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Personal Identity
Personal Identity brings together the most important readings on personal identity theory.
- GenresPhilosophy
408 pages, Paperback
First published February 1, 2002
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July 16, 2014
If you are interested in questions of personal identity, this is very good (although there is a great deal I disagree with). Would you step into the transporter on Star Trek with Parfit?
We read part of this in a Metaphysics class focused on self, identity and free will that I sat in on at Whitman College. I finally got around to finishing it. The class by the way was a great experience.
The forty-ninth book I have finished this year.
p. 19. Moreover, there is in each human form just one substantial form, the rational soul, which, as a substantial, is the same in all humans. (Thomas Aquinas)
This is pure (imago dei) Stoicism, and part of the Stoic heritage that Christianity arrogated.
p. 19. There is a theme in Aquinas that bears on debates in our own time about the morality of human abortion.
p. 20. What this means is, first, that the rational soul arrives relatively late in the process of the development of the human embryo, and second, that prior to its arrival, the embryo has no human soul and no soul of any kind that is capable of surviving bodily death. . . . In fact, technically speaking, it is not even human.
John Locke (1632 - 1704)
p. 31. But let him once find himself conscious of any of the actions of Nestor, he then finds himself the same person with Nestor.
This is - I think? - the aspect of John Lock that has been interpreted as his claiming we are the sum of our memories, and that got him pilloried by the Scriblerians?
p. 35. So that self is not determined by the identity or diversity of substance, which it cannot be sure of but only by identity of consciousness.
p. 37. In general, when Locke used the phrase "is conscious of", in the context of talking about personal identity over time, he meant "remembers".
Samuel Clarke (1675 - 1729) and Anthony Collins (1676 - 1729)
Clarke (on p. 41) richly anticipates the Star Trek "transporter."
Joseph Butler (1692 - 1752)
p. 44. Butler's death, in 1752, marks the end of an era in which religion dominated the philosophy of human nature.
This folks marks the end of the Middle Ages, a process that took ~ 100 years.
David Hume (1711-1776)
p. 47. In claiming that , "without breach of the propriety of language, " we might regard the two churches as the same church even if the first was of brick and second "of free-stone," he added the caveat, " but we must observe, that in these cases the first object is in manner annihilated before the second comes into existence; by which means, we are never presented in any one point of time with the idea of difference and multiplicity; and for that reason are less scrupulous in calling them the same."
This just is the "transporter problem." Captain Kirk is able to have people "transported" through solid rock: matter is not being transmitted. You step into the transporter, and are digitally copied and destroyed. At the other end, you(?) are reconstituted with the same memories. Would you step in?
Thomas Reid(1710-1796)
p. 48. But whereas he assumed that the need for substance is an argument for immaterial substance, actually, so far as his argument goes, it shows at most only the need for substance of some sort.
p. 49. That which has ceased to exist cannot be the same with that which afterwards begins to exist.
William Hazlitt (1778-1830)
p. 54. . . . Hazlitt reads more like one of our contemporaries than any of his predecessors.
p. 55 - 56. He claimed that such considerations provide a basis for founding morality not on self-interest, which he regarded as an "artificial" value, but on the natural concern people have to seek happiness and avoid unhappiness, regardless of whose it is.
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)
p. 60. In other words, the world as it exists in itself - the noumenal world - is neither spatially nor temporally extended, whereas the world that we experience - the phenomenal world - is both.
William James (1842-1910)
p. 64. The line between me and mine is difficult to draw. We feel and act about certain things that are out very much as we feel an act about ourselves. Our fame, our children, the work of our hands, may be as dear to us as our bodies are, and arouse the same feelings and the same acts of reprisal if attached. An our bodies themselves, are they simply ours, or are they us?
1 The Self and the Future by Bernard Williams
2 Personal Identity through Time by Robert Nozick
p. 108. The closest continuer theory is the best Parmenides can do in an almost Heraclitean world.
p. 109. Is temporal overlap a koan for philosophers?
p. 109.
mo·nad (mnd)
n.
1. Philosophy An indivisible, impenetrable unit of substance viewed as the basic constituent element of physical reality in the metaphysics of Leibniz.
2. Biology A single-celled microorganism, especially a flagellate protozoan of the genus Monas.
3. Chemistry An atom or a radical with valence 1.
[Latin monas, monad-, unit, from Greek, from monos, single; see men-4 in Indo-European roots.]
mo·nadic (m-ndk), mo·nadi·cal adj.
mo·nadi·cal·ly adv.
monad·ism n.
p. 112. The alternative to a closest continuer schema is Heraclitean flux, down through all levels. If it becomes legitimate, because necessary, to use the schema at some level, then why not simply begin with it?
