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The Concept of Self: Some Reflections on H. D. Lewis' The Self and Immortality

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Scott Dunbar
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy and Religion, Dawson College, Montreal

Extract

Professor H. D. Lewis' distinguished achievements in philosophy of religion are complemented by his admirable and original contributions to philosophy of mind. His Gifford Lectures, The Elusive Mind, are a model of philosophical clarity and acumen; his account of the elusive mind in the Gifford Lectures is developed and elaborated in a later work, The Self and Immortality. Professor Lewis' ability to connect philosophy of mind with philosophy of religion at a fundamental level is an outstanding feature of his work. Philosophical reflection on religion must, at some stage, include an adequate concept of person, thus the importance of the relationship between philosophy of religion and philosophy of mind. Everyone who is concerned with the philosophical aspects of religious studies has good reason to be indebted to H. D. Lewis as a thinker.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1980

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References

page 37 note 1 In a later paper, ‘Ultimates and a Way of Looking’, Lewis says on this point: ‘On the other hand, nothing seems plainer to me than that seeing, hearing, pondering, resolving etc., while they have behavioural and dispositional aspects, are essentially non-extended, non-physical on-goings. The simplest stock example is having a pain. However ‘physical”, the pain itself is not just a state of my body, but what I feel. But if I am asked to adduce a reason for this I am at a loss; and I marvel that anyone should request a reason for what seems to me so evident in itself. The appeal to our consciousness of pain, or any other experience, seems quite conclusive here, but if it is denied and arguments requested to show why the pain we admittedly do have, and our thoughts about it, must be thought altogether different from physical processes, then one is put out of court before the only possible plea can be made. The thoughts that I put on paper now cannot themselves be located though much that concerns and conditions them can. If this is not plain in itself I do not know what is, and I could hardly fail to do my case the gravest injustice if I took up the challenge to adduce further arguments for what I maintain.’ Persons and Life after Death, pp. 2930.Google Scholar

page 38 note 1 The Self and Immortality, p. 11.Google Scholar

page 38 note 2 Op. cit. p. 20.Google Scholar

page 38 note 3 Op. cit. p. 22.Google Scholar

page 39 note 1 A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. by Selby-Bigge, L. A., book 1, part iv, section vi, and appendix, p. 633.Google Scholar

page 39 note 2 Op. cit. appendix, pp. 635–6.Google Scholar

page 39 note 3 Op. cit. pp. 31–2.Google Scholar

page 40 note 1 Op. cit. p. 43.Google Scholar

page 41 note 1 Religious Language, and, ‘The Systematic Elusiveness of “1”‘, in Philosophical Quarterly, no. 20 (July 1955).Google Scholar

page 41 note 2 Since self is dependent on by, if there is personal survival after death there would need to be a body of some kind, though not the body in which the self is presently contextualized.

page 42 note 1 [Dr Scott Dunbar raises a very crucial issue here for a view like my own. A very similar point is made by Professor Bertocci, Peter in Religious Studies (December 1979Google Scholar). I have offered him an answer in very brief outline. But I hope to be able to present a satisfactory answer in my The Elusive Self, a sequel to The Elusive Mind, which is nearing completion for publication by Macmillans. I certainly have not the least doubt that the question is a crucial one and I am grateful to Dr Scott Dunbar for his forcible presentation of it. H.D.L.]

page 43 note 1 Op. cit. p. 72Google Scholar

page 44 note 1 Op. cit. pp. 7516.Google Scholar

page 45 note 1 Street Haunting’ by Woolf, Virginia, in Collected Essays, iv, 155–6.Google Scholar

page 45 note 2 Le Temps Retrouvé by Proust, Marcel, translated by Blossom, Frederick A. as The Past Recaptured, pp. 212 13.Google Scholar