The current state of the personal ontology debate can be summarized as a disagreement between two roughly distinct camps. First, there are those philosophers who argue that personal identity consists of psychological continuity. According to the psychological continuity theorist, ones identity over time is traced by following a series of memories, beliefs, desires, or intentions. Opposed to psychological continuity theories are those who argue that personal identity consists of biological continuity. So-called animalists suggest that our identity corresponds to that of a human organism, a member of the species Homo Sapiens. As long as the event of the organisms life continues, there too do we persist, according to the animalist. It is my contention that both views suffer difficulties found when exploring their metaphysical commitments and responses to certain widely-discussed thought experiments. In this thesis, I aim to resurrect the ancient view of hylomorphism, by which I mean the view espoused by Aristotle and adapted by St. Thomas Aquinas that posits matter and form as the basic constituents of every material object. As a theory of personal ontology, I argue that hylomorphism has the resources to provide a formidable challenge to the two main views. I will offer hylomorphic responses to general problems faced by accounts of personal identity such as intransitivity, circularity, fission, and composition, and show how its answers are an improvement over those given by psychological continuity theory and animalism.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:USASK/oai:usask.ca:etd-06302011-095440 |
| Date | 11 July 2011 |
| Creators | Skrzypek, Jeremy Wayne |
| Contributors | Teucher, Ulrich, Dwyer, Phil, Still, Carl, Liptay, John |
| Publisher | University of Saskatchewan |
| Source Sets | University of Saskatchewan Library |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://library.usask.ca/theses/available/etd-06302011-095440/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University of Saskatchewan or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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