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Metaphysics of mind :: Personal identity

• Personal identity, general [20]
• Survival and what matters [5]
• Persons [14]
• The self [28]
• Psychological theories [2]
• Physical and animalist theories [11]
• Fission and split brains [3]
• Multiple personality [11]

Personal identity, general

See also: Survival and what matters, Persons, The self, Psychological theories, Physical and animalist theories, Fission and split brains, Multiple personality.

• Torin Alter & Stuart Rachels (2004). Epistemicism and the combined spectrum.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Derek Parfit's combined-spectrum argument seems to conflict with epistemicism, a viable theory of vagueness. While Parfit argues for the indeterminacy of personhood, epistemicism denies indeterminacy. But, we argue, the linguistically based determinacy that epistemicism supports lacks the sort of normative or ontological significance that concerns Parfit. Thus, we reformulate his argument to make it consistent with epistemicism. We also dispute Roy Sorensen's suggestion that Parfit's argument relies on an assumption that fuels resistance to epistemicism, namely, that 'the magnitude of a modification must be proportional to its effect.'
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/rati/2004/00000017/00000003/art00001
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.0034-0006.2004.00252.x
  
• Lynne Rudder Baker (online). Precis of Persons and Bodies: A Constitution View.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1933-1592.2002.tb00162.x
  
• Richard Baron (online). The self is unreal.   (More)
• Simon Beck (2006). These bizarre fictions: Thought-experiments, our psychology and our selves.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.ajol.info/viewarticle.php?jid=190&id=28208&layout=abstract
  
• Jose Luis Bermudez (1995). Aspects of the self: John Campbell's Past, Space, and Self.   (More)
• John Campbell (2004). What is it to know what 'I' refers to?   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~jcampbel/documents/What_I_Refers.pdf
  
• Andy Clark (1995). I am John's brain.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: I am John's[3] brain. In the flesh, I am just a rather undistinguished looking grey/white mass of cells. My surface is heavily convoluted and I am possessed of a fairly differentiated internal structure. John and I are on rather close and intimate terms; indeed, sometimes it is hard to tell us apart. But at times, John takes this intimacy a little too far. When that happens, he gets very confused about my role and functioning. He imagines that I organize and process information in ways which echo his own perspective on the world. In short, he thinks that his thoughts are, in a rather direct sense, my thoughts. There is some truth to this of course. But things are really rather more complicated than John suspects, as I shall try to show
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.imprint.co.uk/online/Clark.html
  http://www.cogs.indiana.edu/andy/johnbrn.pdf
  http://www.zynet.co.uk/imprint/online/Clark.html
  http://www.era.lib.ed.ac.uk/handle/1842/1300?mode=simple
  http://www.philosophy.ed.ac.uk/staff/clark/pubs/johnbrn.pdf
  
• Thomas Clark (1995). Death, nothingness, and subjectivity.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: The words quoted above distill the common secular conception of death. If we decline the traditional religious reassurances of an afterlife, or their fuzzy new age equivalents, and instead take the hard-boiled and thoroughly modern materialist view of death, then we likely end up with Gonzalez-Cruzzi. Rejecting visions of reunions with loved ones or of crossing over into the light, we anticipate the opposite: darkness, silence, an engulfing emptiness. But we would be wrong
• H. Harris (1995). An experimentalist looks at identity.   (More)
• Lars Hertzberg (1991). Imagination and the sense of identity.   (More)
• Tony Hope (1994). Personal identity and psychiatric illness.   (More)
• David Oderberg (1989). Reply to Sprigge on personal and impersonal identity.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0026-4423(198901)2:98:389<129:RTSOPA>2.0.CO;2-1
  http://www.jstor.org/sici?sici=0026-4423(198901)2:98:389<129:RTSOPA>2.0.CO;2-1
  http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2255065.pdf
  
