Bratman on identity over time and identification at a time

According to reductionists about agency, an agent’s bringing something about is reducible to states and events (such as desires and beliefs) involving the agent bringing something about. Many have worried that reductionism cannot accommodate robust forms of agency, such as self-determination. One common reductionist answer to this worry (which I call “identification reductionism”) contends that self-determining agents are identified with certain states and events, and so these states and events causing a decision counts as the agent’s self-determining the decision. In this paper, I discuss Michael Bratman’s well-known identification reductionist theory and his general strategy of grounding an agent’s identification at a time in the agent’s identity over time. I develop two constraints that an adequate identification reductionist theory must satisfy, argue that Bratman’s theory cannot satisfy both, and show that his general strategy for grounding an agent’s identification at a time in the agent’s identity over time is without merit.     

Antoine Le Grand on the identity over time of the human body

ABSTRACT

This paper studies Antoine Le Grand's account of organic identity over time in human bodies. In response to Aristotelian critics who argued that the Cartesian rejection of the Aristotelian ontology of matter and form had put in jeopardy the diachronic identity of material substances in general and of living bodies in particular, Le Grand argued that the identity over time of the human body could be accounted for without the traditional notions of matter and form. The paper shows how he drew on both the Cartesian metaphysics of mind and body and contemporary views on human anatomy and organic generation to develop a unique account of bodily identity over time in human animals.     

Hume on Education

Hume claims that education is ‘disclaimed by philosophy, as a fallacious ground of assent to any opinion’ (T 1.3.10.1) and that it is ‘never . . . recogniz'd by philosophers’ (T 1.3.9.19). He is usually taken to be referring here to indoctrination. I argue, however, that his main concern is with association and those philosophers who emphasize the epistemic dangers of the imagination. These include Locke, Hutcheson and Descartes, but not Hume himself. Hume praises education, highlighting its role in the formation of general rules, and in fostering social conditions that encourage the growth of knowledge and moral virtue.     

Hume on presentation and philosophy

Most philosophers agree that an argument's presentation is relevant to its philosophical merit. This paper explains why David Hume considered presentation philosophically important. On Hume's epistemology, presentation is closely connected with two principal aims of philosophical arguments: persuasion and epistemic justification. Hume's views imply that presentation is a factor determining an argument's persuasiveness and that, by philosophical standards of justification, presentation is also a factor determining the extent to which an argument's conclusion is justified.     

Cultural identity dynamics: Capturing changes in cultural identities over time and their intraindividual organization

Important life transitions – such as migration – have the potential to enrich one's sense of self, but they are also demanding and challenging. The current research investigates how cultural identities change and become configured over time among newly arrived international students and the social factors that predict these longitudinal changes. A four‐wave longitudinal study was conducted during international students' first year in their new country (N = 278). Multivariate hierarchical linear modeling analyses allowed us to unpack both baseline (between‐person) and intraindividual change (within‐person) effects. Whereas increased psychological need satisfaction via both the new and one's heritage cultural group predicted increased identity integration, greater discrimination (i.e., both at baseline and an increase over time) predicted increased compartmentalization and the predominance (categorization) of one identity over the others. Results are discussed in light of novel theoretical developments in the acculturation and identity change literatures.     

Husserl on Hume

ABSTRACT

This article offers an account of the development of Husserl’s assessment of Hume’s position in the history of philosophy. In Husserl’s early treatment of Hume, Husserl’s interpretation was shaped by the anti-Kantian views of his teacher Franz Brentano. Later, however, Husserl concentrated on those themes in Hume’s philosophy that were of relevance for the development of his own conception of phenomenology. His analysis into the a priori structures of intentionality led the Husserl of Logical Investigations (1900–1901) to reject Hume’s nominalism and sensualism, and to criticize Hume’s naturalistic psychologism and fictionalism. Already at this point, however, Husserl appreciated Hume’s metaphysical neutrality as well as his radical starting point in the immediate givenness of consciousness. In the period following Husserl’s transcendental turn in Ideas I (1913), Hume is gradually re-assessed in the context of Husserl’s engagement with Kant as a philosopher who offers important insights concerning concrete problems of transcendental philosophy. For Husserl, Hume ultimately offers the first outline of a pure phenomenology and, indeed, becomes one of the most important forerunners of transcendental philosophy as such.     

大卫·休谟论公正

休谟认为 ,公正是一种社会契约 ,是尊重个人财产权的人为美德 ;功利是道德的最后裁判者 ,也是公正规则的唯一来源与基础 ;理想的社会与政府应以落实社会公正为目标 ,反对“平等主义”的社会利益分配。休谟还认为在特殊情况下 ,维护生存权的公正高于维护财产权的公正 ,从而为“剥夺剥夺者”的正当性留下了道德空间。休谟的公正理论虽有明显的时代和阶级的局限性 ,但对于当代社会的公正论研究仍有不可替代的借鉴价值。     

Hume on Mental Transparency

This article investigates Hume's account of mental transparency. In this article, I will endorse Qualitative Transparency – that is, the thesis that we cannot fail to apprehend the qualitative characters of our current perceptions, and these apprehensions cannot fail to be veridical – on the basis that, unlike its competitors, it is both weak enough to accommodate the introspective mistakes that Hume recognises, and yet strong enough to make sense of his positive employments of mental transparency. Moreover, Qualitative Transparency is also philosophically satisfying in providing good philosophical reason for why the mental states that are incorrigible should in fact be so.     

Being well at work: the impact of organizational climate and social identity on employee stress and self-esteem over time

In organizational psychology, staff perceptions of organizational climate have been found to be an important predictor of employee outcomes, such as employee stress. However, only a small pool of research has investigated the psychological mechanism that underpins the relationship, and no past literature has explored how the relationship persists over time. This paper uses the social identity approach to investigate whether social identification predicts and mediates the relationship between staff perceptions of organizational climate and their levels of stress and self-esteem over time. Employing a sample of public school teachers, the study was conducted over two years (N = 281, 65 schools). The results indicated that social identification fully mediated the relationship between organizational climate and self-esteem longitudinally but showed no significant relationship with stress. The implications of these findings are discussed, with recommendations for future research.     

Hume on sympathy and agreeable qualities

Hume says that sympathy is the source of our moral feeling of approval for useful qualities. But does Hume give the same psychological explanation of our approval of immediately agreeable qualities as he does to our approval of useful qualities? Does he trace our moral approbation of immediately agreeable qualities to sympathy? Some commentators, including Rachel Cohon and Don Garrett, argue that he does not. Let us call this view the ‘narrow view’ of sympathy in contrast to the ‘wide view’ of sympathy, which holds that sympathy is required for every moral sentiment. There is indeed some apparent textual evidence in Hume’s work that seems to support the narrow view. My aim in this paper is to examine that evidence and show how it is merely apparent, in particular by showing how a number of passages can be and are misread. I thus want to argue indirectly for the wide view.