If Hob and Nob both read the same newspaper article claiming that a witch has come into town, then the following sentence can be true, even if the article is fabricated and there are no witches: <ol><li>(1) Hob thinks that a witch has blighted Bob’s mare, and Nob wonders whether she killed Cob’s sow.</li></ol> This phenomenon is called ‘intentional identity’, and there is no consensus on the semantics of (1) or similar sentences. Intentional identity is related to important, unsettled topics in the philosophy of language (e.g., anaphora, dynamic semantics) and in metaphysics (e.g., fictional and Meinongian objects). Thus, a correct semantic account of intentional identity is desirable. In this thesis, I argue that ‘she’ in (1) is behaving semantically like a traditional definite description, and that the truth of sentences like (1) often requires a certain causal connection between the two subjects. In chapter 1, I explain the difficulty in finding a correct semantic ac- count of intentional identity sentences, and I present new evidence that the phenomenon is broader than previously thought. Chapter 2 explores the idea that (1) involves certain exotic objects—e.g., fictional, Meinongian, or merely possible witches. I show that what I call the ‘causal connection problem’ affects most versions of this idea, and that even the best version is probably incorrect. In chapter 3, I argue that ‘she’ in (1) is not being bound dynamically, and that the ‘guise theory’ approach suggested by several dy- namic semanticists is unhelpful. Chapter 4 contains my proposed solution. With a broader view of the problem, one can see that ‘she’ is functioning like a traditional incomplete definite description, and that its complete semantic value involves Hob and Nob being causally connected. This solution allows us to avoid an extravagant semantics and ontology.

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This thesis is concerned to argue for a metaphysical approach to notions of personhood in contradistinction to the alternative positivist approach and this by way of a deployment of the as yet vastly under utilised resources found in the Central European metaphysical tradition. This thesis is organized into three parts. Firstly, it describes the notion of personhood that is drawn from the positivism of the British analytic tradition which can be demonstrated not to have fulfilled the criteria required for an anthropology that accepts a concept of a finite self. The positivist notion of the self is seen to be reductionist, determinist and ultimately nihilistic in its apprehension of human freedom, dignity, and value. Secondly, it canvasses an alternative and specifically metaphysical anthropology found in the Western philosophical tradition as a challenge to this positivist anthropology in German modernism and idealist developments in American personalism. It examines the personalism inherent in the faith-philosophers of the post-Enlightenment and also in Schelling, Schleiermacher and Dilthey. Symbolism and story found in supernatural fiction relating to Fries and Otto’s phenomenology of religion emphasize the significance of the philosophy of the imagination in restoring the metaphysical tradition. Further investigation of phenomenology of the self in Husseri and Scheler unveils a neglected Christian personalism which is traced further in later continental modernists. Thirdly, Polish personalism, typified by its 19th Century instantiation of messianism, significantly demonstrates the profundity and diversity of this neglected tradition. The personalist metaphysics of Mickiewicz and Cieszkowski, together with its Russian and French counterparts represents an ongoing development within metaphysical anthropology which is still to achieve its apogee. This tradition maintains a foundational faith in the imago Dei quite antipathetic to its positivist competitor. The originality of the thesis, resides in a treatment of this system of ideas – little examined in the West.

In 'Oneself as another' Paul Ricoeur considers the nature of selfhood concluding that it can only be understood as polyvalent. He uses narrative identity to show that because selves both “act and suffer” human identity is intimately tied with encounter with the Other. The ethical dimension is explored in a mediation between Aristotelian teleological ethics and Kantian deontological morality, resulting in phronēsis or practical wisdom. The book ends with a number of aporias, including the problem of identifying the internal voice, heard in the conscience – the voice of attestation. In a related paper, which provided the impetus for this thesis - “The self in the mirror of the Scriptures” - Ricoeur considers the issues of identity from a religious perspective. The thesis critically reviews the development of Ricoeur’s thought, moving from philosophy through hermeneutics to ethics, and its implications for theology, moving from questions of the will, to biblical hermeneutics and Christian ethics. It questions the concept of narrative identity and is particularly concerned with the place of the incompetent narrator in community. It concludes that we must take seriously Ricoeur’s insistence that biblical faith adds nothing to the consideration of what is good or obligatory, but belongs to an economy of the gift in which love is tied to the naming of God. However, to consider what this might mean in pastoral and ethical terms for those who understand themselves as summoned selves, and seek to find their image in the mirror of scripture, the thesis concludes with extended exercise in biblical hermeneutics, drawing on Ricoeur’s consideration of genre as a poetic mode. The thesis suggests that the comic parables help us to hope for more than we experience in our frailty, while the tragic parables illuminate our incapacity and enable us to forgive others their failure.