• Eric Olson (2002). Personal identity.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Personal identity deals with questions about ourselves qua people (or persons). Many of these questions are familiar ones that occur to everyone at some time: What am I? When did I begin? What will happen to me when I die? Discussions of personal identity go right back to the origins of Western philosophy, and most major figures have had something to say about it. (There is also a rich literature on personal identity in Eastern philosophy, which I am not competent to discuss. Collins 1982 is a good source.)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=oI8lWo-dasIC&oi=fnd&pg=PA352&dq=+Personal+identity+Olson&ots=YW_LGVKN5y&sig=4-3JrwF-QmrK_4YwvEDTD_8ryWE
  
• Eric Olson (2007). What are we?   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: This paper is about the neglected question of what sort of things we are metaphysically speaking. It is different from the mind-body problem and from familiar questions of personal identity. After explaining what the question means and how it differs from others, the paper tries to show how difficult it is to give a satisfying answer
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/imp/jcs/2007/00000014/F0020005/art00003
  
• David Sanford (1981). Where was I?   (More)
• Galen Strawson (2004). Against narrativity.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/rati/2004/00000017/00000004/art00004
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-9329.2004.00264.x
  
• Joe Strout (online). Mind uploading.   (More)
• Peter Unger (2004). The mental problems of the many.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/philo/faculty/unger/papers/mentalproblem.pdf
  
• Peter Unger (2000). The survival of the sentient.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: In this quite modestly ambitious essay, I'll generally just assume that, for the most part, our "scientifically informed" commonsense view of the world is true. Just as it is with such unthinking things as planets, plates and, I suppose, plants, too, so it also is with all earthly thinking beings, from people to pigs and pigeons; each occupies a region of space, however large or small, in which all are spatially related to each other. Or, at least, so it is with the bodies of these beings. And, even as each of these _ordinary entities_ extends through some space, so, also, each endures through some time. In line with that, each ordinary entity is at least very largely, and is perhaps entirely, an _enduring physical_ entity (which allows that many might have certain properties that aren't purely physical properties.) Further, each ordinary enduring entity is a _physically complex_ entity: Not only is each composed of parts, but many of these parts, whether or not absolutely all of them, are themselves enduring physical entities, and many of _them_ also are such physically complex continuing entities
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/philo/faculty/unger/papers/survival.pdf
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=CPZ4Ksgngs0C&oi=fnd&pg=PA325&ots=R0Tzh4V8s8&sig=OMSEmZ2WoS7Cg1YGVzTGWk_H7bM
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/nous/2000/00000034/A0040s14/art00273
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/nous/2000/00000034/A014s014/art00017
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/links/doi/10.1111/0029-4624.34.s14.17/abs/
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/0029-4624.34.s14.17
  
• David Velleman (ms). So it goes.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Derek Parfit finally meets the Buddha -- on Tralfamadore! This paper is also archived at SSRN
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://homepages.nyu.edu/~dv26/Work/?So_It_Goes.pdf
  http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1006901
  

Survival and what matters

See also: Personal identity, general, Psychological theories, Fission and split brains.

• Matti Eklund (2004). Personal identity, concerns, and indeterminacy.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Let the moral question of personal identity be the following: what is the nature of the entities we should focus our prudential concerns and ascriptions of responsibility around? (If indeed we should structure these things around any entities at all.) Let the semantic question of personal identity be the question of what is the nature of the entities that ‘person’ is true of. A naive (in the sense of simple and intuitive) view would have it that the two questions are so intimately connected that the entities we should focus our concerns and ascriptions around are, pretty trivially, the persons. In part, my aim here is to evaluate this naive view. However, I will not actually attempt to give a definite verdict on it. Rather, I will identify the assumptions under which the naive view is true, and discuss how to go about evaluating those assumptions
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.people.cornell.edu/pages/me72/pi.pdf
  
