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Can the Self Survive the Death of its Mind?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

John Knox Jr
John Knox Jr
Affiliation:
Associate Professor of Philosophy, Drew University
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Extract

C. A. Campbell has written: ‘Almost everyone…takes it to be in principle intelligible to ask whether the self can survive the destruction of its body. But it is taken by no one to be in principle intelligible to ask whether the self can survive the destruction of its mind.’ But is it, after all, so clearly nonsense to suppose that a self can survive the destruction of its mind? This at least is the question I shall raise in this paper. The word ‘can’ in my title should thus be understood in its purely logical sense. For the question, really, is whether or not one can intelligibly speak of a self's surviving the destruction of its mind. By the term ‘self’ I refer to that which is supremely unique in what one calls ‘oneself’; to that aspect or element, in other words, which most decisively distinguishes one self-conscious individual from other such individuals. Now the self thus regarded as the source of one's uniqueness on the one hand, and the self conceived of as the source of one's inner unity on the other, would seem to be but two sides of a single coin. For whatever helps to account for an individual's being identical with itself through internal diversity—or for its being a single individual—must also help, and help in an equal degree, to account for its not being identical with any other individual—or for its being a particular individual; and the converse of this seems equally evident.

Type
Research Article
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 5 , Issue 1 , October 1969 , pp. 85 - 97
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1969

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References

page 85 note 1 On Selfhood and Godhood (London and New York, 1957), p. 96. Although I have found it convenient to quote his words, the present paper is not intended as a response to Professor Campbell, . In fact, my definitions of ‘self’ and of ‘mind’ might well not be acceptable to him.Google Scholar

page 88 note 1 Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research for 1953, reprinted in Smythies, J. R., ed., Brain, and Mind, (New York, 1965), pp. 1–24.Google Scholar

page 92 note 1 One may object that it makes little if any difference to me now whether in an earlier life I was, or was not, the King of England. But so also it makes little if any difference to me now whether or not I suffered severe pains as an infant. In both instances, the reason is simply that what may have been experienced is past and done with, and can no longer be remembered—not that it makes no sense to suppose that the experience was mine.

page 92 note 2 Reid, Thomas, Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man, Essay III, Chapter IV.Google Scholar

page 95 note 1 Here and elsewhere I am indebted for encouragement and help to an unpublished paper by Chisholm, R. M., ‘Identity Through Time’, read during the Conference on Metaphysics,21–3 March, 1968,held at Brockport, New York, as part of the International Philosophy YearGoogle Scholar. This paper will appear in Volume I (Language and Metaphysics) of Contemporary Philosophical Thought, an anthology due to be published in November, 1969 by the University Press of the State of New York.Google Scholar