jan 27, 2017)
10. Marks of Self-Consciousness: the Mirror test and others - Feb 2, 2017
Gallup 'Chimpanzees: Self-Recognition' Science 1970; Peacocke 2014 (190-203)
Bibliography
Anscombe, G.E.M., 1963/1994, ‘The First Person’ in Cassam (ed.) Self-Knowledge (Oxford: Oxford University Press)
Bermúdez, J.L. Marcel, A., and Eilan, N. (eds.) 1995, The Body and the Self (Cambridge: MIT Press)
Bermúdez, J.L., 1998, The Paradox of Self-Consciousness (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press)
Bottini, G., Bisiach, E., Sterzi, R., and Vallar, G. 2001, ‘Feeling touch in someone else’s hand’ NeuroReport 13: 249-252
Campbell, J., 1994, ‘Self-consciousness and ‘I’’ in Campbell Past, Space and Self (Cambridge Mass.: Bradford Books, MIT Press)
Campbell, J., 2004, ‘What Is To Know What ‘I’ Refers to?’ The Monist 87: 206-218
Castaneda, H.-N., 1966a, ‘On the Phenomeno-Logic of the I’ in Castaneda The Phenomeno-Logic of the I (Bloomington: Indiana University Press)
Dennett, M., 1978, ‘Where am I?’ in Dennett Brainstorms
Gallup, Jr. G. G.,1970, ‘Chimpanzees: Self-Recognition’ Science Vol. 167, 86-87
Evans, G., 1982, The Varieties of Reference (Oxford: Oxford University Press)
Neisser, ‘Varieties of Self-Knowledge’
O’Brien, L. 2007, Self-Knowing Agents (Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press)
Olson, E. T., 1997, The Human Animal, Personal Identity Without Psychology (Oxford: Oxford University Press)
Parfit, D., 1984, Reasons and Persons (Oxford: Oxford University Press)
Peacocke, C.A.B., 2014, The Mirror of the World (Oxford: Oxford University Press)
Perry, J., 1979/1993, ‘The Problem of the Essential Indexical’ in Perry The Problem of the Essential Indexical and Other Essays (Oxford: Oxford University Press)
Strawson, P. F., 1959, Individuals: An Essay in Descriptive Metaphysics (London: Methuen)
Shoemaker, S. 1984, ‘Personal identity: A materialist account’ in Shoemaker and Swinburne Personal Identity (Oxford: Blackwell)
Shoemaker, S. , 1968, ‘Self-Reference and Self-Awareness’, The Journal of Philosophy 65:555-567
Snowdon, P., 2014, Persons, Animals, Ourselves (Oxford: Oxford University Press)
Williams, B. 'The Self and the Future'
Wong, H. Y., 2017, 'In and Out of Balance'