(August 16, 2014 at 7:04 am)Michael Wrote: Whateverist. It seems to me you still become trapped in the same problem by trying to reduce 'identity' to a part of us and asking "where is it?" and "what is it made from?"
Actually I was agreeing with you. I meant to show that those questions were not helpful by substituting "your identity" for "the soul". Obviously having an identity makes sense to anyone who has one. I don't think there is actually any problem. When you ask "what", "where" and "why" questions regarding identity, you are using third-person categories for first-person phenomena.
(August 16, 2014 at 7:04 am)Michael Wrote: For example, in what part of me is the identity I had when I was seven years old? Or has that identity completely gone? What was, and is, that identity made of? Using materialism alone I can't see how we can come up with particularly satisfactory answers. This is an area where I think philosophy, and even the arts, may have more useful things to say than materialistic science. Materialistic science generally, I would say, presupposes the existence of 'I'. Indeed it must if one is to try and work from a subjective/objective division which science usually tries to do.
But I presuppose an "I" as well. I quite agree with you that the arts constitute loads of evidence for it. I likewise have no problem using "soul" and "transcendence" to describe what these kinds of first-person experiences are like. What we do as doers is better handled by the arts than by science. I wouldn't use a hammer to tighten a faucet and I wouldn't use calipers to measure a sonnet. Science handles the physics and physiology of what we do, but the arts are better for sharing how we feel about what we do.
