Online research in philosophy

Introduction -- John Locke and the problem of personal identity : the principium individuationis, personal immortality, and bodily resurrection -- On separation and immortality : Descartes and the nature of the soul -- On materialism and immortality or Hobbes' rejection of the natural argument for the immortality of the soul -- Henry More and John Locke on the dangers of materialism : immateriality, immortality, immorality, and identity -- Robert Boyle : on seeds, cannibalism, and the resurrection of the body -- Locke's theory of personal identity in its context : a reassessment of classic objections.

himself or a proper object of his egoistic self-concern. Hazlitt concluded that belief in personal identity must be an acquired imaginary conception and that since in reality each of us is no more related to his or her future self than to the future self of any other person none of us is 2 ‘.

1. In the Essay, Locke’s most controversial claim, which he slipped into Book IV almost as an aside, was that matter might think (Locke1975:IV.iii.6;540-1).i Either because he was genuinely pious, which he was, or because he was clever, which he also was, he tied the denial that matter might think to the claim that God’s powers are limited, thus, attempting to disarm his critics. It did not work. Stillingfleet and others were outraged. If matter can think, then for explanatory purposes the immaterial soul might be dispensable. But throughout the eighteenth century explanatory purposes were at the top of the agenda. And what had always made the soul so handy for proving immortality - that it is non-composite, static, and inaccessible to empirical examination - is also what made it so useless for investigating human nature. By contrast, consciousness is multifaceted, dynamic, and open to empirical investigation. Early in the century a Clarke might take the high road and resist descent into the merely probable and contingent. But when it came to investigating persons, the emerging science of human nature was the only game in town. One either played it or took oneself out of the action.

These are the very scholars that were involved in initiating the revolution in personal identity theory.

I will trace the history of western conceptions of soul and self from the ancient Greeks to the present. The story line that I will present is based mainly on material covered in two books by Ray Martin and myself: _The Naturalization of the Soul: Self and Personal Identity in the_.

This is a review of Raymond Martin and John Barresi's The Rise and Fall of Soul and Self: An Intellectual History of Personal Identity (Columbia University Press, 2006).

It fills an important gap in intellectual history by being the first book to emphasize the enormous intellectual transformation in the eighteenth century, when...

Naturalization of the Soul charts the development of the concept of soul in western thought, from Plato to the present. The authors place particular emphasis on the eighteenth century which witnessed an enormous intellectual transformation in the way theorists perceived self and personal identity and paved the way for contemporary philosophical and psychological debates.