Pragmatistic Anthropology

Description

Leading one’s life as a person is an essential feature of our human existence which is constitutively characterized by finiteness, sociality and vulnerability. Within the framework of a pragmatistic anthropology central features of our being persons (i.e. personal identity, self-consciousness, freedom, autonomy and responsibility) are made explicit in this study. The such unfolded conception is anthropological in the sense of being restricted to the human life-form. The explication is pragmatistic in a double sense: Firstly, action is taken as a complex and not reducible basic feature; secondly, the study is committed to the pragmatistic model of justification. Leading one’s life as a human person, this is the study’s central thesis, is realized in constellations of recognition (intersubjective or institutionally framed). These can be made explicit as basic grammar of our evaluative Praxis within an ascriptivist framework. Pragmatistic Anthropology Content Preface 1. Pragmatistic Anthropology 1.1 The human-personal Lebensform 1.2 Pragmatistic Anthropology 1.2.1 Anthropology 1.2.2 Pragmatistic 1.3 Ascriptivism 2. Personal Identity 2.1 Four Dimensions of Personal Identity 2.2 The non-social character of unity and persistence 2.3 The social character of personhood and personality 2.3 The social character of personhood and personality 2.3.2 Indirect defence of the HYPOTHESIS 2.3.3 Some preliminary conclusions 3. Personhood and Moral Status 3.1 Preliminary Methodological Remarks 3.2 The concept of the person: Four manners of usage 3.3 Personhood as a criterion for moral status 3.4 Personhood and Moral Status: a brief summary 4. Self-consciousness 4.1 Anti-Mentalism 4.2 The argument concerning the Vollzugswiderspruch 4.3 Ascriptivism and Actor-Perspective 4.4 Self-reference and Self-predication 5. Freedom 5.1 Autonomy, incompatibilism and the manipulation argument 5.2 Non-constraining control and personal autonomy: Kane’s libertarian attack 5.3 Compatibilists replies and the problem of global manipulation 5.3.1 Mele’s autonomous agents 5.3.2 Fischer & Ravizza on ›Taking responsibility‹ 5.4 Kapitan and the victims of global manipulation 6. Autonomy 6.1 Christman’s conception of personal autonomy 6.2 From identity to alienation 6.3 »Non-alienation« versus »identification-with«: a useful opposition? 6.3.1 Critique of Christman’s proposal of replacement 6.3.2 Autonomous by default: a pragmatistic alternative 7. Responsibility 7.1 Responsibility and Personal Autonomy 7.1.1 Autonomy to make decisions and personal autonomy 7.1.2 The connection between responsibility and personal autonomy 7.2 Uncritical Ascriptivism? 8. Pragmatistic Anthropology and Ethics in Application Bibliography Index of Names