All philosophy questions
Open inquiry12 min4 historical perspectives

What makes a mind and a self persist?

Use amnesia, bodily duplication, and unfamiliar experience to compare accounts of the self in terms of soul, consciousness, process, and subjectivity.

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  1. From the fifth century BCE

    Not-self analysis opens a tradition that treats persons as aggregates and causal processes.

    Buddhist not-self — Continuity without an owner

  2. 1641

    The Latin Meditations appears in Paris and places the mind-body distinction at center stage.

    Descartes — The thinking self and the extended body

    Paris · 출판

  3. 1694

    The second edition of the Essay adds the chapter on identity and diversity.

    Locke — The same person as far as consciousness reaches

  4. October 1974

    Nagel's article makes the subjective character of consciousness a central problem in philosophy of mind.

    Nagel — Does the bat’s point of view survive physical explanation?