Preface (Full Text, less acknowledgements)
- Over the past twenty years philosophy has changed dramatically. Logical positivism — the prevailing philosophical paradigm of the first half of the twentieth century and one that encouraged intellectual isolationism — is all but dead. In addition, the core philosophical issues about self, identity, and the nature of mind that tend now to interest philosophers — and also psychologists, sociologists, neurophysiologists, novelists, and even physicists — spill over traditional disciplinary boundaries. Finally, philosophically relevant knowledge and information are increasing at an unprecedented rate.
- As a result, the best and most influential philosophy is now being done in a more interdisciplinary way and yet, at the same time, with greater specialization. This creates an urgent need for an anthology that is both general and accessible enough to be used for undergraduate instruction yet specialized and interdisciplinary enough to reflect the ways philosophy is now being done. In putting together Self and Identity, we have tried to meet this challenge by including accessible selections focused on a closely integrated set of specific problems that are central to epistemology, philosophy of mind, theories of rationality, metaphysics, philosophy of the social and natural sciences, perception, free will, religion, and ethics.
- Self and Identity can thus be used as a text not only in philosophy of mind, but in introduction to philosophy courses as well. Because the topics covered have been so central during the past two decades, many of the most important contemporary philosophers have written about them, and so students will get to study some of the best current philosophy available. At the same time, the selections focus ultimately on an issue that interests students more than any other: themselves.
Book Comment
Macmillan Publishing Company, New York, 1991
"Bergmann (Frithjof) - Freedom and the Self"
Source: Kolak & Martin - Self and Identity: Contemporary Philosophical Issues
Paper Comment
Excerpted from Frithjof Bergmann, On Being Free, University of Notre Dame Press, 1977, pp. 79-103.
"Braude (Stephen) - Multiple Personality and the Structure of the Self"
Source: Kolak & Martin - Self and Identity: Contemporary Philosophical Issues
Sections
- Introduction
- Varieties of Reversibility
- An Appeal to Psychological Primitives
- Anomalous Multiplicity
- The Lessons of Dissociation
- Postscript: Commissurotomy1
Paper Comment
1990
"Dennett (Daniel) - Julian Jaynes's Software Archeology"
Source: Dennett - Brainchildren - Essays on Designing Minds
Paper Comment
"Dennett (Daniel) - The Origins of Selves"
Source: Kolak & Martin - Self and Identity: Contemporary Philosophical Issues
Paper Comment
Cogito, Vol. 1 (1989), pp. 163-173.
"Gergen (Kenneth J.) - The Social Construction of Self-Knowledge"
Source: Kolak & Martin - Self and Identity: Contemporary Philosophical Issues
Sections
- Introduction
- A Socio-Cognitive Orientation to Self
- Communication and Conceptualization
- The Evidence of Action
- Self-Other Comparisons
- Concept Association: Identity by Implication
- Memory Scanning and Other Forms of Cognitive Processing
- Summary and Implications for a Science of Self
Paper Comment
Excerpted from K.J. Gergen, "The Social Construction of Self-Knowledge," in The Self, edited by T. Mischel, Basil Blackwell, 1977.
"Harre (Rom) - Personal Being as Empirical Unity"
Source: Kolak & Martin - Self and Identity: Contemporary Philosophical Issues
Sections
- Public and Private Modes of Personal Identity
- Fact of Identity
- Sense of Identity
- Summary of the Argument
- Autobiography as Self-Knowledge
- Speculation: The Breakdown of Transcendental Unities
Paper Comment
Excerpted from Rom Harre, Personal Being (1984), pp. 203-215.
