Date of Award
11-16-2009
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Department
Philosophy
First Advisor
George Graham - Committee Chair
Second Advisor
Andrea Scarantino - Committee Member
Third Advisor
Eddy Nahmias - Committee Member
Abstract
Certain contemporary philosophers (e.g. Dainton, 2008; Strawson, 1999; Foster, 2008) have thought that the first-person, qualitative aspect of conscious experience should be taken seriously when it comes to our thinking about personal identity through time. These philosophers have thus argued that experiential continuity is essential to a person’s ability to persist identically through time. This is what I will call ‘the phenomenological theory’. In this thesis I describe the phenomenological theory and then discuss three problems that have plagued the history of this theory: the bridge problem, the token problem, and the ontological problem. I will argue that a recent version of the phenomenological theory proposed by Barry Dainton and Timothy Bayne (2005) provides satisfactory answers to two of these problems, but not the third. I will conclude this thesis by proposing a superior version of the phenomenological theory—one that can handle all three problems.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.57709/1340964
Recommended Citation
Duncan, Stephen Matthew, "Can Consciousness be Taken Seriously When it Comes to Personal Identity?." Thesis, Georgia State University, 2009.
doi: https://doi.org/10.57709/1340964