PHIL 375 Lecture 8: Phil 375 Lecture 8
Document Summary
Individuals constitute themselves as persons by coming to think of themselves as persisting subjects who have had experience in the past and will continue to have experience in the future. Articulation: form and logic of a conventional, linear narrative. Constituents (characters, events) do not have a meaning of their own. Meaning comes from the configuration, from the plot. Reality: self-constitution requires both an internal life and a proper connection to the social world. Self-conception must be in sync with that of others. Mitigation of the no personhood without narrative claim: (i) other forms of existence are valuable; (ii) there is a wide diversity of qualifying narratives. Parfit concludes from the superficiality of psychological continuity that the self is a fiction. Ms claims, however, that a parfitian live-for-the-moment, sever-the-bonds-with-the-past-and-the-future life produces individuals who. Don"t take responsibility for the past, and, in any case, Ms and dp only disagree on whether personhood is achievable without superficiality.
