Futurity, selves and further organisms

True Selves, False Selves, and the Ambiguity of Authenticity

Automata, Receptacles, and Selves

After rejecting Carruthers' conflation of levels of consciousness as implausible and conceptually muddled, and Carruthers' claim that nonhumans are automata as undermined by evolutionary and ethological considerations, we develop a general criticism of contemporary philosophical approaches which, though recognizing nonhuman consciousness, still see animals as mere receptacles of experiences. Th...

Reasons and Real Selves

Most accounts of responsibility begin from either of two prominent points of departure: the idea that an agent must have some characterological or expressive connection to the action, or alternately, the idea that an agent must be in some sense responsive to reasons. Indeed, we might even understand much of the past couple of decades of philosophical work on moral responsibility as concerned wi...

Selves and Moral Units

Derek Parfit claims that, at certain times and places, the metaphysical units he labels “selves” may be thought of as the morally significant units (i.e., the objects of moral concern) for such things as resource distribution, moral responsibility, commitments, etc. But his concept of the self is problematic in important respects, and it remains unclear just why and how this entity should count...

Possible selves and delinquency.

The relationship between possible selves and delinquency is explored. In this study, 238 youths between the ages of 13-16 who varied in the degree of their delinquency were asked to describe their possible selves. Although many similarities were found among their hoped-for selves, the groups of youth differed markedly in the nature of their expected and feared selves. The balance between expect...