Philosophy 224

1. Philosophy 224 A Failure of Recognition Pt. 1

2. Reading Quiz • True or False: Leibniz’s spokesperson, THEO(philus) argues for a distinction between physical and moral identity.

3. The Development of Modernity • One way of looking at the development of modern philosophy is to consider it a long and extended conversation. • The intellectual world was much smaller then than it is now, and the luminaries of that world were aware of each other’s work and were in contact with each other about their writings and ideas. • The issues that figures like Descartes and Locke raised were just the opening moments of a substantial debate and development.

4. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) • Leibniz was one of the great philosophers of the modern era. • He was in the full sense of the word, a polymath. He made substantial contributions to a wide range of fields, including philosophy, mathematics, physics, geology, and jurisprudence. • Denis Diderot, himself no slouch, said, ““When one compares the talents one has with those of a Leibniz, one is tempted to throw away one's books and go die quietly in the dark of some forgotten corner.”

5. Epistolary Genius • As was true of most of the figures of the modern era, Leibniz was in constant contact and communication with the other intellectuals of the day. • For Leibniz, this contact in the form of a voluminous correspondence is of particular significance. • He wrote extensively, but not always systematically, and his letter are an important source for understanding his doctrines.

6. The New Essays • One of more extended pieces of writing that he did publish during his life took the form of a response to Locke’s Essays on the Human Understanding. • Entitled the New Essays on the Human Understanding, they amount to a repudiation of Locke’s empiricism, both in broad strokes and in many particulars. • Much of the book takes the form of a dialogue between a stand-in for Locke (Philalethes) and a representative of Leibniz’s position (Theophilus).

7. Leibniz and the Tradition • In contrast to Locke, Leibniz is a rationalist philosopher which means that he is committed to the position that a substantial portion of our knowledge and concepts arise from our rational natures and that we know and have these concepts through a process of intellectual intuition. • As he also makes clear in the Preface, he makes explicit appeal to the both Plato and Aristotle (though in different ways and areas) to underwrite his position.

8. The Issue: Identity • In the section of the New Essays we are looking at, the position of Locke’s that Leibniz is discussing is his account of personal identity. • Notable claims that Leibniz is relying on include: • Aristotle’s insistence on the unity of body and soul. • The conclusion that change of state in souls is from more or less sensible (perfect) and that this change is continuous. • Rational souls maintain their “persona” after death (98c1-2).

9. The Issue is Joined • When we take up the dialogue, the interlocutors are summing up the points where they agree. • This agreement includes the insistence that personal identity is linked to the soul. • Another is that there is a complicated relationship between the soul and the body. • A third is a rejection of the theory of the transmigration of souls.

10. Leibniz on Transmigration • Leibniz’s rejection of transmigration is tied to his doctrine of substantial form. • Key to this doctrine is the claim that, “…a single individual substance can retain its identity only by preservation of the same soul…” (99c1). • The body cannot serve as the principle for reasons similar to those articulated by Locke (the body is in flux). • Leibniz differs from Locke in insisting on the persistence of they unity of body and soul, “…instead of transmigration…there is reshaping, infolding, unfolding and flowing, in the soul’s body” (Ibid).

11. A First Dispute • Leibniz’s insistence on the identity of body and soul marks a first point of substantial disagreement with Locke. • Locke’s position is that identity is constituted by persistent self-awareness, maintained in memory, which as Leibniz indicates, seems to require that Locke be committed to the position that if our awareness and memories could be translated into non-human form, we would still be the same person (though no longer human). • Leibniz’s insistence on the persistent union of body and soul requires him to deny this (though he affirms that non-human rationality is possible, 100c1).

12. Physical vs. Moral Identity • Leibniz next uses his agreement with Locke on the importance of conscious self-awareness to personal identity to advance a distinction that Locke doesn’t articulate between the physical identity that incessancy establishes and the moral identity that which is a unique characteristic of human personhood. • “To discover one’s moral identity unaided, it is sufficient that between one state and a neighboring…one there be a mediating bond of consciousness” (101c1).

13. A Second Dispute • The principle of moral identity is the basis for another disagreement with Locke. • With regard to the problem of amnesia, Leibniz insists that the same moral person exists, even in the complete absence of psychological continuity. • In connection to this observation, Leibniz goes a step further and argues for the importance of intersubjective verification for establishing personal identity (101c2).

14. The Role of Other People • Understanding the significance of the confirmation of intersubjective witnesses requires returning to the distinction between real/physical identity and moral identity. • The first is a matter of the fact of psychological continuity; the latter requires awareness of that continuity. • A person with amnesia has the fact of continuity without the awareness. Other people can help restore that awareness to her.

15. David Hume (1711-1776) • Hume is arguably the most important philosopher to write in English. • Like his fellow moderns, Hume did not confine himself to philosophy but wrote influentially on a wide range of topics. • Though Hume was widely recognized as a prodigious intellect, his views were extremely controversial. Though he held a number of public positions, he was never able to secure an academic position.

16. Hume’s Empiricism • Hume distinguishes two types of mental contents (perceptions), distinguished by their different degrees of force and vivacity. Our “more feeble” perceptions, ideas, are ultimately derived/copied from our livelier impressions, which have their source in either sensation or reflection. • This view has some immediate implications for theories of personal identity like those offered by Leibniz and Locke.

17. Self-consciousness • We see this implications immediately when we turn to our selection from Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature. • According to Hume’s theory, any idea of the self must have it’s origin in a corresponding impression, “But self or person is not any one impression, but that to which our several impressions and ideas are supposed to have a reference” (109c1). • As a result, we are forced to conclude that the idea of the self or person is a fiction.

18. What are we? • Reflection reveals nothing more than the flux of perceptions, one succeeding the other without any apparent external organizing principle. • Hume, and the rest of us, are, “…nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with…rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement” (110c1).

19. Self-Identity? • Yet, Hume acknowledge, we do have a strong inclination to take this succession as self-identical. • Hume’s defense of his position, and his account of this inclination, begin with a distinction between identity of perceptions and identity of self-concern. • It’s the first of these that accounts for the inclination in question.

20. Like the Table? • Hume goes on to argue that our sense of the identity of our perceptions is analogous to the sense of identity we have of an object in the world. • He then points to the proximity between this experience of identity (essentially persistence through time) and the experience of a succession of related objects, arguing that we commonly conflate the two experiences, and this conflation is at the root of our sense of self-identity (110c2).

21. Cashing it out • “The whole of this doctrine leads us to a conclusion, which is of great importance in the present affair, viz. That all the nice and subtle questions concerning personal identity can never possibly be decided, and are to be regarded rather as grammatical than as philosophical difficulties. Identity depends on the relations of ideas; and these relations produce identity, by means of that easy transition they occasion” (114c2).