1. Surviving Death: Mark Johnston Meets the Buddhists 鄭凱元 （陽明大學心智哲學所） 政大佛教哲學研究室 2015.10.29.

2. Some Background Something about Mark Johnston （莊子頓） Something about my visit at Princeton (2009) Something about my Zhuangzian turn (ever since)

3. Some of my recent (working) papers “Self and the Dream of the Butterfly in the Zhuangzi” (Philosohpy East and West, 2014) “Zhuangzi and Agricultural Ethics” (to appear in Agricultural Ethics edited by Paul Thompson, Springer) “Personal Identity and Survival in the Zhuangzi” (manuscript) “Commentaries on Minding the Brain (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014) with replies from Georg Northoff (Chinese translation and expansion to appear in 2016, NTU Press) “Levels of Time in Leibniz and Zhuangzi” (with Georg Northoff) “Time and Self-Knowledge in the Happy Fish Dispute” (with 江孟庭） “A New Reading of Cook-Ding-Cuts-Up-An-Ox” (with 鄭喜恆） A book project on Zhuangzi

4. Saving God (2009) Surviving Death (2010)

5. Why Death Death threatens the possibility of value

6. Two Kinds of Death Biological death (body) Subjective death (self) A third kind of death: psychological death (individual psychology)

7. Three Decades of Debates with Derek Parfit Distinction between self and personal identity (not clearly made in Locke, Hume, Parfit…)

8. Situate Personal Identity Historically The issue of personal identity was raised by John Locke in a religious context (not important in analytic philosophy…)

9. Self Inadequacy of Wittgenstein-Strawson’s linguistic treatment of the indexical “I” Phenomenological arena A merely intentional object Not worth caring about Impossibility of subjective death

10. Personal Identity An argument from cognitive offloading against the psychological theory A judgment-dependence account: i) identity-determining dispositions; ii) refiguring basic dispositions Persons are protean

11. Survival I can survive my death, literally. Literal content can be given to John Stuart Mill’s idea of “Religion of Humanity”.

12. From Anatta to Agape Agape: Loving people as loving oneself A religious theme: extremely demanding; humanly impossible; radically evil (Kant); ought implies can The recognition of Anatta (no-self) makes Agape possible.

13. God (or the Highest Being) God is the highest being that makes salvation possible.

14. Salvation A neutral characterization not confined to any monotheism: basic human conditions

15. In Search of God The phenomenological approach Criteria of religious falsehood Undergraduate atheism (graduate level: Kant, Spinoza)

16. Difficulties Benedict’s appeal to rational criteria (good, but not good enough) Kant’s idea of being radically evil in every human being (illuminated by the nature of self understood in terms of a phenomenological arena) Salvation has to come from outside oneself

17. In Search of God Aquinas: The Highest Being = Existence itself (identity relationship, simple) The Highest Being = The outpouring of Existence itself by way of its exemplification in ordinary existents (constitution relationship, complex) The Highest Being = The outpouring of Existence itself by way of its exemplification in ordinary existents for the sake of the self-disclosure of Existence itself (Heidegger’s insight of the forgetfulness of Being)

18. Against Representational Theories of Mind Samplers of presence Producers of presence

19. Salvation Mind is objective My own existence is part of Existence itself, which is the world on which I stand

20. What Jesus Means Girard: setting up a model Johnston: seeing one’s self-righteousness and self-love nature