Title: Belief about Myself<\/p>\n
By Stephen Voss (Bogazi\u00e7i, Philosophy)<\/p>\n
Date: Thursday, April 7
\nTime: 15.30-17.00<\/p>\n
This is an online event. All are welcome. If you would like to listen to the talk please click on the following link when the event is due to begin.<\/p>\n
Zoom: go to www.phil.bilkent.edu.tr<\/p>\n
Abstract: My question is this. What is it to have a belief about oneself, as oneself \u2013 for short, an \u201cI belief\u201d? For that matter, what is it for me to conceive a certain individual as me? John Perry once had a supermarket adventure, when he believed a certain individual was making a mess, but even though that individual was him, his belief didn\u2019t motivate him to stop. It was only his belief \u201cl am making a mess\u201d that did the trick. He concluded that he was believing the same thing he believed before but in a different way, that somehow moved him to take action and stop making a mess.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ll suggest that it\u2019s this link with an I believer\u2019s action that is the key to understanding the way he believes, so I\u2019ll embed my answer in Aristotle\u2019s theory of practical reason in On the Movement of Animals, chapter 7. Aristotle says that a reason to act is constituted by a desire-belief pair. John Perry had a non-I desire, \u201cThe person making a mess should straighten the sack of sugar in the shopping cart,\u201d and an I belief, \u201cI am that person,\u201d which together gave him a reason to act. My suggestion will be that an I belief is a belief such that for some non-I desire, if the person were to have that desire the two would give that person a reason to act. This thesis provides the key to understanding what it is to conceive one individual, out of all the 8 billion possibilities, as oneself. We\u2019ll try to clarify and to evaluate the resulting theory.<\/p>\n
About the speaker: First I was excited about mathematics at Wheaton College, then about philosophy at Berkeley and Stanford. In order to make a living I agreed to teach, first at Nebraska, then at San Jose and Bo\u011faz\u0131c\u0131, where I\u2019ve been for 29 years now. I did some research at Australian National University, Notre Dame, and the French countryside, where I learned about, respectively, Descartes, consciousness, and Leibniz. Now I\u2019m interested in mind and self, both in theoretical terms and as part of philosophy as a way of life. I share Socrates\u2019s conviction that one great way to gain understanding is dialogue with others who also wish to understand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Title: Belief about Myself By Stephen Voss (Bogazi\u00e7i, Philosophy) Date: Thursday, April 7 Time: 15.30-17.00 This is an online event. All are welcome. If you would like to listen to the talk please click on the following link when the event is due to begin. Zoom: go to www.phil.bilkent.edu.tr Abstract: [\u2026] <\/p>\n