Despite the courageous concept of Western philosophy as causa sui, there is much evidence of a significant exchange of thoughts between Europe and the Orient in the early modern period. In David Hume’s case, the Oriental influence was long ignored, but in recent decades several studies have highlighted significant affinities between Hume’s ideas and those of Buddhism. In what follows, I’ll try to show, rethinking Humean and Buddhist no-self, why A. Gopnik’s “Jesuits hypothesis” is more plausible than the explanation which connects both conceptions via Pyrrhonian skepsis. Regardless of both hypotheses, I offer some arguments in favour of spontaneous convergence with no need for the intercultural transfer of thoughts, and point out some problematic aspects of a thought which promotes (with no good reasons) an impersonal description of our lives above that which is based on our intuitions and first-person perspective characterized by the sense of self and ownership.
One of the John Locke´s most controversial claims is that we should not be held responsible for the deeds of which we genuinely have no recollection as performed. We are only responsible for the acts of which we are conscious. The reason behind is the assertion that the personal identity equals the identity of consciousness. This concept of person is the background of Locke´s claim that the immaterial substance (IS) is irrelevant for personal identity. I argue, that if we had only a very unclear idea of IS and could not give any clear explanation of the relationship between IS and a person, the excluding of IS from the identity discourse would be highly dubious. Further, I argue that the memory criterion of the personal identity is problematic for many reasons, and that the missing continuity of memories between lives is compatible with the idea of justice and practical concerns.
What happens with the thought, in which suddenly 'horror alieni' breaks out? This question will be discussed in the context of (not only) Emmanuel Levinas' philosophy. This papper is an attempt to approach several problems related with the philosophy of the Other, including the problem of separate world, anaesthesiological strategies of the subject, the close relationship between thinking and pleasure, autonomy as the principle of pleasure etc. Considering the main parts and motives of Levinas' philosophy, this paper will try to reveal several controversies in this 'difficult, contentious thinking'.
The problems of the self (ātman) and personal identity over time were thoroughly analysed in the classical Indian philosophy. The Buddhist philosophers rejected the Brahmanical commitment to a permanent unitary self which persists through changes of body and mind, and held that the self is a mere conceptual or thought construction (prajñāpti): there is no reality in the self; when we look more closely at what we call ‘I’, we will find only a stream of perceptions. Contrarily, the orthodox (āstika) philosophers argue that many common phenomena like memory or recognitive perception (pratyabhijñā) could not take place, if the rememberer and knower were different. One must endure through time as the same identical subject to be able to remember, have desire, commitments, responsibility etc. In favour of the classical Brahmanical position the author argues that if a person is nothing more than a bundle of different fleeting psycho-physical states, none of them can be plausibly explained. The paper brings out also some connections between the Indian and the Western debates over the personal identity problem.
Intertemporal decision making research in the fields of psychology and behavioural economy (Mischel et al. 1972, Kahneman & Tversky 1979, Loewenstein & Prelec 1992, O’Donoghue & Rabin 1999) shows that people are less concerned about distant future benefits than about outcomes that arrives sooner. Although the economy of “sooner rather than later”, i. e. focus on short-term utility, may have good evolutionary explanation mainly in the past, it can be also, if connected with other factors, one of the main factors of contemporary environmental crisis, as well as unwillingness to do something. The aim of this paper is to examine the phenomenon of time preference in relation to the philosophical concept of akrasia or weakness of will, and show to what degree rational argumentation and cognitive strategies of delayed gratification can be useful in this direction. According to the pessimistic scenario the time distant and abstract nature of the global risks must not evoke sufficient reactions in the form of behavioural changes (motivate people to the long-term strategies). If so, then either a kind of paternalist intervention or direct personal experience of permanent crisis is needed.
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