I Am a Lot of Things: A Pluralistic Account of the Self

Metaphysica 15 (1) (2014)
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Abstract

When I say that I am a lot of things, I mean it literally and metaphysically speaking. The Self, or so I shall argue, is a plurality (notwithstanding the fact that ordinary language takes "the Self" to be a singular term – but, after all, language is only language). It is not a substance or a substratum, and it is not a collection or a bundle. The view I wish to advocate for is a kind of reductionism, in line with some – but not all – broadly Humean ideas. In short, I will defend the view there are the experiences and mental states we have, and that's it: no additional substances, and no bundles. This does not mean, however, that there is no Self – the Self simply is the experiences. I will try to articulate and defend this view by showing that it can accommodate what I take to be the three main desiderata for any theory of the Self to satisfy: first, that the Self is the subject of experience (a subject of mental states, in general); second, that there is a unity to the Self in the sense that our (conscious, phenomenal) experience is at least partly continuous or 'stream-like'; and third, that we do not die when we go to sleep or when we otherwise don't have any (conscious, phenomenal) experiences.

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Jiri Benovsky
University of Fribourg

Citations of this work

The No Self View and the Meaning of Life.Baptiste Le Bihan - 2019 - Philosophy East and West 69 (2):419-438.
Dual‐Aspect Monism.Jiri Benovsky - 2015 - Philosophical Investigations 39 (4):335-352.
Immaterialist solutions to puzzles in personal ontology.Kristin Seemuth Whaley - 2017 - Dissertation, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

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References found in this work

Reasons and Persons.Derek Parfit - 1984 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press.
A World of States of Affairs.D. M. Armstrong - 1997 - New York: Cambridge University Press.
Material beings.Peter Van Inwagen - 1990 - Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man.Thomas Reid - 1785 - University Park, Pa.: Cambridge University Press. Edited by Derek R. Brookes & Knud Haakonssen.
Reasons and Persons.Joseph Margolis - 1986 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 47 (2):311-327.

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