3 Why Our Identity is Not What Matters by Derek Parfit
p. 116. To seek what is "logically required" for sameness of person under unprecedented circumstances is to suggest that words have some logical force beyond what our past needs have invested them with.
p. 118. As I shall argue later, being destroyed and Replicated is about as good as ordinary survival. [. . .]
p. 118. Physcialists could accept the Psychological Criterion.
p. 119. A person is a separately existing entity, distinct from his brain and body, and his experiences. . . . But this view claims that, thought we are not separately existing entities, personal identity is a further fact, which does not just consist in physical and / or psychological continuity.
p. 122. It might be objected that my description ignores 'the necessary unity of consciousness'. But I have not ignored this alleged necessity. I have denied it.
p. 124. We cannot explain these two unities by claiming that all of these experiences are being had by me at this time.
4 Survival and Identity by David Lewis
From Mitch:
(1) Identity is about persons existing across time, while relatedness is about "person-stages" at different times. So, they're talking about different things. Ordinarily, they clearly match up: the existence of a person across time is easily seen as a set of person-stages that are closely related to each other. In some cases, like division/fission and fusion, they *seem* to diverge. But we can use some of the technicalities to rework the two claims so that they do match up.
(2) The key to doing that is to recognize that a single person-stage can actually be a part of more than one person. But...how could THAT be? Well, read the article to see his explanation, as well as how he thinks this approach can solve some other puzzle-cases -- then we'll talk about it tomorrow and see if his views are convincing!
p. 144. I answer, along with many others: what matters in survival is mental continuity and connectedness. . . . My total present mental state should be but one momentary stage in a continuing succession of mental states.
Does this mean "continuous" or "continual?" What if I am transported (destroyed and reconstituted) while asleep and do not realize it?
p. 144. Change should be gradual rather than sudden, and (at least in some respects) there should not be too much change overall.
Aging? Radical prostatectomy?
p. 145. What matters in survival is survival.
Being transported while asleep fails this test. Survival is like pornography: I will know it when I see it.
p. 145. What matters in survival is identity.
Does sleep or anesthesia eliminate the difference between "identity" and "person-stages?"
Survival must equal identity to reconcile?
p. 151. A further premise is needed that partial overlap of continuant persons is impossible.
p. 155. This completes my discussion of fission and fusion. To summarize: if the R-relation is the I-relation, and in particular if continuant persons are maximal R-interrelated aggregates of person-stages, then cases of fission and fusion must be treated as cases of stage-sharing between different, partially overlapping continuant persons. If so, the R-relations and the I-relation are alike intransitive, so there is no discrepancy on that score. If it is granted that we may count continuant persons by tensed identity, then this treatment does not conflict with our opinion that in fission one person becomes two; nor with our opinion (it if really is our opinion that in fission one person becomes two; nor with our opinion (if that really is our opinion) that in fusion two persons become one.
5 Personal Identity and the Unity of Agency: A Kantian Response to Parfit by Christine M. Korsgaard
* The conclusion that Korsgaard reaches at the end is that personal identity is a matter of "authorial psychological connectedness." Let's work backwards from there:
- What does she mean by that phrase?
p. 170. In choosing our careers, and pursuing our friendships and family lives, we both presuppose and construct a continuity of identity and agency.
- How would it apply to some of the examples and puzzle-cases that we've been considering?
p. 170. . . . the body which makes you one agent now persists over time, . . .
p. 171. The unity of our life is forced upon us, although not deeply, by our shared embodiment, together with our desire to carry on long-term plans and relationships.
- How does it compare to the views of our other authors, especially Schechtman and Parfit?
"authorial psychological connectedness" seems very much like "empathic access."
* Leading up to that conclusion, Korsgaard sketches a view of personhood itself (not always exactly in those terms).
- What is that view?
p. 172. And when a group of psychological functions occupy the same human body, they have an even more imperative need to become a unified person.
p. 172. My argument supports a physical criterion of identity, but only a conditional one.
- How does Korsgaard see the issues of personhood and personal identity as relating to each other?
p. 174. Consciousness, then, is a feature of certain activities which percipient animals can perform. . . . Consciousness is not a state that makes these activites possible, or a qualification of the subject who can perform them.