"Hilgard (Ernest R.) - Dissociative Phenomena and the Hidden Observer"
Source: Kolak & Martin - Self and Identity: Contemporary Philosophical Issues
Sections
- Possession States, Fugues, and Multiple Personalities
… Possession States
… Fugues
… Alternating Personalities
… Multiple Personalities: Three or More
… Recent Cases
… Concluding Note on Multiple Personalities
- Automatic Writing and Divided Attention
… The Background in Spiritualism
- Divided Consciousness in Hypnosis: The “Hidden Observer”
… The Hidden Observer Revealed in a Class Demonstration
… The Hidden Observer Revealed in the Hypnotic Reduction of Pain
Paper Comment
Divided Consciousness, Expanded Edition, by Ernest Hilgard, 1977, 1986, John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
"Humphrey (Nicholas) & Dennett (Daniel) - Speaking for Our Selves: An Assessment of Multiple Personality"
Source: Dennett - Brainchildren - Essays on Designing Minds
Author’s Abstract
- In 1988, the British psychologist Nicholas Humphrey came to work with me at the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts. Among our projects was investigating the curious phenomenon of Multiple Personality Disorder.
- Our jointly authored essay was originally commissioned by the New York Review of Books, but when we submitted the draft (in roughly the form presented here), we encountered an escalating series of ever more impenetrable editorial "objections''; it finally became clear to us that these objections had more to do with feelings of intellectual queasiness than with scientific disagreement, and that nothing we could do would make the article acceptable.
- Since we were eager to publish it swiftly, in a journal of general intellectual interest, we submitted it to Raritan. That journal does not permit footnotes, so the footnotes as printed here are from the version reprinted as Occasional Paper #8, Center on Violence and Human Survival, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, The City University of New York, 1991.
- The topic of MPD has something for everyone: self, science, sex, violence, literary theory, and much, much more. We think we did justice to the phenomena, and we have often wondered about the emotional politics that lay behind the New York Review of Books' decision to keep our observations from their readers.
Paper Comment
"Jaynes (Julian) - Consciousness and the Voices of the Mind"
Source: Kolak & Martin - Self and Identity: Contemporary Philosophical Issues
Sections
- Introduction
- Previous Solutions
- What Consciousness Is Not
- What Consciousness Is
- The Bicameral Mind
- The Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind
- The Beginning of Consciousness
- Four Ideas
- Open Discussion
Paper Comment
"Johnston (Mark) - Self-Deception and the Nature of Mind"
Source: Kolak & Martin - Self and Identity: Contemporary Philosophical Issues
Sections
- Introduction
- Self-Deception
- Homuncularism Revisited
- Tropisms and Reason
Paper Comment
Excerpted from Mark Johnston, "Self-Deception and the Nature of Mind," pp. 63-66, 74-79, 81-91 in Perspectives on Self-Deception, edited by Brian McLaughlin and Amelie Rorty, University of California Press, 1988.
"Kolak (Daniel) & Martin (Raymond) - Personal Identity: Introduction"
Source: Kolak & Martin - Self and Identity: Contemporary Philosophical Issues
"Kolak (Daniel) & Martin (Raymond) - Self & Identity: Introduction"
Source: Kolak & Martin - Self and Identity: Contemporary Philosophical Issues
"Kolak (Daniel) & Martin (Raymond) - Self: Introduction"
Source: Kolak & Martin - Self and Identity: Contemporary Philosophical Issues
"Kolak (Daniel) & Martin (Raymond) - Unity of Consciousness: Introduction"
Source: Kolak & Martin - Self and Identity: Contemporary Philosophical Issues
Sections
- Origins of Consciousness
- Split Brains
- Split Minds
"Martin (Raymond) - Identity, Transformation, and What Matters in Survival"
Source: Kolak & Martin - Self and Identity: Contemporary Philosophical Issues
Philosophers Index AbstractThe situation considered is one in which we are given a choice among at least as good a set of alternatives as those we are typically given in our lives, and we choose just to promote selfish ends. The question is whether, under such circumstances, we might nevertheless choose cessation over continued existence. It is argued--without appeal to fission examples--that under such circumstances many of us would rather cease to exist than to continue, provided that in ceasing to exist we could transform into the persons we most want to be.
Paper Comment
1990
"Miller (Jonathan) - Primitive Thoughts"
Source: Kolak & Martin - Self and Identity: Contemporary Philosophical Issues
Paper Comment
"Neisser (Ulric) - Five Kinds of Self-Knowledge"
Source: Kolak & Martin - Self and Identity: Contemporary Philosophical Issues
Philosophers Index Abstract
- Self-knowledge is based on several different forms of information, so distinct that each one essentially establishes a different 'self'.