• Amy Kind (2004). The metaphysics of personal identity and our special concern for the future.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Philosophers have long suggested that our attitude of special concern for the future is problematic for a reductionist view of personal identity, such as the one developed by Derek Parfit in Reasons and Persons. Specifically, it is often claimed that reductionism cannot provide justification for this attitude. In this paper, I argue that much of the debate in this arena involves a misconception of the connection between metaphysical theories of personal identity and our special concern. A proper understanding of this connection reveals that the above-mentioned objection to reductionism cannot get off the ground. Though the connection I propose is weaker than the connection typically presupposed, I nonetheless run up against a conclusion reached by Susan Wolf in “Self-Interest and Interest in Selves.” According to Wolf, metaphysical theses about the nature of personal identity have no significance for our attitude of special concern. By arguing against Wolf’s treatment of self-interest, I suggest that her arguments for this conclusion are misguided. This discussion leads to further clarification of the nature of the link between theories of personal identity and our special concern and, ultimately, to a better understanding of the rationality of this attitude
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://phil-rlst.claremontmckenna.edu/akind/SC.doc
  http://www.claremontmckenna.edu/phil-rlst/akind/SC.doc
  http://phil-rlst.academic.claremontmckenna.edu/akind/SC.doc
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/links/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9973.2004.00335.x/pdf
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/meta/2004/00000035/00000004/art00007
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-9973.2004.00335.x
  
• Neil McKinnon & John Bigelow (2001). Parfit, causation, and survival.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/8268tt1657856224/fulltext.pdf
  http://www.springerlink.com/index/8268TT1657856224.pdf
  
• Derek Parfit (1976). Lewis, Perry, and what matters.   (More)
• Derek Parfit (1971). Personal identity.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0031-8108(197101)80:1<3:PI>2.0.CO;2-R
  http://www.jstor.org/sici?sici=0031-8108(197101)80:1<3:PI>2.0.CO;2-R
  http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2184309.pdf
  

Persons

See also: Personal identity, general, The self.

• Lynne Rudder Baker (2004). On being one's own person.   (More)
• John Barresi (1999). On becoming a person.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: How does an entity become a person? Forty years ago Carl Rogers answered this question by suggesting that human beings become persons through a process of personal growth and self-discovery. In the present paper I provide six different answers to this question, which form a hierarchy of empirical projects and associated criteria that can be used to understand human personhood. They are: (1) persons are constructed out of natural but organic materials; (2) persons emerge as a form of adaptation through the process of evolution; (3) persons develop ontogenetically; (4) persons are created through the unifying activity of self-narrative ; (5) persons are constituted through socio-historical and cultural processes; and (6) the concept of person is a normative ideal . I suggest that it is important to consider all of these projects and related criteria in order to appreciate fully how an entity becomes a human person
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/routledg/cphp/1999/00000012/00000001/art00005
  http://taylorandfrancis.metapress.com/index/AJNQTT65TH61RUMR.pdf
  http://www.informaworld.com/index/AJNQTT65TH61RUMR.pdf
  
• Lisa Bortolotti (2005). Stem cell research, personhood and sentience.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.philosophy.bham.ac.uk/staff/Bortolotti_RB-Bortolotti.pdf
  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=15820013&dopt=Citation
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/repro/rebi/2005/00000010/A00103s1/art00017
  
• Martin Davies (2000). Persons and their underpinnings.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: I defend a conception of the relationship between the personal and sub-personal levels as interaction withoutreduction.There are downward inferences from the personal to the sub-personal level but we find upward explanatory gaps when we try to construct illuminating accounts of personal level conditions using just sub-personal level notions. This conception faces several serious challenges but the objection that I consider in this paper says that, when theories support downward inferences from the personal to the sub-personal level, this is the product of an unacceptably • mechanistic view of persons. According to this objection, if we were to focus on persons as conscious rational thinkers and agents then the support for putative downward inferences would be undermined. I consider and reject developments of this objection in response to two arguments for downward inferences
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/./ftinterface~content=a780184914~fulltext=713240930
  http://www.informaworld.com/index/780184914.pdf
  
• Henk de bij Weg (ms). Can a person break a world record?   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: In consciousness studies, the first-person perspective, seen as a way to approach consciousness, is often seen as nothing but a variant of the third-person perspective. One of the most important advocates of this view is Dennett. However, as I show in critical interaction with Dennett’s view, the first-person perspective and the third-person perspective are different ways of asking questions about themes. What these questions are is determined by the purposes that we have when we ask them. Since our purposes are different according to the perspective we take, each perspective has a set of leading questions of its own. This makes that the first-person perspective is an approach of consciousness that is substantially different from the third-person perspective, and that one cannot be reduced to the other. These perspectives are independent, although complementary approaches of the mind
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://home.hetnet.nl/~wegweeda/PersonalIdentity.htm
  http://home.hetnet.nl/~wegweeda/Summaryexplaining.htm
  http://home.hetnet.nl/~wegweeda/Lessons_to_be_learned.htm
  
