PhilosophyMonkeyFranzKafka

  • Subscribe to our RSS feed.
  • Twitter
  • StumbleUpon
  • Reddit
  • Facebook
  • Digg

Wednesday, 29 June 2011

Julian Baggini - What Does It Mean to Be "You"?

Posted on 07:02 by Unknown
The metaphysical question of personal identity is, to my mind, one of the most interesting and important there are in the philosophical literature. An obvious part of its importance has to do with the fact that many other philosophical, psychological, social and ethical issues depend on the answer to the question of whether the self exists and what it is.

Consider a thought experiment formulated by Leibniz: suppose you have the option to choose to have all the riches, talents, fame, good looks and lovers you desire, but on one condition: that you forget absolutely everything about yourself up to that point. Would you do it? If you answer is no, that implies that you think that whatever you are, your conscious experience and memories seem to be a necessary part of being you. So, no memories = no you. The new rich, talented, beautiful person would effectively be someone else. Imagine then a case of assault in which the victim loses all memory. Should this now count as murder?

In the following presentation, Julian Baggini explores the question of the self, whether it exists, whether it's an illusion, and whether we should understand an illusion as something that's not there, or as something that's simply not quite what we normally take it to be, but which is there nevertheless.



And if you want to listen to the whole thing, including an interesting Q&A, you can listen to it here:



For more on this issue, check out the Brainspotting series.

Email ThisBlogThis!Share to XShare to FacebookShare to Pinterest
Posted in audio, David Hume, John Locke, Leibniz, mind, philosophy, TEDTalks | No comments
Newer Post Older Post Home

0 comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

Popular Posts

  • The Punishable Perils of Plagiarism
    As we've seen before (in a case in which a professor discovered a massive collective case of cheating ), academic dishonesty is a seriou...
  • Diane Kelly - What We Didn't Know about Penis Anatomy
    Penises... they're great. In my case, we're best friends. I never leave home without mine. Do you? It may seem pretty obvious what t...
  • Obama and Romney Laugh It Up
    With the upcoming elections, things have been heated up for the past few months. And though not to the same level, both major contenders, as...
  • Sean Carroll - The Case for Naturalism
    If you follow current events in the world of public intellectualism, you probably know that over the past few decades, and increasingly over...
  • Tsumanis 101
    Sometimes when it rains, it pours. Japan has been recently devastated by the accumulation of horrendous circumstances due to the earthquake ...
  • Doodling in Math - Spirals, Fibonacci and Plants - 3
    Ok, so now that you've learned how the beauty and elegance of the golden ratio and Fibonacci sequence are instantiated all over the natu...
  • Stephen Colbert - America Again: Re-Becoming the Greatness We Never Weren't
    Sorry for the sparse presence recently folks, but I've been buried under a mountain of work with the end of the semester. Last night, fo...
  • Daniel Dennett - How to Tell If You're an Atheist
    The human mind is both beautiful and frustrating. We have minds that can contemplate the meaning of infinity and consciousness, on the one h...
  • Super Monkey Collider Loses Funding
    Though the longitudinal study on whether multiple stab wounds may be harmful to monkeys is not yet complete, The Onion reports that the ec...
  • Miss USA Contestants on Evolution
    Let's be honest: beauty pageants are about how hot the contestants are. I won't pass judgment on whether this is morally acceptable ...

