[ Short Description ]
[ Grades ]

Short Description:

Content.

What makes you the person you are? This question can be understood in two ways. First, maybe it means what makes you the kind of person you are: what makes you a nice person, or trustworthy person, or whatever. Second, it might mean, what is it that makes you the specific person you are, what makes you [insert your name here]? For example, suppose that you are now on the surface of a planet because you believe you just were teleported there by a Star Trek transporter. And so you believe that you are teh same person who was just on the space ship a minute ago. But are you? Does the transporter teleport a person from teh ship to the planet, or does it destroy the person on the ship, and at the same instant create a brand-new duplicate on the planet with a bunch of false memories of just having been on the ship, and so forth? How could you know if you were the person who was on the ship a minute ago, or if that person is dead and you are a deluded clone who believes you are that person? This is the question we will discuss. There won't be any definitive answers here, but there are a lot of deep and interesting philosophical issues about what people are, that will have value even if they don't provide ultimate answers.

Structure.

The seminar will meet for 2 four-hour sessions. During the first four-hour session (Saturday April 19, 1-5 pm) we will do two things. We will begin with some discussion of some philosophical perspectives on identity and in particular personal identity. We will then see a film that brings some of these issues out in a particularly vivid way, The Sixth Day. And we will continue the discussion, time permitting, after viewing that film. During the second four-hour session, we will do the same thing: a slightly different set of issues will be raised that we will discuss, and we wil see another film, Solaris, that brings out a different set of issues regarding personal identity. Time permitting, we will continue discussing after the film as time permits.

In addition to the films, which we will watc in class, there are two papers that I will make available. They are not required, but I recommend reading them, and they will form the basis of much of what I will be discussing in class. They are:

Williams, Bernard (1970). The self and the future. The Philosophical Review 79(2):161-180. [pdf]

Parfit, Derek (1971). Personal Identity. The Philosophical Review 80(1):3-27. [pdf]

 

Grades

All freshman seminars are P/NP. In order to get a P, you must attend both 4-hour sessions, and participate in the discussion.