• Martha Farah & Andrea Heberlein (2007). Personhood and neuroscience: Naturalizing or nihilating?   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Personhood is a foundational concept in ethics, yet defining criteria have been elusive. In this article we summarize attempts to define personhood in psychological and neurological terms and conclude that none manage to be both specific and non-arbitrary. We propose that this is because the concept does not correspond to any real category of objects in the world. Rather, it is the product of an evolved brain system that develops innately and projects itself automatically and irrepressibly onto the world whenever triggered by stimulus features such as a human-like face, body, or contingent patterns of behavior. We review the evidence for the existence of an autonomous person network in the brain and discuss its implications for the field of ethics and for the implicit morality of everyday behavior
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://repository.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1018&context=neuroethics_pubs
  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=17366164&dopt=Citation
  http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/./ftinterface~content=a769958327~fulltext=713240930
  http://www.informaworld.com/index/769958327.pdf
  
• Markus Heinimaa (2000). Ambiguities in the psychiatric use of the concepts of the person: An analysis.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/philosophy_psychiatry_and_psychology/v007/7.2heinimaa01.html
  
• David Hershenov (2005). Persons as proper parts of organisms.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Defenders of the Psychological Approach to Personal Identity (PAPI) insist that the possession of some kind of mind is essential to us. We are essentially thinking beings, not living creatures. We would cease to exist if our capacity for thought was irreversibly lost due to a coma or permanent vegetative state. However, the onset of such conditions would not mean the death of an organism. It would survive in a mindless state. But this would appear to mean that before the loss of cognition and the destruction of the person, the organism and the person were spatially coincident entities – two beings composed of the same matter at the same time and place. Perhaps the most problematic aspect of positing spatially coincident material entities is that it would seem to result in there being one too many thinkers. Since the person can obviously think, the organism should also have such a capacity as a result of possessing the same brain as well as every other atom of the person. This means that there now exist two thinking beings under the reader’s clothes!
• Jaron Lanier (1995). Agents of alienation.   (More)
• Chris Lindsay (ms). Subjects as objects: Living in a material world.   (More)
• John Locke (1690). Of identity and diversity (book II, chapter XXVII).   (More)
• E. J. Lowe (1999). Self, agency, and mental causation.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/imp/jcs/1999/00000006/F0020008/975
  
• James Stone (1988). Parfit and the Buddha: Why there are no people.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0031-8205(198803)48:3<519:PATBWT>2.0.CO;2-H
  http://www.jstor.org/sici?sici=0031-8205(198803)48:3<519:PATBWT>2.0.CO;2-H
  http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2107477.pdf
  
• Robert Wilson (2005). Persons, social agency, and constitution.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: In her recent book Persons and Bodies1, Lynne Rudder Baker has defended what she calls the constitution view of persons. On this view, persons are constituted by their bodies, where “constitution” is a ubiquitous, general metaphysical relation distinct from more familiar relations, such as identity and part-whole composition
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0265052505052039
  

The self

See also: , Self-consciousness, Self-consciousness, Personal identity, general, Persons.

• John Barresi (online). The rise and fall of the conscious self: A history of western concepts of self and personal identity.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: I will trace the history of western conceptions of soul and self from the ancient Greeks to the present. The story line that I will present is based mainly on material covered in two books by Ray Martin and myself: _The Naturalization of the Soul: Self and Personal Identity in the_
• Andy Clark (1995). I am John's brain.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: I am John's[3] brain. In the flesh, I am just a rather undistinguished looking grey/white mass of cells. My surface is heavily convoluted and I am possessed of a fairly differentiated internal structure. John and I are on rather close and intimate terms; indeed, sometimes it is hard to tell us apart. But at times, John takes this intimacy a little too far. When that happens, he gets very confused about my role and functioning. He imagines that I organize and process information in ways which echo his own perspective on the world. In short, he thinks that his thoughts are, in a rather direct sense, my thoughts. There is some truth to this of course. But things are really rather more complicated than John suspects, as I shall try to show
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.imprint.co.uk/online/Clark.html
  http://www.cogs.indiana.edu/andy/johnbrn.pdf
  http://www.zynet.co.uk/imprint/online/Clark.html
  http://www.era.lib.ed.ac.uk/handle/1842/1300?mode=simple
  https://www.era.lib.ed.ac.uk/handle/1842/1300?mode=simple
  http://www.philosophy.ed.ac.uk/staff/clark/pubs/johnbrn.pdf
  
