Personal Identity

John Perry (Edited by)

ISBN 10: 0520029607 / ISBN 13: 9780520029606

Published by University of California Press, Berkeley & Los Angeles, CA, London, 1975

About this Item

248 pp. Solidly bound copy with moderate external wear, crisp pages and clean text. Slightly slanted spine. Relevant newspaper articles included from previous owner.

Seller Inventory # 4ivAg0008

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Personal Identity
• Publisher: University of California Press, Berkeley & Los Angeles, CA, London
• Publication Date: 1975
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0520029607
• ISBN 13: 9780520029606
• Binding: Trade Paperback
• Edition: 1st Paperbound Edition 1975
• Condition: Very Good
• Seller catalogs:
  • Humanism & Humanites, Philosophy, Ethics
  • Academic, Scholarly, Research
  • Philosophy

About this title

Synopsis

This volume brings together the vital contributions of distinguished past and contemporary philosophers to the important topic of personal identity. The first part sets forth the attempts by John Locke, Anthony Quinton, and H. P. Grice to analyze personal identity in terms of memory. The eleven other selections are largely critical of this approach and provide alternative perspectives.

Part II contains classic contributions by Joseph Butler, Thomas Reid, and Sydney S. Shoemaker, and a new paper by John Perry―"Personal Identity, Memory, and the Problem of Circularity"―in which he defends some of the central features of the Locke-Grice-Quinton approach.

Part III contains three sections from David Hume's Treatise of Human Nature: "Our idea of Identity," "Of Personal Identity," and an appendix which the editor has entitled "Second Thoughts."

In the fourth part of the volume, Bernard Williams discusses "The Self and the Future," and Derek Parfit contributes his view of "Personal Identity."

A recurring theme throughout the work is the possibility of "body transfer"―of a single person having, at different times, different bodies. In the final section of the volume ("Brian Bisection and the Unity of Consciousness"), Thomas Nagel examines the philosophical implications of recent scientific research on split-brain patients' he discusses the possibility, entertained by some researchers, that such cases involve two persons simultaneously inhabiting a single body.

In his long introduction to this unique anthology on a topic of prime interest to the philosophical community, Mr. Perry scrutinizes the differing approaches and vocabularies of the various authors. The editor also includes "Suggestions for Further Reading."

About the Author

John Perry is Professor of Philosophy at Stanford University, co-host of the award-winning radio program "Philosophy Talk," and author of many books including Knowledge, Possibility, and Conciousness and Identity, Personal Identity, and the Self.