invitation to a philosophy talk - date correction 14. February

The Philosophy Department cordially invites you to a talk by Dmitriy Vinnik (SEP fellow, CEU Philosophy Department, Institiute of Philosophy and Law,Russian Academy of Science) on "The criteria of personal identity in property dualism framework" Wednesday, 14. February,, 5.00 PM , Philosophy Department Zrinyi str. 14 /room 412 Abstract: Due to the nonreductionist form of property dualistic conceptions we can not reduce the problem of personal identity only to the relevance of usage of one type of criteria (physical or psychological). It is plausible that brain and memory criteria are necessary but not enough to solve the problem of personal identity. Such objections against the relevance of these criteria known as “reduplication argument” and “circularity objection” (relatively) are serious and can’t be ignored. An attempts to defend brain and memory criteria in a simple form are being described. These attempts known as “simple view” and “quasi-memory” conception. Simple view is a contemporary form of classical metaphysical conception of nonobservable mental ego. A great number of contemporary dualistic conceptions implies this point of view or contain it unobviously. This conception is irrelevant for predicate or conceptual dualism but seems plausible for property dualism, double-aspect theory and neutral monism. Despite to the contemporary character of this argumentation this kind of standpoint may be found out in cartesian and kantians philosophy. The notion of quasi-memory was suggested as rather sophisticated attempt to solve the pure logical, not essential mind-body problem. This problem derives from the Hume’s notion of mental subject. However even Hume used this notion in some unobvious way because his concept of mental content is transubjective. The analysis of relationships between physical and mental criteria is very topical. This criteria has to be used as a pare in property dualism. By the way in the other forms of nonproductive physicalism one of criteria’s may be successfully excluded. In supervenient theories the physical criteria plays more fundamental role. In functionalism, for example, physical criteria is not necessary at all, since we are acknowledge the conceptual dualistic character of functionalism as a form of the token-identity theory. It is evident that the choice of several criteria depends of ontological premises However the concepts of nonobservable mental subject and transubjective mental content can’t be airily ignored when philosophers try to solve the problem of personal identity and the problem of unity of consciousness. Kriszta Biber Department Coordinator Philosophy Department Tel: 36-1-327-3806 Fax: 36-1-327-3072 E-mail: biberk(a)ceu.hu