This essay continues Kafka’s tale of a human being who metamorphoses into a beetle. The tale is developed in the light of some recent theory about personal identity and rational choice, particularly Robert Nozick’s Closest-Continuer theory and Mark Johnston’s Relativism about the self. These are potentially complementary conceptions of relativity about the self, Nozick’s focusing on the individual’s ‘metric’ as a criterion of personal continuity, Johnston’s on social standards. When the individually authentic determination about ‘closeness’ coincides with the community’s standards (...) for continuity, the two accounts are complementary. The tale concludes with reference to applying the concept of personal identity for branching selves in the Many-Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics. Application of the concept of personal identity in an MWI context implies that there is a bad end in store for us all, as David Lewis argued in his last essay. (shrink)
A decision value alternative is proposed to the various formulations of the principle of utility, which counsel maimization of expected utility as utility is variously conceived. Decision value factors expected utility into causal expected utility and evidential expected utility, and it adds a third factor --- symbolic utility. This latter introduces deontological and a ‘perceived value’ elements into calculations of utility. It also suggests a solution to a lingering problem in population ethics, the so-called Repugnant Conclusion that consequentialist thinking demands (...) a vast population of people leading lives barely worth living. (shrink)
James's moral theory, primarily as set out in ?The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life? (in his The Will To Believe (1897)), is presented here as having a two-level structure, an empirical or historical level where progress toward greater moral inclusiveness is central, and a metaphysical or end-of-history level?James's ?kingdom of heaven??characterised by universal agreement on moral content that is likely to be pluralistic, including deontological elements in a broadly consequentialist endeavour to attain the greatest good, by the lights of (...) a variety of moral ideals. This consequentialism of ideals is significantly different from a straightforward consequentialism that aims to satisfy preferences. The pluralism of moral content is mirrored in the pluralism he suggests at the end of The Varieties of Religious Experience about gods. The various theisms will eventually make accommodations to each other in a greater whole, as a Science of Religion matures. The pluralistic pattern in ethics and religion gains strength from an analogy with pluralism in science. (shrink)
A rational reconstruction of James's doctrine of pure experience is attempted, showing how it can be formulated in terms of a Ramsey sentence so that its credibility is comparable to contemporary functionalism about the mind. Whereas functionalism treats only mental predicates as theoretical terms and quantifies over physical objects, Jamesian 'global-functionalism' treats both mental and physical predicates as theoretical terms and quantifies over pure experience. Rehabilitated in this way, the doctrine of pure experience is a fit partner for Jamesian <span (...) class='Hi'>pragmatism</span>. When James says that <span class='Hi'>pragmatism</span> guides us in the course of our experience, this 'experience' must be understood as ultimately pure experience. Pure experience is just what appears , pre-conceptually, and Ramsey-sentence analysis shows how James's employment of the pre-conceptual demonstrative that can refer to pure experience with conditions of identity given by its physical or mental properties, while being itself 'colourless', neither mental nor physical. It is concluded that functionalists about the mind have reason to be global-functionalists about mind and body, in just the way that James's doctrine of pure experience lays out; and Jamesian pragmatists should also accept his radical empiricism. (shrink)
