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SUMMARY:IDENTITY AND THE MIND - Raymond Tallis\, Manchester University
DTSTART:20070223T173000Z
DTEND:20070223T183000Z
UID:TALK6194@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Janet Gibson
DESCRIPTION:Personal identity is an elusive notion. Some contemporary thin
 kers question whether it has any substantive reality or even whether it is
  important. This has potentially alarming implications for our belief in o
 urselves as responsible agents. Many of the difficulties of pinning down p
 ersonal identity result from confusing different aspects of a very complex
  notion. Identity has subjective dimensions: my sense of who and what I am
  at any given time\; and my sense of being the same individual over a peri
 od of time. These dimensions in turn have many elements. There are also th
 e external aspects of identity: those characteristics by which\, and with 
 which\, I am identified and classified by others and which count as object
 ive criteria for my remaining the same person. Since John Locke\, many phi
 losophers have sought the basis of personal identity in the mind: in our p
 sychological continuity over time\, mediated by memory. More recently\, so
 me philosophers have emphasised the role played by the physical continuity
  of the body. While each approach captures some aspects of identity\, neit
 her gets to the heart of matter. What is more\, continuity accounts focus 
 on sameness of identity over time and on objective or external criteria fo
 r identity rather than the immediate\, unassailable moment-by-moment intui
 tion of identity. We cannot\, however\, understand what it is that confers
  sameness of identity over time unless we can understand what gives us a s
 ense of identity at a particular time. I will argue that the primary locat
 ion of identity is a moment-to-moment sense of being myself\, which is qua
 si-tautologous\, unassailable and underivable. This is rooted in what I ha
 ve called The Existential Intuition `That I am this.. .' . `This'\, in the
  first instance\, is my body. The self-apprehension of the human body\, wh
 ich is neither purely psychological nor purely corporeal\, is the common p
 oint of origin of the various subjective and objective dimensions of perso
 nal identity and of the various senses of what I am now and of what is the
  same in me over time. The scope of `this' expands beyond the body as the 
 individual undergoes cognitive development and enters a world of possibili
 ty and fact\, extending into past and future. The Existential Intuition is
  unique to humans: no other organism apprehends itself\, that it is\, to t
 he same degree. It is the basis of human freedom and moral responsibility.
  
LOCATION:LMH\, Lady Mitchell Hall
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