This paper is a critical account, centered on the views of a contemporary analytic philosopher, Derek Parfit, of concepts of the person which reduce personal processes to the mental contents that they contain. It is argued that (1) the "split-brain" thought experiments that Parfit sees as undermining the unity of the person in fact only reveal some nonpathological divisions in its executive functions; (2) the reductionist analysis that Parfit offers fails to take account of the socially constituted dimension of personal life, producing a one-sidedly psychologistic analysis; (3) even within the realm of the psychological, this analysis fails to capture a central feature of personal processes: their modes of engagement between self and environment; and (4) this is revealed through an examination of Korsakoff's syndrome patients, some of whom would satisfy Parfit's criteria for personhood while lacking some of its essential features, such as the ownership of experiences and the narrativization of a personal history. Rather, it is argued, drawing on accounts of person formation in Freud and in object relations theory, (1) it is only after mental contents have been owned (and not disowned) that they appear within the boundary of the psyche in the first place; and (2) this process of person formation and person maintenance is diagnosed as requiring that life have an affective dimension that is not reducible to purely cognitive operations.

Liberal Man: A Response

Affect, Agency, and Engagement: Conceptions of the Person in Philosophy, Neuropsychiatry, and Psychotherapy

Part 1 Introduction. Part 2 Vilfredo Pareto - his life and his economic theories: the man the economist the "Cours" and the "Manuel" Pareto's major contributions to economics. Part 3 Pareto's methodological approach: ethical neutrality economic sociology Leon Walras and Pareto note on the "second" school of Lausanne. Part 4 The Pareto optimum and welfare economics: a social welfare function the theory of "second best". Part 5 The "law" of income distribution: extracts from the "Cours". Part 6 Utility theory and general economic equilibrium: extracts from the "Cours" and the "Manuel". Part 7 General equilibrium theory: notes on production and marginal productivity theories extracts from the "Cours" and the "Manuel". Part 8 Pareto's minor contributions to theory: capital rent theory of the firm monopoly and other forms of imperfect competition the theory of money economic crises and fluctuations the theory of international trade collective economies. Part 9 Conclusion.

Liberal Man: A Response

Citations

Affect, Agency, and Engagement: Conceptions of the Person in Philosophy, Neuropsychiatry, and Psychotherapy

References

The economics of Vilfredo Pareto

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