Philosophy of Personal Identity and Multiple Personality by Gunnarsson Logi

Author:Gunnarsson, Logi.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Behavioral Sciences
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (CAM)
Published: 2009-07-21T16:00:00+00:00

Understood as an account of the individuation of fundamental entities, Rovane’s position is mistaken. First, her account is intuitively implausible. Even if the human being pursues each of the projects completely independently in this way, she still might regard all of the projects as her own projects. She could, for instance, say as a philosopher: “When I perform as a musician I can live out my emotions in a way that isn’t possible for me as a philosopher. I can’t and don’t want to weigh my projects against one another but I love them both.” The attitudes expressed in this statement must be understood as attitudes toward oneself: as a philosopher the person understands herself as someone who—as a musician—can live out passions that she cannot satisfy as a philosopher. Each of us has such attitudes toward ourselves, and such attitudes remain possible even if we have decided to let our projects run radically parallel to one another. The imagined utterance also shows that the human being making it regards herself as an agent: she has for the time being decided not to try to make these two sides of herself into a unified whole. Intuitively speaking, Rovane has described a case in which one fundamental entity pursues her projects in an unusual fashion, but not a situation in which three fundamental entities are present.

Second, even assuming that persons are to be individuated over rational points of view, Rovane offers the wrong account of the individuation of such points of view. As a way of preparing my argument for this claim, let me say a few words about one’s own attitudes as the starting point for practical deliberations. Subjective theories of practical reason assume that one’s subjective attitudes (such as one’s own desires), which cannot be given objective justification, are the ultimate basis of practical deliberations. Objective theories assume that one’s attitudes can be justified “objectively.” Both theories must nonetheless assume that one’s own attitudes play an important role that the attitudes of others cannot play. According to subjective theories, my own attitudes are simply the subjectively given basis of my deliberations. According to the objective theories, my deliberations must take those of my attitudes as a starting point that I have made my own by regarding them as well founded; the attitudes of others become indirectly relevant only after I myself have adopted these attitudes by taking them to be well founded. As I will now argue, this particular role of one’s own attitudes brings out a central problem in Rovane’s theory.

Rovane describes a situation in which three projects run independently of one another. She points out that in this situation desires belonging to the music project are irrelevant for the philosophy project (176). However, this situation is artificial: the person in the philosopher-state has decided to pursue the philosophy project in isolation from the others. The person in the musician-state has decided the same for the music project. In this artificial situation we can say that “music” attitudes are irrelevant for the pursuit of the philosophy project.

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