What constitutes personhood? How are persons and their bodies related? What is the relationship between personhood and value?
The Unity of a Person: Philosophical Perspectives explores the current debates surrounding the philosophy of personal identity and offers a fresh approach to this important topic. It is original in bringing together three approaches to personal identity that are traditionally treated separately: the metaphysical, the phenomenological and the social. By examining these three areas this volume establishes connections between the underlying metaphysical issues surrounding personal identity and the specific forms of personal existence such as self-consciousness, action, and normativity. Topics discussed include personhood and animalism, process ontology, self-identity over time, sociality and personhood, and the normative status of personhood.
With chapters by an outstanding international roster of contributors, this collection will be of great interest to those studying personal identity and the nature of the self in metaphysics, philosophy of mind, and phenomenology.
Introduction Jörg Noller
Part 1: Ontology
1. Personhood and the relation between metaphysics and value Eric T. Olson
2. The Hybrid Account of Personal Persistence Benjamin Curtis and Harold Noonan
3. Persons, Animals, and Persistence Paul Snowdon
4. The Thread of Persistence and the Persistence of Threads: A Process-Ontological Account of Temporal Personal Unity Godehard Brüntrup
5. What are Persons? Attempt at a Normatively Neutral Ontological Account Thomas Buchheim
Part 2: Subjectivity
6. Personal Identity and the Transfer of Commitment Erasmus Mayr
7. Biological Subjectivity: Processual Animalism as a Unified Account of Personal Identity Anne Sophie Meincke
Part 3: Intersubjectivity
8. Animals in Person Space Marya Schechtman
9. Personal Identity and Responsibility Kathleen Wallace
10. Coherence in the self-pattern Shaun Gallagher
11. Collective Intentionality, We-identity, and the Role of Narratives in the Constitution of Friendship Felipe León
12. A Person’s Life: Uniting Metaphysics and Value Jörg Noller.
Index
Biography
Jörg Noller is lecturer in philosophy at the University of Munich, Germany. He wrote his dissertation on the problem of freedom after Kant, and his habilitation on personal life forms. He spent research stays in the USA at the Universities of Notre Dame, Chicago, and Pittsburgh. His main areas of research are personal identity, freedom of the will, philosophy of digitalization, and German idealism.