• Andy Clark (2002). That Special Something: Dennett on the Making of Minds and Selves.   (More)
• Tanya de Villiers & Paul Cilliers (2004). Narrating the self: Freud, Dennett and complexity theory.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.ajol.info/viewarticle.php?jid=211&id=23954
  
• Daniel Dennett (online). In Darwin's wake, where am I?   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: He was not just my teacher and my friend. He was my hero, a man who was quietly but passionately committed to truth, to clarity, to understanding everything under the sun–and to making himself understood. More than anybody else he has made me proud to be a philosopher, so I would like to dedicate my Presidential Address to his memory
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/papers/PresidentialAddress.pdf
  http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0065-972X(200111)75:2<11+13:IDWWAI>2.0.CO;2-A
  
• Mait Edey (2002). Subject and object.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.imprint.co.uk/online/edey.html
  http://www.zynet.co.uk/imprint/online/edey.html
  
• Risieri Frondizi (1950). On the nature of the self.   (More)
• Shaun Gallagher (2000). Philosophical conceptions of the self.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Although philosophical approaches to the self are diverse, several of them are relevant to cognitive science. First, the notion of a 'minimal self', a self devoid of temporal extension, is clarified by distinguishing between a sense of agency and a sense of ownership for action. To the extent that these senses are subject to failure in pathologies like schizophrenia, a neuropsychological model of schizophrenia may help to clarify the nature of the minimal self and its neurological underpinnings. Second, there is good evidence to suggest that although certain aspects of the minimal self are primitive and embodied, other aspects may be accessed only in reflective consciousness. Employing a modified concept of the minimal self, it may be possible to construct a robotic form of non-conscious self-reference that depends on an interaction between the robotic body and its environment. In contrast to the minimal self, the narrative self involves continuity over time and is directly relevant to discussions of memory and personal identity. There is growing consensus among philosophers and cognitive scientists about the importance of narrative and its relation to episodic memory and left-hemisphere functions. There are, however, at least two different views of how the narrative self is structured. On one model it is nothing more than an abstract point. On a more extended view, proposed here, the self is a rich amalgam of narratives that allows for the equivocations, contradictions, and self-deceptions of personal life. Even in this case, however, neurocognitive models contribute to our understanding of how narrative identity is structured
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~gallaghr/tics2000.html
  http://www.paed.uni-muenchen.de/~allg1/lehrveranstaltungen/selfSS03/gallager.pdf
  http://www.paed.uni-muenchen.de/~allg1/lehrveranstaltungen/selfSS03/Gallager.pdf
  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=10637618&dopt=Citation
  
• Marcello Ghin (2005). What a self could be (commentary on metzinger).   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Metzinger’s claim that there are no such things as selves has given rise to a lot of discussions. By examining the notion of self used by Metzinger, I want to clarify what he means when saying that nobody ever was or had a self. Furthermore, I want to examine if there could be a notion of ‘self’ which is compatible with the Self- Model Theory of Subjectivity (SMT). I will argue that there is a notion of self which is not only compatible with the SMT, but that the SMT also provides the theoretical framework for developing such a notion
• John Gregg (online). The self.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: One of the most certain truths in the world is Descartes' "I think, therefore I am". Descartes was so certain of the existence of some kind of essential _self_ that others have coined the term "Cartesian theater" to describe the sense that we all have of being the audience enjoying the rich play of our experiences. We tend to believe in an enduring self, independent of our individual percepts. Sometimes this virtual "self" in our mind, sitting in the audience of the Cartesian theater who watches our thoughts is referred to as a homunculus. This is not necessarily to imply that most of us believe that the self or homunculus is an identifiable region of the brain like the pineal gland, just that at some level of organization, we assume that there is a self that is separate from the stuff that self experiences, remembers, thinks about, etc
• Nicholas Humphrey (2007). The society of selves.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Human beings are not only the most sociable animals on Earth, but also the only animals that have to ponder the separateness that comes with having a conscious self. The philosophical problem of ‘other minds’ nags away at people’s sense of who—and why—they are. But the privacy of consciousness has an evolutionary history—and maybe even an evolutionary function. While recognizing the importance to humans of mind-reading and psychic transparency, we should consider the consequences and possible benefits of being—ultimately—psychically opaque
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.journals.royalsoc.ac.uk/index/2873162851078478.pdf
  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=17255004&dopt=Citation
  
