Personal Identity - Paper Example

Knowledge: Russells term for the content of experience.

Reference: A rational person will use this to defend their belief that something is, or is not, the case.

Personal identity: Reflecting on this was what initially got Descartes to write the Meditations.

Immaterial: If the soul is this, then it seems it cannot go to places like Heaven or Hell, or float around as a ghost and spook us in the night.

Sensation: We need one of these in order to determine whether we are in a dream state or in a veridical state. Arthurs loaded die in the movie Inception is an example and had this function.

Brain: We use these in class in order to find your pre-theoretical intuitions on a certain topic.

Appearance: The feature that distinguishes substance dualism from property dualism is whether the soul can be this in regard to the body.

Perception: It seems that we are trapped behind this; in other words, the real world is always hidden from us, outside our grasp, and we can only grasp the apparent world.

Causal interaction: There is only kind of substance in the universe, minds and ideas.

Indexical: One can have bodies without minds, but minds, if they exist, can be independent of bodies too.

Evidence: The one thing in common that multiple instances of a property have

Justification: The view that what makes you you are your memories. (The philosopher John Locke endorsed this.)

Sense: The part of us that is the self or the person functions as this for our rights and freedoms.

Punishment: Thats a contradiction!

Reality: This potential source for knowledge comes from what other people tell us, either directly or via various media.

Veil of perception: Descartes initially felt that the fact he was sometimes deceived and made mistakes undermined this property of God.

Reason: What is knowledge? Where does it come from? How do we get it?

Indexical: A technical term for the kinship you have with your past and future selves.

Brain: Most of our knowledge (if we have any) comes from here, which in fact you are using at this very moment.

Criterion: Endorsing a view just simply because your parents, or someone on TV, talk radio or the Internet, tells you that view is right.

Causal interaction: All religious Americans likely endorse this view of personal identity.

Existence: This exam. Your computer. The building youre in. Your body.Reason: In criminal justice, when someone is found not guilty by reason of insanity, the law is implicitly endorsing this view of personal identity.

Thought experiment: If you believe there are two completely different substances in the universe, minds or souls on the one hand, and bodies or matter on the other, you are this.

Possible: The soul is a mind, a thinking thing without parts, and does not exist in space and time, unlike the body it belongs to, which is just a machine.

Memory: This potential source of knowledge comes from your past experiences.

Cynical: Someone who assumes, without justification, that when a person is nice, or is sticking up for something, they really are doing so from base motives.Mystery: The common view that the soul is like a ghost animating the body, and this soul is frequently conceived of as a more perfect, more beautiful version of that body, belongs to this specific form of dualism.

Personal identity: Me me me me me!

Knowledge: Say what makes you you is like what is implied in the Matrix: your self-image in addition to your brain. This is what view of personal identity?

Artificial intelligence: Mentality or Spirit is a constituent part of the universe; mental properties exist like many material properties, e.g. radio waves, gravity, electron probability fields, etc.

Belief:The I think, therefore I am.

Skeptical: If you are a dualist, this is the main problem you have to resolve in order for your view to be plausible, especially for a skeptic or agnostic.

Mystery: Mind=brain. (Foster mentions this view.)

Ideal: If a word has meaning, is also has this, in some form or another.

Reference: Something that exists or is the case in at least one world

Identity: The reason why questions concerning personal identity are important is because where you determine the person or self to be is where you determine what part or aspect of our humanity has this.

Reason: What exists? What is the self? What are properties? What are things?

Brain: Descartes conceived control by something like the Matrix in this way.

Will: Foster argues that if there is no free will, no intentional actions, or in short no causally affective mind (as with epiphenomenalism), then there is no such thing as this.

Personal identity: Socrates thinks of the soul as the of the body.

Cogito: Russell seems to argue that we do not have any direct contact with, or experience of, this. (Idealists hold it doesnt even exist.)

Matter: Dennett believes that the brain is just an organic, naturally-made version of one of these.

Reality: According to Russell, when we see a table or a chair, we do not grasp its what?Belief: Clones of you exemplify this.

View: You think you see me down the hall. You say to your friend, Hey, thats Tom over there! You and your friend are implicitly endorsing what view of personal identity?Override: If one cannot tell the difference between dreams and waking life, then dreams do this to our perceptual beliefs.

Interactionism: The philosophical term for minds or souls arising out of a (sufficiently complex) body.Memory: Parfit holds that since your relationship with some past guilty self becomes weaker over time, the justification for this becomes weaker too.

The reason were unhappy with a duplicate living our lives after we die is because we wont have this in regard to our future.

Belief: This view of personal identity Foster finds implausible; if true, the word mind or psychology has no affective meaning.

Nature: In ordinary English language, this term is frequently ambiguous between a declaration of facts, and a declaration of confidence.

Cynicism: Say your friend is convinced that we are trapped in a simulated universe like the Matrix, and because of that anything could be a trick, including you. Your friend endorses a strong version of this.

Reality: This generic kind of dualism holds that the body can affect the mind or soul, and maybe vice versa, but that if the body were destroyed, its mind or soul would be destroyed too.

causal interaction: The twin and triplet cases from Parfit are supposed to show that this is no further fact, but simply another way of thinking and talking about survival over time. The character Weirob agrees.

Conceivable: Like most philosophers, Weirob defines possibility in terms of this.

Part II

Daniel thinks that after you die, you either go to Heaven or Hell. In the former, you get to see and do all of the wholesome things you enjoyed while on Earth. In the latter, you suffer by eternally remembering all of the suffering you caused, and never seeing the things you still love. What view of personal identity is he endorsing?

Free-will is the personal identity that Daniel endorses for the belief in Hell and Heaven

The law, which is generally secular, holds that stabbing or shooting a person who is already dead is not murder or manslaughter, but a lesser crime. The law is implicitly endorsing what general view of personal identity?The law implicitly endorses the perception of living together in harmony by restricting people from committing crimes against each other

The law often identifies people by their fingerprints or their dental records. When they do so, what specific view of personal identity are they endorsing?

Identify thesis

Arthur has succumbed to the advanced stages of Alzheimers. Arthurs sister May states Thats not really Arthur anymore, hes gone. May is implicitly endorsing what general view of personal identity? Given this view, should she hold euthanasia to be permissible? Given the laws position in no. 3 above, should the law find euthanasia in this case legal or illegal?May is implicitly endorsing that humans have some control over life

The law should find the use of euthansia as illegal since it gives people the power to do a mercy killing

Morpheus explains to Neo that people cant tell the difference between the Matrix and the real world because they both simply cause what, and where?

Because they have their own perception of the world and have restrictions on what they see as true

What is the idea that Dom planted in Molls mind that drove her to commit suicide?

Dom planted the idea of life in Heaven for those that are good on earth

Using the principal distinction Russell employs in his essay, while Cypher is having dinner with Agent Smith, Cypher declares that he prefers what over what?

Cypher declares that he prefers proof over assmuptions based on feelings

In the movie Inception, what is Doms criterion for telling when he is dreaming?

The fact that he cannot control what happens in the dream and reality

What beliefs did youth skepticism cause Descartes to examine?

The belief on being the best

What beliefs did Descartes think were uncertain thanks to dream skepticism?

That dreams are a manifestation of what might happen in the future

What beliefs does dream skepticism not affect? Why?The fact that sometimes dream can come true

What single belief does evil demon skepticism not affect?

The demon skepticism does not affect the soul according to Descartes words

Descartes holds that what makes you YOU is the fact from no. 12, and that this is a substance. Assuming we also have a body, what issue or problem does Descartes, or any Cartesian, have to explain?

That the body can be separated from the soul and each exists as its independent being