PERSON, IDENTITY AND DIGNITY.

Please see the announcements for important information

In this class we reflect on the nature of persons. We will focus our attention on the following questions: What, if anything, makes persons different from other things in the world? What makes a person identical with herself over time? and finally Do any moral considerations (questions of value) depend on our status as persons?

The course will provide you with an introduction to philosophical anthropology (philosophy of person). The class consists of 15 lectures divided into three parts. Each part is to satisfy a different objective. Part A provides a historical introduction to the main issues in philosophy of mind. We discuss the standard positions in philosophy of mind (dualism, materialism, idealism, neutralism) as well as the theory of social identity (including Aristotelianism and Marxism).

Part B familiarizes you with some of the main issues in contemporary analytical philosophy of person, as well as with the analytical method of practicing philosophy. We shall discuss the cases such as personal identity after radical organ transplants and teletransportation. We also tackle the question whether computers can think and whether there are any special qualities of first-person perception. The texts are those by Parfit, Turing, Dennett and Nagel. Discussions in this part of the class should have an analytical focus. To this effect students will be divided into tutorial groups in order to help each other understand the arguments in the readings.

Part C is devoted to an important connection between personal identity and one's moral standing. This part involves the texts ranging from Buddhist writings and the Bible, through feminist theory, to normative psychology and back to Ancient and analytical philosophy. This part of the class is particularly conducive to student discussions.

Due to these different objectives different parts of the class have different requirements that may involve different skills. My lectures in Part A (lectures 1-5) are longer than those in the other two parts are. Part A may require additional work of those who do not have the background in philosophy.

In Part B you should concentrate on careful analysis of the readings which may be more difficult than those in parts A and C. Students with high analytical skills may, especially those good in math and scientific theory, may do well in this part of the course.

The readings in Part C are diversified; most of them accept different levels of interpretation.. Discussions will be less guided by the instructor and they will depend more on the interests of a given group of students. Students with strength in the humanities tend to do better in this setting.

Although the class does not require any prior familiarity with philosophy, such familiarity would be helpful, especially during the first part of the class. Before signing in you may read one of the sample texts I prepared for this class. Try to see for yourself whether you are interested in the kinds of problems discussed by philosophy. Those already familiar with philosophy may find this class particularly interesting since I aim at showing the vital connections between personal identity and normative moral psychology. I follow in this respect the work of the late professors Albert Shalom of MacMaster University and Kazimierz Dabrowski of the University of Alberta, my mentors and friends, to whom this class is dedicated.

Dr. Piotr Boltuc, University of Illinois at Springfield, August 1999.