44 ideas
5333 | Philosophy needs wisdom about who we are, as well as how we ought to be [Flanagan] |
5334 | We resist science partly because it can't provide ethical wisdom [Flanagan] |
5515 | Imaginary cases are good for revealing our beliefs, rather than the truth [Parfit] |
5516 | Reduction can be by identity, or constitution, or elimination [Parfit, by PG] |
5340 | Explanation does not entail prediction [Flanagan] |
5346 | In the 17th century a collisionlike view of causation made mental causation implausible [Flanagan] |
21833 | Research suggest that we overrate conscious experience [Flanagan] |
5341 | Only you can have your subjective experiences because only you are hooked up to your nervous system [Flanagan] |
3539 | Personal identity is just causally related mental states [Parfit, by Maslin] |
5514 | Psychologists are interested in identity as a type of person, but philosophers study numerical identity [Parfit] |
1393 | One of my future selves will not necessarily be me [Parfit] |
5521 | If my brain-halves are transplanted into two bodies, I have continuity, and don't need identity [Parfit] |
5522 | Over a period of time what matters is not that 'I' persist, but that I have psychological continuity [Parfit] |
5351 | We only have a sense of our self as continuous, not as exactly the same [Flanagan] |
1392 | If we split like amoeba, we would be two people, neither of them being us [Parfit] |
5519 | It is fine to save two dying twins by merging parts of their bodies into one, and identity is irrelevant [Parfit] |
5520 | If two humans are merged surgically, the new identity is a purely verbal problem [Parfit] |
1391 | Concern for our own lives isn't the source of belief in identity, it is the result of it [Parfit] |
5353 | The self is an abstraction which magnifies important aspects of autobiography [Flanagan] |
5354 | We are not born with a self; we develop a self through living [Flanagan] |
5349 | For Buddhists a fixed self is a morally dangerous illusion [Flanagan] |
5518 | It doesn't matter whether I exist with half my components replaced (any more than an audio system) [Parfit] |
5338 | Normal free will claims control of what I do, but a stronger view claims control of thought and feeling [Flanagan] |
5344 | Free will is held to give us a whole list of desirable capacities for living [Flanagan] |
5332 | People believe they have free will that circumvents natural law, but only an incorporeal mind could do this [Flanagan] |
5345 | We only think of ourselves as having free will because we first thought of God that way [Flanagan] |
5343 | People largely came to believe in dualism because it made human agents free [Flanagan] |
5347 | Behaviourism notoriously has nothing to say about mental causation [Flanagan] |
5339 | Cars and bodies obey principles of causation, without us knowing any 'strict laws' about them [Flanagan] |
21834 | Sensations may be identical to brain events, but complex mental events don't seem to be [Flanagan] |
5342 | Physicalism doesn't deny that the essence of an experience is more than its neural realiser [Flanagan] |
5335 | Emotions are usually very apt, rather than being non-rational and fickle [Flanagan] |
5348 | Intellectualism admires the 'principled actor', non-intellectualism admires the 'good character' [Flanagan] |
5355 | Cognitivists think morals are discovered by reason [Flanagan] |
21837 | Morality is normative because it identifies best practices among the normal practices [Flanagan] |
5336 | Ethics is the science of the conditions that lead to human flourishing [Flanagan] |
21830 | For Darwinians, altruism is either contracts or genetics [Flanagan] |
21835 | We need Eudaimonics - the empirical study of how we should flourish [Flanagan] |
9762 | We should focus less on subjects of experience, and more on the experiences themselves [Parfit] |
21831 | Alienation is not finding what one wants, or being unable to achieve it [Flanagan] |
5350 | The Hindu doctrine of reincarnation only appeared in the eighth century CE [Flanagan] |
21832 | Buddhists reject God and the self, and accept suffering as key, and liberation through wisdom [Flanagan] |
1513 | The Egyptians were the first to say the soul is immortal and reincarnated [Herodotus] |
5352 | The idea of the soul gets some support from the scientific belief in essential 'natural kinds' [Flanagan] |