Read Who Am I and If So How Many? Online
Authors: Richard David Precht
12
‘What is your aim in philosophy?’
Ibid., p. 103e.
13
The new discipline of analytical philosophy
For an introduction to analytical philosophy, see Hans-Johann Glock,
What Is Analytic Philosophy?
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008).
14
John Langshaw Austin … John Rogers Searle
J. L. Austin’s major work is
How to Do Things with Words
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1976). John R. Searle’s major work is
Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1970).
15
‘If a lion could talk’
Wittgenstein,
Philosophical Investigations,
p. 223e.
1
Rousseau was a true eccentric
On Rousseau’s life, see Leo Damrosch,
Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Restless Genius
(New York: Mariner Books, 2007).
2
‘I fell across the question’
Jean-Jacques Rousseau,
The Confessions and Correspondence, Including the Letters to Malesherbes,
vol. 5 of
The Collected Writings of Rousseau,
trans. Christopher Kelly (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1990), p. 575.
3
‘Men are wicked’
This quote comes from Rousseau’s
Discourse on Inequality,
in Jean-Jacques Rousseau,
The Discourse and Other Early Political Writings,
trans. Victor Gourevitch (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 197–98.
4
Its founder was Robert Weiss
Robert Weiss published the results of his loneliness research in the modern classic
Loneliness: The Experience of Emotional and Social Isolation
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1975).
1
Three adults lunged
The story of Fawn is told by Frans de Waal in
Good Natured: The Origins of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other Animals
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), pp. 45f. See also de Waal’s
Chimpanzee Politics,
25th anniv. ed. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007).
2
revealed the astonishing extent
On the social behavior of primates, see also Frans de Waal,
Peacemaking Among Primates
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990).
3
Darwin’s mid-nineteenth-century proof
A purely Darwinist view of evolution is offered by Robert Wright,
The Moral Animal: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology
(New York: Pantheon Books, 1994).
4
‘The ethical progress of society’
Thomas Henry Huxley,
Evolution and Ethics
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989), p. 141.
5
‘sword forged by
Homo sapiens
’
De Waal,
Good Natured,
p. 2.
1
‘Two things … fill the mind’
Immanuel Kant,
Critique of Practical
Reason
, trans. Lewis White Beck (New York: Macmillan, 1993), p. 169.
2
‘The understanding … does not draw’
Immanuel Kant,
Prolegomena
to Any Future Metaphysics,
trans. Gary Hatfield (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 73–74.
3
the Italian philosopher Giovanni Pico della Mirandola
Giovanni Pico della Mirandola,
On the Dignity of Man,
trans. Paul J. W. Miller et al. (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1998).
4
‘schematism of our understanding’
Immanuel Kant,
Critique of Pure Reason,
trans. Norman Kemp Smith (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), p. 183. For background information about Kant, see Manfred Kuehn,
Kant: A Biography
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
1
Arthur Schopenhauer
On Schopenhauer’s life, see Rüdiger Safranski,
Schopenhauer and the Wild Years of Philosophy,
trans. Ewald Osers (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991).
2
‘What opposes the heart’
Arthur Schopenhauer,
The World as Will and Representation,
trans. E.F.J. Payne (New York: Dover, 1966), p. 218.
3
‘thousands of years of philosophizing’
Ibid., p. 199.
4
‘fundamental error of all philosophers’
Ibid., p. 206.
5
he experimented on several patients
Libet’s experiments are described and interpreted in Benjamin Libet,
Mind Time: The Temporal Factor in Consciousness
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005). On the recent debate about the freedom of the will, see Christian Geyer, ed.,
Hirnforschung und Willsfreiheit: Zur Deutung der neuesten Experimente
(Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2005); Helmut Fink, ed.,
Freier Wille – frommer Wunsch?
(Paderborn: Mentis-Verlag, 2006); and Michael Pauen,
Illusion
Freiheit? Mögliche und unmögliche Konsequenzen der Hirnforschung
(Frankfurt: S. Fischer, 2006). The two most influential German neuroscientists on the subject of the freedom of the will are Gerhard Roth (coauthor, with Klaus-Jürgen Grün),
Das Gehirn und seine Freiheit
(Göttingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 2006), and Wolf Singer,
Ein neues Menschenbild? Gespräche über Hirnforschung
(Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2003), esp. pp. 24–34.
1
September 13, 1848
For a detailed account of the life of Phineas Gage, see Malcolm MacMillan,
An Odd Kind of Fame: Stories of Phineas Gage
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000). See also John Fleischman,
Phineas
Gage: A Gruesome but True Story About Brain Science
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2002).
2
neuroscientists Hanna and Antonio Damasio
The Damasios’ research and conclusions are found in Antonio R. Damasio, Descartes’ Error:
Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain
(New York: Putnam, 1994), and Hanna Damasio et al., ‘The Return of Phineas Gage: Clues About the Brain from the Skull of a Famous Patient,’
Science
264, no. 5102 (May 20, 1994), pp. 1102–5.
3
‘it is as if the moral compass’
De Waal,
Good Natured,
p. 217.
4
‘a machine that tells you’
Tove Jansson,
Finn Family Moomint roll,
trans. Elizabeth Portch (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1958), p. 167.
1
Rizzolatti has been examining the function of neurons
See Giacomo Rizzolatti and Corrado Sinigaglia,
Mirrors in the Brain: How Our Minds Share Actions, Emotion, and Experience,
trans. Frances Anderson (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008). An earlier book on this subject is Maksim I. Stamenov and Vittorio Gallese,
Mirror Neurons and the Evolution of Brain and Language
(Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2002).
