PHIL 195 - Seminar for First-Years and Sophomores

FDR: HU
Credits: 3
Planned Offering: Winter, Spring

A consideration of selected issues in philosophy. May be repeated for degree credit with permission and if the topics are different.

Topic for Winter 2011:

PHIL 195: Personal Identity (3). “Who am I?” This question, so centrally important to any individual, is the main topic of this seminar. We trace the question of selfhood, agency, and personal identity through the history of Western philosophy, contemporary analytic philosophy, post-modern theory, and feminist thought. We discuss what it means to be a person, how identity is constituted, and how well I can know myself. Among other questions, we explore: am I the same person I was in the past, and if I lose my memory, am I still ‘me’? Am I just a body, or an ‘immaterial self,’ or am I nothing? Do I ‘own’ my mental states, my body? Where am I, can I be replicated or wake up in another body’s skin? Am I my brain, my body, or am I no more and no less than the story I tell about myself? Through an in-depth discussion of personal identity, students study questions of metaphysics, knowledge acquisition, and ethical and/or political theory. (HU) Verhage.