• Max More (1995). The Diachronic Self.   (More)
• Shaun Nichols (2000). The mind's "I" and the theory of mind's "I": Introspection and two concepts of self.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Introspection plays a crucial role in Modern philosophy in two different ways. From the beginnings of Modern philosophy, introspection has been used a tool for philosophical exploration in a variety of thought experiments. But Modern philosophers (e.g., Locke and Hume) also tried to characterize the nature of introspection as a psychological phenomenon. In contemporary philosophy, introspection is still frequently used in thought experiments. And in the analytic tradition, philosophers have tried to characterize conceptually necessary features of introspection.² But over the last several decades, philosophers have devoted relatively little attention to the cognitive characteristics of introspection. This has begun to change, impelled largely by a fascinating body of work on how children and autistic individuals understand the mind.³ In a pair of recent papers, Stephen Stich and I have drawn on this empirical work to develop an account of introspection or self-awareness.⁴ In this paper, I will elaborate and defend this cognitive theory of introspection further and argue that if the account is right, it may have important ramifications for psychological and philosophical debates over the self
• Eric Olson (1998). There is no problem of the self.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Because there is no agreed use of the term 'self', or characteristic features or even paradigm cases of selves, there is no idea of "the self" to figure in philosophical problems. The term leads to troubles otherwise avoidable; and because legitimate discussions under the heading of 'self' are really about other things, it is gratuitous. I propose that we stop speaking of selves
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.shef.ac.uk/content/1/c6/03/49/16/self.pdf
  http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/archive/00000742/01/olsonet6.pdf
  
• John Perry (1996). The self.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: The English expression “self” is a modest one; in its normal use, it is not even quite a word, but something that makes an ordinary object pronoun into a reflexive one: “her” into “herself,” “him” into “himself” and “it” into “itself”. The reflexive pronoun is used when the object of an action or attitude is the same as the subject of that action or attitude. If I say Mark Twain shot _himself _in the foot, I describe Mark Twain not only as the shooter but as the person shot; if I say Mark Twain admired _himself, _I describe him not only as the admirer but as the admired. In this sense, “the self” is just the person doing the action or holding the attitude that is somehow in question. “Self” is also used as a prefix for names of activities and attitudes, identifying the special case where the object is the same as the agent: self-love, self-hatred, self-abuse, self-promotion, self-knowledge
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www-csli.stanford.edu/~john/SELF-ENC/self-enc/self-enc.html
  
• John Pollock & Jenann Ismael (2006). So you think you exist? — In defense of nolipsism.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Human beings think of themselves in terms of a privileged non-descriptive designator — a mental “I”. Such thoughts are called “_de se_” thoughts. The mind/body problem is the problem of deciding what kind of thing I am, and it can be regarded as arising from the fact that we think of ourselves non-descriptively. Why do we think of ourselves in this way? We investigate the functional role of “I” (and also “here” and “now”) in cognition, arguing that the use of such non-descriptive “reflexive” designators is essential for making sophisticated cognition work in a general-purpose cognitive agent. If we were to build a robot capable of similar cognitive tasks as humans, it would have to be equipped with such designators
• John Pollock (online). What am I?   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: It’s morning. You sit down at your desk, cup of coffee in hand, and prepare to begin your day. First, you turn on your computer. Once it is running, you check your e-mail. Having decided it is all spam, you trash it. You close the window on your e-mail program, but leave the program running so that it will periodically check the mail server to see whether you have new mail. If it finds new mail it will alert you by playing a musical tone. Next you start your word processor. You have in mind to write a paper in moral philosophy about whether people who send spam
• Marya Schechtman (2005). Community, consciousness, and dynamic self-understanding.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/philosophy_psychiatry_and_psychology/v012/12.1schechtman02.pdf
  
