The Bounds of Agency (ebook)

Argumento de The Bounds of Agency (ebook)

The subject of personal identity is one of the most central and most contested and exciting in philosophy. Ever since Locke, psychological and bodily criteria have vied with one another in conflicting accounts of personal identity. Carol Rovane argues that, as things stand, the debate is unresolvable since both sides hold coherent positions that our common sense will embrace. Our very common sense, she maintains, is conflicted; so any resolution to the debate is bound to be revisionary. She boldly offers such a revisionary theory of personal identity by first inquiring into the nature of persons.

Rovane begins with a premise about the distinctive ethical nature of persons to which all substantive ethical doctrines, ranging from Kantian to egoist, can subscribe. From this starting point, she derives two startling metaphysical possibilities: there could be group persons composed of many human beings and multiple persons within a single human being. Her conclusion supports Locke's distinction between persons and human beings, but on altogether new grounds. These grounds lie in her radically normative analysis of the condition of personal identity, as the condition in which a certain normative commitment arises, namely, the commitment to achieve overall rational unity within a rational point of view. It is by virtue of this normative commitment that individual agents can engage one another specifically as persons, and possess the distinctive ethical status of persons.0Acknowledgments Pt. I Lessons from Locke Introduction to Part I 3 Ch. 1 Preview of the Normative Analysis of Personal Identity 13 1 Locke's Analysis 13 2 Rational Points of View 19 3 The Explanatory Goal of the Normative Analysis 26 4 Meeting the Explanatory Goal 29 5 A Final Comparison with Locke 32 Ch. 2 On the Need for Revision 35 1 What the Lockean Thought Experiments Really Show 40 2 The Conflict Is Not Merely Apparent 45 3 Neither Side of the Conflict Is Incoherent 49 4 Seeking Positive Reasons to Embrace One Side of the Conflict 59 Ch. 3 A Revisionary Proposal 65 1 What Are Agency-Regarding Relations? 74 2 The Ethical Criterion Meets All Three Constraints 99 Pt. II Personal Identity: The Body Practic Introduction to Part II 127 Ch. 4 A Sufficient Condition for Personal Identity 136 1 The Case for Group Persons 137 2 Intra- and Interpersonal Relations 142 3 The Normative Analysis of Personal Identity: A First Full Statement 160 Ch. 5 The Sufficient Condition Is Also Necessary 167 1 A Rational Reconstruction of Multiple Personality Disorder 169 2 Justifying the Commitment to Overall Rational Unity 179 3 Some Remaining Metaphysical Issues 183 Ch. 6 The First Person 209 1 The Distinctive Features of the First Person 211 2 Self-Oriented Ethical Relations 232 Postscript 245 Bibliography 251 Index 255