1
Harvard psychologist Marc Hauser
Marc D. Hauser,
Moral Minds: How Nature Designed Our Universal Sense of Right and Wrong
(New York: HarperCollins, 2006).
2
the origin of our morality
The development of moral feelings is also explained in Frans de Waal,
Primates and Philosophers: How Morality Evolved
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006), and in his
Our Inner Ape: A Leading Primatologist Explains Why We Are Who We Are
(New York: Riverhead, 2006).
3
‘Moral progress is a matter of wider and wider sympathy’
Richard Rorty,
Philosophy and Social Hope
(New York: Penguin, 2000), pp. 82–83.
1
Jeremy Bentham was born in 1748
The classic biography of Bentham, written in 1905, is Charles Milner Atkinson,
Jeremy Bentham: His Life and Work
(Charleston, SC: BiblioBazaar, 2009). A more recent collection of Bentham’s writings, with an introduction by Ross Harrison, is
Selected Writings on Utilitarianism
(Ware, UK: Wordsworth, 2001). John Bowring edited Bentham’s complete works in eleven volumes:
The Works of Jeremy Bentham
(Edinburgh: W. Tait, 1843).
1
Imagine the following situation
The example with the violinist originated in Judith Jarvis Thomson, ‘A Defense of Abortion,’
Philosophy and Public Affairs
1, no. 1 (Fall 1971), pp. 47–66. My example draws on the variant by Peter Singer in his
Practical Ethics,
2nd ed. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 146–47.
2
Kant writes that the embryo is a being
Kant’s ideas about the freedom of children conceived in wedlock can be found in paragraph 28 (‘On the Right of Domestic Society, Title 2, Parental Rights’) of part 1 of the ‘Doctrine of Right’ of his
Metaphysics of Morals,
trans. Mary Gregor (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 64. His ideas about infanticide are in the same text, in part 2, near the conclusion of section E (‘On the Right to Punish and to Grant Clemency’), p. 109.
3
‘Better to be Socrates dissatisfied’
John Stuart Mill,
Utilitarianism and Other Essays
(New York: Penguin, 1987), p. 281. On the historical background, see Robert Jütte,
Geschichte der Abtreibung: Von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart
(Munich: Beck, 1993). For an overview of utilitarian arguments, see also Norbert Hoerster,
Ethik und Interesse
(Stuttgart: Reclam, 2003).
1
‘Warnemünde is a cheerful place’
Beate Lakotta recounts the story of Alexander Nicht in
Der Spiegel,
no. 46 (November 13, 2006).
2
The major argument
On the euthanasia discussion from the perspective of an advocate, see Norbert Hoerster,
Sterbehilfe im säkularen Staat
(Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1998), and Singer,
Practical Ethics,
pp. 127–57. Günter Altner presents an opposing view in
Leben in der Hand des Menschen: Die Brisanz des biotechnischen Fortschritts
(Primus, 1998), esp. pp. 225–78.
1
In the fall of 1970
Peter Singer,
Animal Liberation
(New York: Harper, 2001). See also Peter Singer, ed.,
In Defense of Animals
(New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2009).
2
‘The day
may
come’
Jeremy Bentham,
An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation,
ed. J. H. Burns and H.L.A. Hart (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 283.
3
Singer’s book on liberating animals
The second important father of animal rights philosophy is Tom Regan,
The Case for Animal Rights
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983). On the question of eating meat, see Michael Pollan,
The Omnivore’s Dilemma
(New York: Penguin, 2007), and Jonathan Safran Foer,
Eating Animals
(New York: Little, Brown, 2009). See also Richard David Precht,
Noahs Erbe: Vom Recht der Tiere und den Grenzen des Menschen
(Hamburg: Rowohlt, 2000). Issues of
consciousness and animal ethics are examined by David DeGrazia,
Taking Animals Seriously: Mental Life and Moral Status
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
4
a now classic essay
The essay by Thomas Nagel, ‘What Is It Like to Be a Bat?’ was first published in
Philosophical Review
83, no. 4 (October 1974), pp. 435–50, and can also be read online at
evans-experientialism
.freewebspace.com/nagel.htm.
5
‘We don’t know’
Giacomo Rizzolatti’s comment about barking is taken from www.infonautik.de/rizzolatti.htm.
1
‘Jerom died on February 13’
Steven Wise,
Rattling the Cage
(New York: Perseus Publishing, 2001), p. 1.
2
a movement initiated by Peter Singer
Peter Singer and Paola Cavalieri, eds.,
The Great Ape Project: Equality Beyond Humanity
(New York: St Martin’s Griffin, 1994). For an opposing view, see Claudia Heinzelmann,
Der Gleichheitsdiskurs in der Tierrechtdebatte: Eine kritische Analyse von Peter Singers Forderung nach Menschen rechten für Grosse Menschenaffen
(Stuttgart: Ibidem, 1999).
3
he was not entirely wrong
On the close relationship between primates and humans, see Jared Diamond,
The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal
(New York: Harper, 2006); the quotation about ‘future taxonomists’ is on p. 23.
4
Japanese ethologists
For animal and ape intelligence, see Donald R. Griffin,
Animal Thinking
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985).
5
‘Now we must redefine tool’
This telegram is quoted at www.janegoodall.org/janes-story.
6
a bonobo named Kanzi
On feats of intelligence demonstrated by Kanzi and other primates, see Sue Savage-Rumbaugh and Roger Lewin,
Kanzi: The Ape at the Brink of the Human Mind
(Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley, 1996).
7
Koko, a female gorilla
Francine Patterson’s experiments with Koko are recorded on Koko’s website, www.koko.org, and described in detail in Francine Patterson and Eugene Linden,
The Education of Koko
(New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1981); the examples cited here are on pp. 185, 151, and 191.