Personal Identity, the Self and Ethics

337 Pages·2007·1.38 MB·English

by  Santiago Sia, Ferdinand Santos

Personal Identity, the Self,
and Ethics
Ferdinand Santos and Santiago Sia
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Personal Identity, the Self, and Ethics
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Also by Santiago Sia
CHARLES HARTSHORNE’S CONCEPT OF GOD
FRAMING A VISION OF THE WORLD
FROM SUFFERING TO GOD
GOD IN PROCESS THOUGHT
PHILOSOPHY IN CONTEXT
PROCESS THEOLOGY AND THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF GOD
RELIGION, REASON AND GOD
Also by Ferdinand Santos
JOURNEY INTO THE HEART OF CHRIST
JOURNEY INTO THE HEART OF LIFE
THE CITY OF GOD AND THE CITY OF MAN
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Personal Identity, the Self,
and Ethics
Ferdinand Santos
and
Santiago Sia
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© Ferdinand Santos & Santiago Sia 2007
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this
publication may be made without written permission.
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save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence
permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90
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Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication
may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as
the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988.
First published 2007 by
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PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave
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ISBN-13: 978–0–230–52203–9 hardback
ISBN-10: 0–230–52203–3 hardback
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully
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processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the
country of origin.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Santos, Ferdinand.
Personal identity, the self, and ethics / by Ferdinand Santos and
Santiago Sia.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0–230–52203–3 (alk. paper)
1. Self (Philosophy) 2. Identity (Philosophical concept) 3. Ethics.
I. Sia, Santiago. II. Title.
BD450.S277 2007
126—dc22 2007023318
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07
Printed and bound in Great Britain by
Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham and Eastbourne
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Contents
List of Abbreviations vi
Prologue vii
Introduction 1
Chapter 1 The Lockean Account of Person and
Personal Identity 17
Chapter 2 Personal Identity and the Unity and Uniqueness
of the Self 46
Chapter 3 Charles Hartshorne’s Critique of the Ontology of
Substance 70
Chapter 4 The Fallacy of Simple Location and the Ontologies
of Substance and Event 91
Chapter 5 Methodological Considerations in
Hartshorne’s Event Ontology 115
Chapter 6 The Structure of an Event as Creative Synthesis 144
Chapter 7 Ethics and the Mnemonic Structure of Persons 169
Chapter 8 The Social Structure of Persons 195
Conclusion 20
Notes 227
Bibliography 296
Index 320
v
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List of Abbreviations
1. Charles Hartshorne’s works
BH Beyond Humanism: Essays in the Philosophy of Nature
CAP Creativity in American Philosophy
CSPM Creative Synthesis and Philosophic Method
DR The Divine Relativity: A Social Conception of God
IO Insights and Oversights of Great Thinkers
LP The Logic of Perfection
MVG Man’s Vision of God and the Logic of Theism
NT A Natural Theology for Our Time
OO Omnipotence and Other Theological Mistakes
PPS The Philosophy and Psychology of Sensation
PSG Philosophers Speak of God
RSP Reality as Social Process: Studies in Metaphysics and Religion
WM Wisdom as Moderation: A Philosophy of the Middle Way
WMW Whitehead and the Modern World
ZF The Zero Fallacy and Other Essays in Neoclassical Philosophy
2. Alfred North Whitehead’s works
AI Adventures of Ideas
MT Modes of Thought
PR Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology
SMW Science and the Modern World
PNK An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Natural Knowledge
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Prologue
Much of present-day literature upon this subject is
based upon notions which, within the last hundred years,
have been completely discarded. The notion of the fixity of
species and genera, and the notion of the unqualified def-
initeness of their distinction from each other, dominate
the literary traditions of Philosophy, Religion, and Science.
Today, these presuppositions of fixity and distinction have
explicitly vanished: but in fact they dominate learned lit-
erature. Learning preserves the errors of the past, as well as
its wisdom.
Each single example of personal identity is a special
mode of coordination of the ideal world into a limited role
of effectiveness. This maintenance of character is the way
in which the finitude of the actual world embraces the
infinitude of possibility. In each personality, the large
infinitude of possibility is recessive and ineffective; but a
perspective of ideal existence enters into the finite actual-
ity. Also this entrance is more or less; there are grades of
dominance and grades of recessiveness. The pattern of
such grades and the ideal entities which they involve, con-
stitute the character of that persistent fact of personal exis-
tence in the World of Activity. The essential coordination
of values dominates the essential differentiation of facts.
Alfred North Whitehead on Personal Identity;
“Immortality,” in The Philosophy of
Alfred North Whitehead
I have sometimes sat looking at a comrade, speculating
on this mysterious isolation of self from self. Why are we
so made that I gaze and see of thee only thy Wall, and
never Thee? … How would it seem if my mind could but
once be within thine; and we could meet and without bar-
rier be with each other? And then it has fallen upon me
like a shock – as when one thinking himself alone has felt
a presence – But I am in thy soul. These things around me
are in thy experience. They are thy own; when I touch
them and move them I change thee. When I look on
them I see what thou seest; when I listen, I hear what
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viii Prologue
thou hearest. I am in the great Room of thy soul; and I
experience thy very experience. For where art thou? Not
there, behind those eyes, within that head, in darkness,
fraternizing with chemical processes. Of these, in my own
case, I know nothing, and will know nothing; but my exis-
tence is spent not behind my Wall, but in front of it. I am
there, where I have treasures. And there art thou, also … I
can imagine no contact more real and thrilling than this;
that we should meet and share identity, not through inef-
fable inner depths (alone), but here through the fore-
grounds of common experience.
William Ernest Hocking on the Self and the Other
in The Meaning of God in Human Experience
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Introduction
The questions and the context
What does it mean to be “oneself” or to be “the same” person? What does
being a “person” or a “self” mean? What is “personal identity”? How do
these notions relate to ethics? Many, influenced by the postmodernist talk
of “the fall of the self,” have sought to show that these questions are unan-
swerable and even irrelevant. There is a trend to convince us that since there
is no self in reality, despite the claims in much of traditional philosophy, we
should disregard all talk connected with this illusion and devote our atten-
tion elsewhere.
This work takes a different stand. It seeks to address these questions in
order to maintain their continued importance in philosophy and in other
disciplines. In fact, in the recent issue of The Economist, the question “Who
do you think you are?” is given extensive coverage, and the articles dealing
with the question attest to the increasing and widening need to examine it
closely.1 Identifying some of the problems which have been brought about
by the traditional answers, this book provides another conception of per-
son, personal identity, and the self. More specifically, it is an investigation
into the approach that process philosophy brings into the discussion. Our
goal, therefore, is to develop a philosophical anthropology based on
process philosophy, in particular as set out by Charles Hartshorne.2 Since
process philosophy at its core is a metaphysical system, this work is also a
metaphysical inquiry. Again, it should be noted that metaphysical thinking
as developed here is not to be aligned with traditional metaphysics, which
has been subjected to much justified criticism. Metaphysics as pursued in
process philosophy is quite distinctive.
Process metaphysics purports to be existential, i.e., it holds that its theo-
retical constructions are grounded in human experience, which it takes as
the starting point as well as the yardstick of its general view of reality. As
human experience is the point of departure for Hartshorne’s metaphysical
speculation, it is in human experience that our discussion must find its first
1