• Maxine Sheets-Johnstone (2002). Phenomenology and agency: Methodological and theoretical issues in Strawson's 'the self'.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/imp/jcs/1999/00000006/00000004/937
  
• David Shoemaker (1999). Selves and moral units.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: offers each of these as a possible moral unit at various points.1 It is the aim of this paper, however, to suggest that, if Parfit’s two key arguments about the indeterminacy of identity and what matters in our identity are correct, we should take selves to be the significant moral units in any metaphysically-grounded ethical theory. Furthermore, because Parfit’s own explanation of what the concept of the self involves is problematic in important respects, I hope to point out a few ways in which this concept might be made clearer and more coherent. Finally, I will defend this intermediate view from objections stemming from each of the other two alternatives. I begin with a brief exposition of the Parfitian model
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/papq/1999/00000080/00000004/art00006
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/papq/1999/00000080/00000004/art00091
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1468-0114.00091
  
• Roy Sorensen (online). The vanishing point: The self as an absence.   (More)
• Roy Sorenson (forthcoming). The vanishing point: A model of the self as an absence.   (More)
• Galen Strawson (2002). The self and the SESMET.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.imprint.co.uk/pdf/sesmet.pdf
  http://www.rdg.ac.uk/AcaDepts/ld/Philos/gjs/sesmet.pdf
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/imp/jcs/1999/00000006/00000004/938
  
• Peter Suber (online). Self-determination and selfhood in recent legal cases.   (More)
• Bas van Fraassen (2004). Transcendence of the ego (the nonexistent knight).   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/rati/2004/00000017/00000004/art00005
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-9329.2004.00265.x
  
• David Velleman (1996). Self to self.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www3.cambridge.org/asia/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=0521854296
  http://www3.cambridge.org/us/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=0521670241&ss=exc
  http://www3.cambridge.org/asia/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=0521854296&ss=ind
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=9biADg1IoM8C&oi=fnd&pg=PA1&ots=ubCDMmhWlJ&sig=4CUxPc0Zbtx-GnkY8A4hAy_22RU
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=9biADg1IoM8C&oi=fnd&pg=PR9&ots=ubCDMmhWlJ&sig=qxcXJLEzTFS_0-sEL30LvTmZzDg
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=9biADg1IoM8C&oi=fnd&pg=PA1&sig=3P2pUODd4X9jEnMeom42sr99T7o&dq=+Self+to+self.+Velleman
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=9biADg1IoM8C&oi=fnd&pg=PR9&dq=+Self+to+self+Velleman&ots=ubDBOggZoI&sig=ExtJCn0tEua8XlLLGmKoCPJpst0
  http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0031-8108(199601)105:1<39:STS>2.0.CO;2-0
  http://www.jstor.org/sici?sici=0031-8108(199601)105:1<39:STS>2.0.CO;2-0
  http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2185763.pdf
  
• Stephen White (2004). Skepticism, deflation and the rediscovery of the self.   (More)
• Dallas Willard (online). Intentionality and the substance of the self.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: For the Society of Christian Philosophers, APA San Francisco, April 4, 2007

Psychological theories

See also: Personal identity, general, Survival and what matters, Physical and animalist theories.

• Eric Olson (2002). What does functionalism tell us about personal identity?   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Sydney Shoemaker argues that the functionalist theory of mind entails a psychological-continuity view of personal identity, as well as providing a defense of that view against a crucial objection. I show that his view has surprising consequences, e.g. that no organism could have mental properties and that a thing's mental properties fail to supervene even weakly on its microstructure and surroundings. I then argue that the view founders on "fission" cases and rules out our being material things. Functionalism tells us little if anything about personal identity
  Additional links for this entry: