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Personal Identity and Self-Consciousness
Personal Identity and Self-Consciousness is about persons and personal identity. What are we? And why does personal identity matter? Brian Garrett, using jargon-free language, addresses questions in the metaphysics of personal identity, questions in value theory, and discusses questions about the first person singular. Brian Garrett makes an important contribution to the philosophy of personal identity and mind, and to epistemology.
- GenresPhilosophy
160 pages, Hardcover
First published April 16, 1998
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
May 18, 2022
I chose this book because I saw it on a respected reading list of philosophy books on particular topics, in this case on personal identity. Unfortunately, it's a fairly bad book.
Garrett's writing is readable enough; it's on the philosophy side that his work is lacking. He relies heavily on his own intuitions, which frequently differ from mine, regarding outlandish thought experiments (fission, brain transplants, and so on). As I learned from professional reviews of this book, the use of such thought experiments in philosophizing about personal identity is controversial, as are Garrett's intuitions about these cases. There's a noticeable lack of rigor in the briskness with which Garrett treats opposing views: they simply vaporize at the first whiff of the author's opposing intuitions. This shoddy treatment does an injustice to his philosophical rivals -- most egregiously animalists, psychological reductionists, and anti-materialists of every stripe.
From Garrett's book -- until I saw these criticisms expressed in reviews by other philosophers of personal identity -- I got the impression that the topic of personal identity in philosophy is a sham. I'm a friend of philosophy, not some philosophy-bashing STEMlord. I approached the book sympathetically and humbly, with an open mind; I have a fairly strong philosophy background for a layman; and I understood the arguments presented in the book. Therefore, I conclude that it's Garrett's fault, not mine, that I initially saw this subfield as a sham, because his methods of argumentation are suspect. That is a most unfortunate result of reading a book in a new topic!
As a fan of austere ontological theories like those of van Inwagen and Horgan/Potrc, I was particularly disappointed in the short shrift Garrett gave to challenges to the notion of ontological vagueness and the existence of ordinary objects. In discussing sorites-style cases like the Ship of Theseus and analogizing them to persons, he again leans heavily on commonsense intuitions that have been challenged by powerful arguments (e.g., Unger's "Problem of the Many"). We don't get any sense that serious metaphysicians have posed legitimate challenges to vague objects, among which persons arguably count.
Nevertheless, I'm giving it 2 stars rather than 1, because it is readable and some of the arguments are serious. I do believe that thought experiments have a place in metaphysical theorizing, including about personal identity. Garrett's treatment, however, was an object lesson in the drawbacks of that approach when doggedly pursued.
Garrett's writing is readable enough; it's on the philosophy side that his work is lacking. He relies heavily on his own intuitions, which frequently differ from mine, regarding outlandish thought experiments (fission, brain transplants, and so on). As I learned from professional reviews of this book, the use of such thought experiments in philosophizing about personal identity is controversial, as are Garrett's intuitions about these cases. There's a noticeable lack of rigor in the briskness with which Garrett treats opposing views: they simply vaporize at the first whiff of the author's opposing intuitions. This shoddy treatment does an injustice to his philosophical rivals -- most egregiously animalists, psychological reductionists, and anti-materialists of every stripe.
From Garrett's book -- until I saw these criticisms expressed in reviews by other philosophers of personal identity -- I got the impression that the topic of personal identity in philosophy is a sham. I'm a friend of philosophy, not some philosophy-bashing STEMlord. I approached the book sympathetically and humbly, with an open mind; I have a fairly strong philosophy background for a layman; and I understood the arguments presented in the book. Therefore, I conclude that it's Garrett's fault, not mine, that I initially saw this subfield as a sham, because his methods of argumentation are suspect. That is a most unfortunate result of reading a book in a new topic!
As a fan of austere ontological theories like those of van Inwagen and Horgan/Potrc, I was particularly disappointed in the short shrift Garrett gave to challenges to the notion of ontological vagueness and the existence of ordinary objects. In discussing sorites-style cases like the Ship of Theseus and analogizing them to persons, he again leans heavily on commonsense intuitions that have been challenged by powerful arguments (e.g., Unger's "Problem of the Many"). We don't get any sense that serious metaphysicians have posed legitimate challenges to vague objects, among which persons arguably count.
Nevertheless, I'm giving it 2 stars rather than 1, because it is readable and some of the arguments are serious. I do believe that thought experiments have a place in metaphysical theorizing, including about personal identity. Garrett's treatment, however, was an object lesson in the drawbacks of that approach when doggedly pursued.
July 21, 2013
Yet another flimsy approach to the subject...
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews