Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 2 of 2
Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Can Consciousness Be Taken Seriously When It Comes To Personal Identity?, Stephen Matthew Duncan
Can Consciousness Be Taken Seriously When It Comes To Personal Identity?, Stephen Matthew Duncan
Philosophy Theses
Certain contemporary philosophers (e.g. Dainton, 2008; Strawson, 1999; Foster, 2008) have thought that the first-person, qualitative aspect of conscious experience should be taken seriously when it comes to our thinking about personal identity through time. These philosophers have thus argued that experiential continuity is essential to a person’s ability to persist identically through time. This is what I will call ‘the phenomenological theory’. In this thesis I describe the phenomenological theory and then discuss three problems that have plagued the history of this theory: the bridge problem, the token problem, and the ontological problem. I will argue that a recent …
Motivating Emotional Content, Benjamin Sheredos
Motivating Emotional Content, Benjamin Sheredos
Philosophy Theses
Among philosophers of the emotions, it is common to view emotional content as purely descriptive – that is, belief-like or perception-like. I argue that this is a mistake. The intentionality of the emotions cannot be understood in isolation from their motivational character, and emotional content is also inherently directive – that is, desire-like. This view’s strength is its ability to explain a class of emotional behaviors that I argue, the common view fails to explain adequately. I claim that it is already implicit in leading theories of emotion elicitation in cognitive psychology – “appraisal theories.” The result is a deeper …