Categories

  • 3-minute philosophy (11)
  • 60 Second Adventures in Thought (8)
  • Alan Turing (3)
  • All Too Human (1)
  • amazing (6)
  • animals (25)
  • animation (77)
  • anthropology (4)
  • architecture (2)
  • Aristotle (13)
  • art (14)
  • atheism (41)
  • audio (21)
  • autism (2)
  • Ayaan Hirsi Ali (1)
  • Big Brother (4)
  • biography (9)
  • Bishop Berkeley (3)
  • Brainspotting (3)
  • Brian Cox (6)
  • Bryan Magee (1)
  • Carl Sagan (5)
  • Charles Darwin (9)
  • chemistry (6)
  • Christopher Hitchens (6)
  • cognitive science (5)
  • corruption (108)
  • Cosmos (3)
  • creationism (12)
  • Dan Ariely (1)
  • Daniel Dennett (4)
  • David Attenborough (3)
  • David Chalmers (1)
  • David Hume (17)
  • David Sloan Wilson (2)
  • debate (12)
  • Descartes (11)
  • dinosaurs (1)
  • documentary (45)
  • doodling in math (6)
  • E.O. Wilson (2)
  • economics (23)
  • education (43)
  • Einstein (11)
  • Elegant Universe (11)
  • Enemies of Reason (21)
  • environment (19)
  • Epicurus / Lucretius (1)
  • ethics (100)
  • evolution (55)
  • existentialism (13)
  • feminism (13)
  • Flying Spaghetti Monster (2)
  • Founding Fathers (13)
  • free speech (4)
  • free will (7)
  • Freud (1)
  • funny songs (12)
  • Galileo (6)
  • gay stuff (12)
  • geography (9)
  • George Carlin (2)
  • health (35)
  • Hegel (1)
  • Heidegger (1)
  • hilarious (163)
  • history (64)
  • Hobbes (8)
  • Inside Nature's Giants (6)
  • Jane Goodall (1)
  • Jim Al-Khalili (4)
  • John Locke (9)
  • John Searle (4)
  • Jon Stewart (48)
  • jurisprudence (8)
  • Kant (7)
  • Ken Miller (1)
  • Kierkegaard (2)
  • Kurt Vonnegut (1)
  • Large Hadron Collider (7)
  • Leibniz (5)
  • Leonardo da Vinci (1)
  • linguistics (11)
  • literature (25)
  • logic (60)
  • Lord Robert Winston (1)
  • magic (3)
  • Malcolm Gladwell (1)
  • Martin Luther King Jr. (2)
  • Marx (2)
  • Masters of Philosophy (19)
  • math (38)
  • Michael Faraday (2)
  • Michael Sandel (2)
  • Michael Shermer (1)
  • mind (34)
  • Mind control (1)
  • monkeys (8)
  • Monty Python (3)
  • movie (2)
  • music (7)
  • National Geographic (3)
  • Neil DeGrasse Tyson (7)
  • Newton (7)
  • Nietzsche (7)
  • Optical illusion (10)
  • Paradox (8)
  • Penn and Teller (1)
  • personal (5)
  • Peter Millican (10)
  • Peter Singer (7)
  • philosophy (111)
  • Philosophy: A Guide to Happiness (1)
  • physics (39)
  • Plato (7)
  • porn (7)
  • privacy (4)
  • problem of evil (4)
  • psychology (18)
  • public announcement (2)
  • racism (19)
  • religion (115)
  • Richard Dawkins (12)
  • Richard Feynman (7)
  • Ricky Gervais (1)
  • Robert Krulwich (1)
  • RSA Animate (16)
  • Sam Harris (3)
  • sartre (1)
  • science (79)
  • sex (19)
  • SNL (2)
  • Socrates (7)
  • space (32)
  • sports (4)
  • Stephen Colbert (40)
  • Stephen Fry (6)
  • Stephen Hawking (4)
  • Stephen J. Gould (1)
  • Steven Pinker (6)
  • Steven Weinberg (1)
  • technology (20)
  • TEDTalks (50)
  • The Human Sexes (4)
  • The Onion (24)
  • Tim Minchin (4)
  • time (5)
  • time lapse (10)
  • William Lane Craig (3)
  • Wittgenstein (3)

Blog Archive

  • ►  2013 (49)
    • ►  August (1)
    • ►  July (9)
    • ►  June (9)
    • ►  May (8)
    • ►  April (8)
    • ►  March (6)
    • ►  February (3)
    • ►  January (5)
  • ►  2012 (205)
    • ►  December (4)
    • ►  November (7)
    • ►  October (12)
    • ►  September (14)
    • ►  August (15)
    • ►  July (20)
    • ►  June (19)
    • ►  May (27)
    • ►  April (26)
    • ►  March (19)
    • ►  February (22)
    • ►  January (20)
  • ▼  2011 (217)
    • ►  December (19)
    • ►  November (20)
    • ►  October (17)
    • ►  September (19)
    • ►  August (16)
    • ►  July (19)
    • ▼  June (15)
      • John Locke & Bishop Berkeley animation
      • Julian Baggini - What Does It Mean to Be "You"?
      • Miss USA Contestants on Evolution
      • The Awesomest Sentence I Read Today
      • Stuxnet: Anatomy of a Computer Virus
      • 300 Years of Fossil Fuels in 300 Seconds
      • Colbert Takes the Marshmallow Test
      • Go the F**k to Sleep, read by Samuel L. Jackson
      • The Cyclotrope
      • Lecture 4 - Cartesian Dualism & the Mind-Body Problem
      • Figures Palin would claim it was a "Lame-Stream Me...
      • Everything and Nothing - Everything
      • Sarah Palin's History Lesson on Paul Revere
      • Earth Rotating Time Lapse
      • Lecture 4 - Skepticism of the External World
    • ►  May (19)
    • ►  April (16)
    • ►  March (22)
    • ►  February (19)
    • ►  January (16)
  • ►  2010 (29)
    • ►  December (26)
    • ►  November (3)
Powered by Blogger.

About Me

Unknown
View my complete profile