- The "ecological self" is the self as directly perceived with respect to the immediate physical environment;
- the "interpersonal self", also directly perceived, is established by species-specific signals of emotional rapport and communication;
- the "extended self" is based on memory and anticipation;
- the "private self" appears when we discover that our conscious experiences are exclusively our own;
- the "conceptual self" or 'self-concept' draws its meaning from a network of socially-based assumptions and theories about human nature in general and ourselves in particular.
- Although these selves are rarely experienced as distinct (because they are held together by specific forms of stimulus information), they differ in their developmental histories, in the accuracy with which we can know them, in the pathologies to which they are subject, and generally in what they contribute to human experience.
Sections
- Introduction
- The Ecological Self
- The Interpersonal Self
- The Extended Self
- The Private Self
- The Conceptual Self
- Conclusion
Paper Comment
Philosophical Psychology, 1 (1988), 37-59.
"Nussbaum (Martha) - Love's Knowledge"
Source: Kolak & Martin - Self and Identity: Contemporary Philosophical Issues
Sections
- Introduction
- Knowledge of the Heart by Intellectual Scrutiny
- The Cataleptic Impression: Knowledge in Suffering
- Cataleptic Impressions and the Science of Life
- Catalepsis Ordered by Reflection: Proust’s Final View
- Learning to Fall
Paper Comment
Excerpted from Martha Nussbaum, "Love's Knowledge, " in Perspectives on Self-Deception, edited by Brian McLaughlin and Amelie Rorty, University of California Press, 1988.
"Parfit (Derek) - Divided Minds and the Nature of Persons"
Source: Blakemore & Greenfield - Mindwaves
Author’s Introduction
- It was the split-brain cases which drew me into philosophy. Our knowledge of these cases depends on the results of various psychological tests, as described by1 Donald MacKay. These tests made use of two facts. We control each of our arms, and see what is in each half of our visual fields, with only one of our hemispheres. When someone's hemispheres have been disconnected, psychologists can thus present to this person two different written questions in the two halves of his visual field, and can receive two different answers written by this person's two hands.
- Here is a simplified imaginary version of the kind of evidence that such tests provide. One of these people looks fixedly at the centre of a wide screen, whose left half is red and right half is blue. On each half in a darker shade arc the words, 'How many colours can you see?' With both hands the person writes, 'Only one'. The words are now changed to read, 'Which is the only colour that you can see?' With one of his hands the person writes 'Red', with the other he writes 'Blue'.
- If this is how such a person responds, I would conclude that he is having two visual sensations - that he does, as he claims, see both red and blue. But in seeing each colour he is not aware of seeing the other. He has two streams of consciousness, in each of which he can see only one colour. In one stream he sees red, and at the same time, in his other stream, he sees blue. More generally, he could be having at the same time two series of thoughts and sensations, in having each of which he is unaware of having the other.
- This conclusion has been questioned. It has been claimed by some that there are not two streams of consciousness, on the ground that the subdominant hemisphere is a part of the brain whose functioning involves no consciousness. If this were true, these cases would lose most of their interest. I believe that it is not true, chiefly because, if a person's dominant hemisphere is destroyed, this person is able to react in the way in which, in the split-brain cases, the sub-dominant hemisphere reacts, and we do not believe that such a person is just an automaton, without consciousness. The sub-dominant hemisphere is, of course, much less developed in certain ways, typically having the linguistic abilities of a three-year-old. But three-year-olds are conscious. This supports the view that, in split-brain cases, there are two streams of consciousness.
- Another view is that, in these cases, there are two persons involved, sharing the same body. Like Professor MacKay, I believe that we should reject this view. My reason for believing this is, however, different. Professor MacKay denies that there are two persons involved because he believes that there is only one person involved. I believe that, in a sense, the number of persons involved is none.
Paper Comment
For the full text, follow this link (Local website only): PDF File2.
