Over his philosophical career, David Wiggins has produced a body of work that, though varied and wide-ranging, stands as a coherent and carefully integrated whole. Its parts cannot be studied in isolation, and a central aim of this thesis is to examine how three vital elements of his systematic metaphysics interconnect: his conceptualist-realism, his sortal theory ‘D’, and his account of personal identity – his human being theory. Yet critics murder to dissect, and Wiggins’ project is often unfairly decomposed into its parts. Thus, this study aims both to introduce his thoughts without neglecting the relations between them, and to rectify the various misinterpretations of them by – among others – Paul Snowdon, Eric Olson and Lynne Rudder Baker. In clarifying and exploring these connections another sunken, yet central, vein is revealed. It is argued that Wiggins’ metaphysics bears on, and is borne upon, by various discussions in the philosophy of biology. This is a connection that he himself adverts to, but which commentators have rarely investigated. Attending to it, one finds in his analyses of natural substances a novel form of biological anti-reductionism, which stands as a productive alternative to emergentism. Closer attention to his construal of substances – specifically organisms – also reveals a worry. At the core of Wiggins’ account of personal identity is the consilience he sees between the concept of a person and the concept of a natural substance (a human being). It is argued below that organ transplantation disturbs the Aristotelian distinction between natural substance and biological artefact, and thus tests the heart-string of his human being theory.

We are, it seems, able to know a wide range of our own thoughts, beliefs, desires and emotions in a special immediate, authoritative way in which we are not able to know the mental states of others, nor indeed a certain range of our own such states. How is this possible What is this special way we have of knowing a certain class of our own mental states What, in fact, is the class of states of which we are able to have such knowledge, and, what is it about this class that enables us to know them in such a distinctive, authoritative way The broad aim of this thesis is to bring out, in answering these questions, an important point of intersection between issues about world-directed consciousness, self-consciousness and introspective self-knowledge. More specifically, starting from the problem of authoritative self-knowledge, the aim of the thesis is threefold: to motivate, to articulate, and to expand upon a particular Sartrian solution to this problem, based on a view of our world-directed conscious states as being in some sense at the same time states of implicit or 'pre- reflective' self-consciousness. In accordance with this threefold aim, the thesis divides into three parts as follows: Part I begins with the problem of authoritative self-knowledge and the standard solutions on offer in the literature: inferential models, perceptual models, and constitutive accounts. It then suggests how a close examination of the shortcomings of these standard approaches ultimately points towards a solution along the above Sartrian lines, ie. based on an understanding of first-order consciousness as involving already itself an implicit form of self-consciousness. Part II then focuses more narrowly on this notion of implicit self- consciousness, proceeding (a) to distinguish it first from other similar-sounding notions in the literature (ie. notions of 'non-conceptual' self-consciousness, higher- order-thought conceptions of consciousness, and constitutive accounts of self- knowledge), moving on then (b) to show how the notion introduced here, contra these others, can indeed provide the basis for a solution to the initial problem of introspective self-knowledge meeting all the desiderata on a successful such theory. Finally, Part III takes on the more concrete issue of how such a form of implicit self-consciousness might, in practice, be seen to be involved in our two main categories of world-directed states, ie. in our cognitive states on the one hand (thoughts, beliefs, perceptual experiences), and in our emotions on the other (desires, fears, hopes, etc). This section of the thesis goes beyond mere concerns about the relation between an implicit form of self-consciousness and the problem of self- knowledge, drawing on both other parts of the philosophical literature and on various parts of the current psychological literature, to make not only more concrete sense of the view of world-directed consciousness here advocated, but to thereby show it to be also plausible independently from the theoretical considerations about self-knowledge initially driving it in this thesis.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

This dissertation explores concepts of the self in the ninth century, specifically in the Carolingian Empire. This work begins with a review of scholarship on the medieval self. Much scholarship on this concept has tended to focus on the twelfth century. As I hope to demonstrate, however, ninth-century writers were just as interested in their own constructions of the self. Ninth-century treatments of the self were unique and thus offer us a great deal of insight into the mentalities of the time. I also examine the ninthcentury vocabulary of the self, focusing on the language inherited from patristic and early medieval writers, especially Gregory the Great, and the way in which this vocabulary was adapted by Carolingian writers. Throughout the body of the dissertation, I focus on two main bodies of texts: ninthcentury uses of Augustine's De Trinitate and the ninth-century baptismal expositions recently edited by Susan Keefe. Both sets of texts illustrate the ways in which the moral self was both defined and shaped in the ninth century. The treatments of De Trinitate were mainly concerned with the monastic self, while the baptismal expositions allow us a glimpse of the way in which churchmen perceived the lay self. I conclude by briefly looking ahead to the middle of the ninth century and the controversies surrounding Gottschalk. The question of the moral self was at the centre of these debates, and this thus demonstrates the importance of the concept of the self to the ninth century. I have included as an appendix my translation of sections of the baptismal expositions.

No description available.

The main issue of this thesis is to analyse what kind of concept we have of 'personal identity.' The concept of personal identity is basically examined in relation to memory in this thesis. , Recalling memory is supposed to make an intelligible account between experiences. It gives meaning to what is remembered in accordance with the context of that person's life. This work is compared to a narrative understanding of memory. Ile unity of a person over time, which relates to the unity of personal identity, assumed to be formed through making this narrative account (Chapter one and the first half of Chapter two). However, there arises the question of whether all of our experiences can be managed by the narrative account. Two issues are examined at this point: The insufficiency of that narrative approach (die latter half of Chapter two) and the historical transformation of tile concept of personal identity (Chapter three). The transformation is specifically studied with influences of the media through time. The particularities of tile modem period of time are specifically considered as the age from which the study of personal identity has developed. Today, however, the credibility of the modem concept of personal identity seems to be in doubt. This doubt is summarised in the term 'postmodem'. The characteristics of and the discontinuity between the modem and the postmodern are described in Chapter four. Finally Chapter five investigates the particularities of the concept of identity in the postmodern age I conclude that the modem concept of personal identity has been effective in organising society, but it has arrived during a time at which its boundary needs to be reconsidered. Differences of a person, which are not identified within the narrative consistency of a life, are a key-term in this thought.