The Bounds of Agency

by Rovane, Carol A.

• ISBN13: 9780691017167
• ISBN10: 0691017166
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1998-01-01
• Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr

Summary

The subject of personal identity is one of the most central and most contested and exciting in philosophy. Ever since Locke, psychological and bodily criteria have vied with one another in conflicting accounts of personal identity. Carol Rovane argues that, as things stand, the debate is unresolvable since both sides hold coherent positions that our common sense will embrace. Our very common sense, she maintains, is conflicted; so any resolution to the debate is bound to be revisionary. She boldly offers such a revisionary theory of personal identity by first inquiring into the nature of persons.Rovane begins with a premise about the distinctive ethical nature of persons to which all substantive ethical doctrines, ranging from Kantian to egoist, can subscribe. From this starting point, she derives two startling metaphysical possibilities: there could be group persons composed of many human beings and multiple persons within a single human being. Her conclusion supports Locke's distinction between persons and human beings, but on altogether new grounds. These grounds lie in her radically normative analysis of the condition of personal identity, as the condition in which a certain normative commitment arises, namely, the commitment to achieve overall rational unity within a rational point of view. It is by virtue of this normative commitment that individual agents can engage one another specifically as persons, and possess the distinctive ethical status of persons.

Table of Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS	ix
PART I: LESSONS FROM LOCKE	3	(124)
Introduction to Part I	3	(10)
CHAPTER ONE Preview of the Normative Analysis of Personal Identity	13	(22)
1. Locke's Analysis	13	(6)
2. Rational Points of View	19	(7)
3. The Explanatory Goal of the Normative Analysis	26	(3)
4. Meeting the Explanatory Goal	29	(3)
5. A Final Comparison with Locke	32	(3)
CHAPTER TWO On the Need for Revision	35	(30)
1. What the Lockean Thought Experiments Really Show	40	(5)
2. The Conflict Is Not Merely Apparent	45	(4)
3. Neither Side of the Conflict Is Incoherent	49	(10)
4. Seeking Positive Reasons to Embrace One Side of the Conflict	59	(6)
CHAPTER THREE A Revisionary Proposal	65	(62)
1. What Are Agency-Regarding Relations?	74	(25)
2. The Ethical Criterion Meets All Three Constraints	99	(28)
PART II: PERSONAL IDENTITY: THE BODY PRACTIC	127	(118)
Introduction to Part II	127	(9)
CHAPTER FOUR A Sufficient Condition for Personal Identity	136	(31)
1. The Case for Group Persons	137	(5)
2. Intra- and Interpersonal Relations	142	(18)
3. The Normative Analysis of Personal Identity: A First Full Statement	160	(7)
CHAPTER FIVE The Sufficient Condition Is Also Necessary	167	(42)
1. A Rational Reconstruction of Multiple Personality Disorder	169	(10)
2. Justifying the Commitment to Overall Rational Unity	179	(4)
3. Some Remaining Metaphysical Issues	183	(26)
CHAPTER SIX The First Person	209	(36)
1. The Distinctive Features of the First Person	211	(21)
2. Self-Oriented Ethical Relations	232	(13)
POSTSCRIPT	245	(6)
BIBLIOGRAPHY	251	(4)
INDEX	255