Also in:-
In-Page Footnotes ("Parfit (Derek) - Divided Minds and the Nature of Persons")
Footnote 1: In "MacKay (Donald) - Divided Brains - Divided Minds".
"Puccetti (Roland) - Two Brains, Two Minds? Wigan's Theory of Mental Duality"
Source: Kolak & Martin - Self and Identity: Contemporary Philosophical Issues
Philosophers Index Abstract
- The London physician A. L. Wigan (Duality of the Mind, 1985), having discovered at autopsy that a formerly cultivated man had gone through life with but one brain, concluded that we with two brains must have two minds. But if a single person had two minds, then single objects would be perceived doubly.
- I propose instead that each of the two brains is the biological substrate of a person having a single mind and lacking introspective access to the other person's mind: thus without double perception.
Sections
- Introduction
- Wigan’s Argument for Our Having Two Brains
- Evidence for Double-Mindedness in Split-Brain Patients
- Wigan’s Mis-statement of His Theory
- Restatement of Wigan’s Theory
- Current Misconceptions of Double-Mindedness
- Evidence for Disguised Transcallosal Inhibition
- Conclusion
Paper Comment
- For the full text, follow this link (Local website only): PDF File1.
- British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 40 (1989) 137-144.
"Sperry (Roger W.) - Hemisphere Deconnection and the Unity in Conscious Awareness"
Source: Baars, Banks & Newman - Essential Sources in the Scientific Study of Consciousness
Author’s Introduction
- The following article is a result of studies my Colleagues and I have been conducting with some neurosurgical patients of Philip J. Vogel of Los Angeles. These patients were all advanced epileptics in whom an extensive midline section of the cerebral commissures1 had been carried out in an effort to contain severe epileptic convulsions not controlled by medication. In all these people the surgical sections included division of the corpus collosum in its entirety, plus division also of the smaller anterior and hippocampal commissures2, plus in some instances the massa intermedia. So far as I know, this is the most radical disconnection of the cerebral hemispheres attempted thus far in human surgery. The full array of sections was carried out in a single operation.
- No major collapse of mentality or personality was anticipated as a result of this extreme surgery: earlier clinical observations3 on surgical section of the corpus callosum in man, as well as the results from dozens of monkeys on which I had carried out this exact same surgery, suggested that the functional deficits might very likely be less damaging than some of the more common forms of cerebral surgery, such as frontal lobotomy, or even some of the unilateral lobotomies performed more routinely for epilepsy.
- …
- Although the alleviation of the epilepsy has not held up 100% throughout the series (two patients are still having seizures, although their convulsions are much reduced in severity and frequency and tend to be confined to one side), the results on the whole continue to be predominantly beneficial, and the overall outlook at this time remains promising for selected severe cases.
- …
- Our own work has been confined entirely to an examination of the functional outcome, that is, the behavioral, neurological, and psychological effects of this surgical disruption of all direct cross-talk between the hemispheres. Initially we were concerned as to whether we would be able to find in these patients any of the numerous symptoms of hemisphere deconnection that had been demonstrated in the so-called split-brain animal studies of the 1950s …
Paper Comment
1968. Also in "Kolak (Daniel) & Martin (Raymond), Eds. - Self and Identity: Contemporary Philosophical Issues".
"Stairs (Allen) - Quantum Mechanics, Mind, and Self"
Source: Kolak & Martin - Self and Identity: Contemporary Philosophical Issues
Paper Comment
1990
"Wilkes (Kathleen) - Fugues, Hypnosis, and Multiple Personality"
Source: Wilkes - Real People: Personal Identity Without Thought Experiments, Chapter 4
Sections
- The unity1 and continuity of consciousness – 100
- Fugues and epileptic automatism – 103
- Hypnosis – 106
- Multiple personality: Christine Beauchamp – 109
- How many Miss Beauchamps? – 118
- Unity2; and the Greeks – 12
Paper Comment
Also in "Kolak (Daniel) & Martin (Raymond), Eds. - Self and Identity: Contemporary Philosophical Issues"
Text Colour Conventions (see disclaimer)- Blue: Text by me; © Theo Todman, 2026
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