The bounds of agency : an essay in revisionary metaphysics /

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Bibliographic Details
Author / Creator:Rovane, Carol A. (Carol Anne), 1955-
Imprint:Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, ©1998.
Description:1 online resource (viii, 260 pages)
Language:English
Subject:
Format: E-Resource Book
URL for this record:http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/cat/bib/11118504
Hidden Bibliographic Details
ISBN:1400813239
9781400813230
0691017166
9780691017167
1282753339
9781282753334
Digital file characteristics:data file
Notes:Includes bibliographical references (pages 251-254) and index.
Print version record.
Summary:The subject of personal identity is one of the most central and most contested and exciting in philosophy. Ever since Locke, psychological and bodily criteria have vied with one another in conflicting accounts of personal identity. Carol Rovane argues that, as things stand, the debate is unresolvable since both sides hold coherent positions that our common sense will embrace. Our very common sense, she maintains, is conflicted; so any resolution to the debate is bound to be revisionary. She boldly offers such a revisionary theory of personal identity by first inquiring into the nature of persons. Rovane begins with a premise about the distinctive ethical nature of persons to which all substantive ethical doctrines ranging from Kantian to egoist, can subscribe. From this starting point, she derives two startling metaphysical possibilities: there could be group persons composed of many human beings and multiple persons within a single human being. Her conclusion supports Locke's distinction between persons and human beings, but on altogether new grounds. These grounds lie in her radically normative analysis of the condition of personal identity, as the condition in which a certain normative commitment arises, namely, the commitment to achieve overall rational unity within a rational point of view. It is by virtue of this normative commitment that individual agents can engage one another specifically as persons, and possess the distinctive ethical status of persons. This highly original book departs significantly from the standard philosophical views of personal identity. It will be of major importance in the fields of metaphysics, moral philosophy, and philosophy of mind.
Other form:Print version: Rovane, Carol A. (Carol Anne), 1955- Bounds of agency. Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, ©1998 0691017166
Standard no.:ebc668953

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