report of chapter 5, surviving death by mark johnston 20151015
main structure and arguments of this book
- chapter one
1. to establish scientifically meterialism about life and death, or speaking arcane guised, the philosophy of personal identity (p.2)
2. some big thoughts about personal identity:
a. the entombment of gonzalo ruiz, count of orgaz:
the painting is very clearly divided into two zones; above, heaven is evoked by swirling icy clouds, semiabstract in their shape, and the saints are tall and phantomlike; below, all is normal in the scale and proportions of the figures. the upper and lower zones are brought together compositionally (e.g., by the standing figures, by their varied participation in the earthly and heavenly event, by the torches, cross etc.). the scene of the miracle is depicted in the lower part of the composition, in the terrestrial section. the young boy at the left is el greco's son, jorge manuel; on a handkerchief in his pocket is inscribed the artist's signature and the date 1578, the year of the boy's birth. the artist himself can be recognised directly above the raised hand of one of the mourners immediately above the head of saint stephen. The rhetoric of the expressions, the glances and the gestural translation make the scene very moving. (see m. lambraki-plaka, el greco-the greek, 55–56) (p.19)
b. locke and the wisdom of solomon:
Lockeanism: distinctive about locke’s theory is that he argues that the notion of a person is to be distinguished from that of a human organism, or “man” to use Locke’s term, and that of a substance. by distinguishing the notion of a person from the more traditional notions of a human organism and a substance, locke is able to address moral questions of accountability without having to take a stance on the question of whether the underlying ontological constitution of a person is material or immaterial. (see 'john locke: identity, persons, and personal identity', by ruth boeker, 2013) (p.20)
however the author took opposite view to locke's with three reasons:
i. we need not be cognitive of common essence by 'a priori', armchair reflections
ii. might we not have thereby undermined our ability to make good judgments about personal identity when considering these very cases? (p.44)
iii. see c. offloading
c. neo-lockeanism:
its principles: see above (p.27) why the author has to reject its view of persons with eight systematic grounds (p.59)
3. offloading:
as an empirical matter of fact, nature saves us inferential labor by having us offload the question of sufficiency onto the objects and people themselves.
《老子道德經》第四十八章：「為學日益，為道日損。損之又損，以至於無為。無為而無不為。取天下常以無事，及其有事，不足以取天下。」(p.45)
so the hypothesis is that our cognitive system 'offloads'. (p.50)
4. three philosophical conceptions of substance:
a. substances must be logically independent
b. substances are things that are at the bottom of hierarchy predication
c. substances have a power of self maintenance, development, and persistence, (p.51)
5. christianity eschatology:
'the patient cannot survive', namely, depending essentially on the demonstration of immateriality of souls, on supernaturalism is of pyrrhic victory. (p.80)
- chapter two
1. which can pass through death, body or soul? (p.127)
2. materially or immaterially, the existence of the soul and consequently the nature of personal identity are empirical questions (p.135)
3. sobering verdict:
death is the end, total annihilation, severance of life with others, when the author takes that the sobering verdict scarcely follows. (p.137)
4. what in chptrs 4 and 5 mainly explains about :
sobering verdict is of no hope for an afterlife for it does not follows. (p.137)
5. the arena theory:
the arena of presence and action, as a sort of virtual frame or 'container' that includes all this; it is of you like the mind considered as a sort of place, the mental 'bed' in which the stream of consciousness flows. (p.140)
6. auto-alienation:
many uses of 'i' are not blank indexical uses, uses whose communicative function is just to introduce the speaker or writer as a topic of thought and talk. there appear to be sues of 'i' where a certain interesting subjective property is being introduced as a topic of thought and talk. (p.148)
- chapter three
1. 'de se' (of oneself), 'de dicto' (what is said), and 'de re' (what it is):
'here i have imagined being spinoza in a situation in which johnston does not exist. (p.189)
2. the paradox of auto-alienation:
one is imagining being a spinoza in a situation where oneself does not exist.
a. imagination has to capture one icon and lose anther.
b. one and one's imagination rigidly denote what they denote.
c. identity ego may not be equal to cognitive ego. (p.197)
- chapter four
1. in continuing form chapter two and three, how did human being get to be here except 'human being'?
a. the hibernators
b. the teletransporters (p.245) and the above said are three distinctive patterns of self-concern (p.247)
2. cultural relativism:
it is not morally permissible to respond to an insult by asking the person who has insulted you to 'step outside', even if there is a rough equivalence of physical prowess, so long as the person in question is self-consciously operation in a culture where a main way of implementing the ethic of respect involves treating the body of another as inviolable. (p.256)
3. personhood, personality, and relativism:
personhood, personality are mostly 'coincident' in ordinary adult life. (p.262)
4. two elements dealing with want to survive are closely related, which are:
a. that 'the person i am' continues to exist
b. that this individual personality survive and flourish (p.264)
5. hibernator + human being = waif, waiting the orders form teletransporter, as a boot camp (p.282)
6. persons are protean, thus concluded as two:
a. we are aiming for that both of the respective claims are correct thanks to the fact that both the human beings (hb) and the teletransporters (tlp) have organized their dispositions around an admissible implementation of the relation of personal identity.
b. all the rationally irresolvable dispute between the hb and tlp shows is that we have a case of 'conceptual indeterminacy'. (p.287)
7. pauline stance = a refuge (p.297)
- chapter five
1. naturalistic view of surviving:
a. 'ancient worry'
b. 'we are obliged to be moral' by kant
2. parfit: 'there are no persisting selves worth caring about' (p.306)
3. work with being protean: (selfownership)
a. the dispositions of this personality determine the very conditions of one's existence.
b. a person has a legitimate interest in controlling that aspect of one's embodiment that determines and expresses one's ethical condition, the aspect that is his individual personality. (p.339)
4. schopenhauer and vedanta:
a. a good will opens up a new identity
b. illusion of the separate self prevents us from seeing this as our essential identiy.
c. the single will is the sustainer of the world
d. compassion (p.345)
5. two problems of kantian vedantism:
a. highly conjectural metaphysics
b. atman (true ego) would be in the end just another ingredient of reality (p.349)
6. nietzsche:
a. agape is regarded with utmost suspicion
b. 'how much love of life does one need to affirm the perpetual return of the actual life lived by one's own individual personality?' (p.352)
7. what is the interests of the good?
this is the hope that properly goes with agape and with faith in the importance of goodness. (p.354)
8. conclusion:
the threat of death to the importance of goodness is itself a generic threat, and even in the face of death, goodness remains a reasonable form of heroism. (p.357)
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