- Personal Identity, Second Edition (Topics in Philosophy) (Volume 2)

Boight this book for UCB Phil100 class. The writing is fascinating, what I don't like is the weekly writing assignments I have to do for this class.

I am a philosophy major at UC Berkeley and this was a textbook for a class. It is a collection of essays on personal identity that are easy to read and very thought provoking. It introduces both new thinkers and old heavy-hitting philosophers.

There are several other excellent collections of essays on the philosophical problem of personal identity over time;this is the only indispensable one. It contains Locke's seminal treatment of the problem, and the famous criticisms by Butler and by Read. Selections from Hume's Treatise includes the often omitted, enigmatic appendix (second thoughts). Bernard Williams' "The Self and the Future" and Derek Parfit's "Personal Identity" are probably the two most influential papers on personal identity in the last hundred years.

Personal identity has a long history, and so it's worth going back to John Locke, as Perry does. My hope for the second edition was that it would add enough contemporary philosophy to bring the anthology up to the present. After all, I would trust Perry to choose contemporary articles wisely. I'm disappointed that he opted to do very little of that. The new material in the second edition is:(1) a new preface, explaining the significance of the additional articles;(2) Sydney Shoemaker's "Persons and Their Pasts;" (1970)(3) "Selections from the Clarke-Collins Correspondence" (a series of letters exchanged between 1706-8), excerpted by William Uzgalis;(4) an article about that correspondence, written by Uzgalis, "Locke and Collins, Clarke and Butler, on Successive Persons;"(5) "Williams on the Self and the Future," by John Perry (based on a 1976 review)(6) The "Suggestions for Further Reading" on the last two pages of the book have been substantially updated. Many of those recommendations point us toward other anthologies, though. If you're looking for specific guidance, like, What are some excellent contemporary articles that advance this historical debate?, it isn't there.The second edition preserves all of the material from the first edition.

interesting concepts