Robert C. Coburn

Personal Identity Revisited

In recent years work on the topic of personal identity has flourished. Much of it is ingenious and some of it is quite dazzling. Despite the brilliance of the literature, however, the topic itself continues to be wrapped in darkness and its capacity to baffle and perplex is as great as ever. In the present paper, I will attempt to make clear that and why this is so. I shall begin by showing why the most recent virtuoso performance in the area leaves everything as obscure as before. I shall then develop a version of what appears to me to be the most viable alternative to both the bankrupt view just unmasked and its equally bankrupt congeners, and indicate why it too is less than fully satisfactory. The upshot will be that we seem to be faced with three possible conclusions, each moderately compelling, but none obviously correct or altogether happy.

Shaffer on the identity of mental states and brain processes

In ‘Could mental states be brain processes?’ (Paper X) Jerome Shaffer undertakes to examine a much-discussed view of the relation between ‘mental states’ or ‘states of consciousness’ and brain processes. According to this view — roughly speaking — whether or not expressions that refer to mental states pick out the same ‘things’ as do expressions that refer to brain processes is a more or less straightforward empirical question, a question which can be decided by, and only by, further scientific (especially neurophysiological) research. In the course of his examination of this view, Shaffer considers a number of difficulties which arise in connection with it, and having done so, he concludes that though some of these difficulties are more serious than others, none of them is really insurmountable. Unfortunately, his treatment of what he takes to be the central difficulty with the view in question is, I believe, seriously defective, and my purpose in the present note is to indicate wherein, in my judgement, its defects lie.

The Concept of God

My aim in this essay is to elucidate in a certain way the concept of God. I shall begin with several brief remarks in clarification of this aim and the terminology I shall employ in pursuing it.