The philosophical tradition has long understood subjectivity solely in reference to the self's place within the world and the powers of intentional transcendence which open it. Nowhere is this presupposition more apparent than in the thought of Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, and Merleau-Ponty. Despite the precise differences among their respective philosophies of transcendence, each understands the self as little else than that which opens the exteriority of a world and is thereby exhausted and determined by it. Against this prevailing assumption that the self is a 'being-in-the-world', I contend that the essence of subjectivity instead consists in the unworldly interiority of life's affective self-revelation. The studies that follow accordingly investigate five related aspects of subjectivity: the irreducibility of the self's individuality to society; the blow of vanity that reveals this inwardness; the resultant life that marshals and in turn deploys it; the power of the work of art to express it; and finally the promise of immortality that sustains it.

It is my intention in this thesis to demonstrate that there exists a clear and explicit formal relationship between the seemingly exclusive descriptions of spatio-temporal and purely temporal continuity, and further, that this relationship manifests itself within our most fundamental understanding of the physical world itself, namely; within our understanding of the identity, diversity and re-identification of material bodies (Book 1). It may therefore be claimed that behind that cultural understanding which leads us to imagine that the physical world is located in both space and time, whereas our thoughts and feelings are located in time alone, there lies a formal logical framework, or an explicit formal description of how being in space and time relates to being in time alone - leading us to wonder, perhaps, whether these two things are really as distinct as we might at first imagine. That I should then go on (albeit without a formal methodology) to apply to this analysis a philosophical interpretation of Bergson's conception of the relationship between the intuition and the intellect (Book 2) is of lesser importance - indicating as it does little more than my own philosophical inclinations. However, something will be gained, I hope, from this further exercise. Along the way it will allow me to clarify a number of technical points of which the general philosopher may be unaware; for example the unobservable nature of numerical identity and re-identification, the importance of the principle of special relativity to the topic of mind and the technical difficulties of claiming that mental events are 'in time' at all. Notwithstanding these latter points, however, the intentions of this work are predominantly analytical and are adequately described as an attempt to consolidate spatio-temporal and purely temporal description under a unified logical framework.

The notion that we are essentially conscious beings has a good deal of intuitive appeal, but also gives rise to a number of philosophical problems. As a result of its appeal, and in conjunction with a growing dissatisfaction with reductive accounts of consciousness, a number of experiential accounts of personal identity have been introduced into the relatively recent literature. These accounts offer various analyses of the relationship between consciousness and selfhood in an attempt to overcome the problems faced by adopting such a position. I argue that a correct appreciation of the nature of inner awareness, and experience more generally, entails that the experiential approach is indeed justifiable. Specifically, I argue that the relationship between an experience and its subject necessitates the view that selves are constituted by episodes of consciousness. I then evaluate a number of theories of temporal consciousness and argue that the most promising kind of account has implications concerning our persistence conditions. Subsequently, I argue for a radical account of our nature by defending the resulting ontological claim: selves are streams of consciousness.

by Christian Schaack, Richard C. Larson. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 21).

This thesis examines some of the contested meanings of what it is to be a self, person and individual. The law of obligations sets the context for this examination. One of the important aspects of contemporary feminist philosophy has been its move beyond highlighting inconsistencies in political and legal theory, in which theoretical frameworks can be shown to rely upon an ambiguous treatment of women. The feminist theorists whose work is considered use these theoretical weaknesses as a point of departure to propose different conceptual frameworks. I start by analysing contemporary work on the self from within both philosophy of science and feminist metaphysics to draw out common approaches from these diverse positions. These themes are then discussed in the context of the law. I then critically examine the concept of legal personhood in the work of Drucilla Cornell and her proposals for the amendment of tort law. This is juxtaposed with an analysis of the practical operation of tort law by adapting François Ewald's work on risk and insurance to English law. I concentrate on women's ambiguous position with regard to both risk and to the image of the individual that is the subject of Ewald's critique. This is followed by an examination of the changing position of women with regard to 'possessive individualism', 'self-ownership' or 'property in the person' in relation to contract law and social contract theory. There are a number of different social contracts discussed in the thesis: Cornell's reworking of John Rawls and the stories of Thomas Hobbes and of Carole Pateman. The final 'social contract' to be discussed is that of 'new contractualism', the employment of contract as a technique of government. I argue that Pateman's critique of possessive individualism continues to be relevant at a time when the breadwinner/housewife model has broken down.