Word games! Yes it is: see definitions below.
per·cip·i·ent
pərˈsipēənt/
adjective
1.
(of a person) having a good understanding of things; perceptive.
"he is a percipient interpreter of the public mood"
noun
1.
(esp. in philosophy or with reference to psychic phenomena) a person who is able to perceive things.
per·ceive
pərˈsēv/
verb
1.
become aware or conscious of (something); come to realize or understand.
"his mouth fell open as he perceived the truth"
synonyms: discern, recognize, become aware of, see, distinguish, realize, grasp,understand, take in, make out, find, identify, hit on, comprehend,apprehend, appreciate, sense, divine; More
2.
interpret or look on (someone or something) in a particular way; regard as.
"if Guy does not perceive himself as disabled, nobody else should"
* At the outset, Korsgaard emphasizes that she's approaching these issues in a "practical" rather than a "metaphysical" way.
- What does she mean by that distinction?
p. 169. First, there is the raw necessity of eliminating conflict among your various motives. . . . You are a unified person at any given time because you must act, and you have only one body with which to act.
p. 169. The second element of the pragmatic unity is the unity implicit in the standpoint from which you deliberate and choose. . . . Instead it is a practical necessity imposed upon you by the nature of the deliberative standpoint.
p. 172. Obviously, a state is not a deep metaphysical entity underlying a nation, but rather something a nation can make of itself.
The implication here is that things I cannot change (I am half Mexican half Scottish) are "metaphysical." Things I can change (I am a Robles not a McCourtie) are "practical."
- How does she think the two are related?
(Is there a useful similarity here to Schechtman's distinction between "basic" and "subtle" survival? How so, and/or how not?)
p. 172. The main point of the argument is this: a focus on agency makes more sense of the notion of personal identity than a focus on experience.
Yes. "basic" survival is irrelevant. "subtle" is what matters for identity.
* Finally, it will be important for me (with your help!) to save at least a few minutes to set up the transition from this first chunk of material and the issues of "personal identity" to the next chunk of material and the issues of "the self."
p. 172. We have a state only where these citizens have constituted themselves into a single agent.
p. 173. . . . even when interrupted by deep sleep or anesthesia.
6 Fission and the Focus of One's Life by Peter Unger
p. 186. Having already fissioned, and lost much of my life's focus, I have already benefited, somewhat, as regards the awfulness of this pain that will soon occur. But, as each of their lives is fully focused, and will remain so, there is nothing here to reduce, for them, the awfulness of the protracted pain that soon will begin to occur.
No. There has not been a definition of the fission process: notwithstanding that to the contrary it seems that the original person must either have ceased to exist or become on of the fission products. Who is the being with the "loss of focus?"
I did not read all of this chapter. Perhaps I am missing something in the (missing) definition of "fission," but the whole discussion seems nonsensical. Could there be a reason Mitch did not assign this chapter?
7 Surviving Matters by Ernest Sosa
p. 200. What we can retain, which remains intrinsically important for Parfit, is the appropriate causal relation that links together the stages of a life so long as it does not branch.
p. 207. What one wants for such future stages relative to one's present stages would seem to be primarily high quality of line and not necessarily either (a) casual derivation, or (be) similarity).
p. 207. B Main arguments against survival
p. 212. If so, there seems little merit in fearing such an outcome.
I could not disagree more: there are many things in my life (intimacy with my wife, etc.) that I would not care to share with a copy, who would begin to become a different person as soon as we had different experiences. Sosa gets this:
p. 214. But the basic pattern is ubiquitous: consider marriage, and all sorts of competitions an prizes.)
8 Fission Rejuvenation by Raymond Martin
p. 216. However, the fate of the remaining third-phase development, the revolutionary idea that identity is not what matters in survival, still hangs in the balance.
The scenario on p. 218 would have the advantage that I would "know then" (at age 20) what I know now (at age 75). I (age 65) am trying to imagine what it would be like to be dumped into a 20-year-old body ten years from now: I see some hazards. (See p. 229.)
9 Emphatic Access: The Missing Ingredient in Personal Identity by Marya Schechtman
Schechtman is working within a framework that accepts that some sort of psychological relatedness is what underlies identity/survival. She considers and rejects two versions of that approach: one based on psychological continuity (a la Parfit and Lewis), and one based on "narrative." We haven’t read any narrative theorists, but you should accept her discussion of that view as fair and accurate.
p. 239. With respect to the intuitions generated by these thought experiments, I claim, both psychological continuity theories and narrative view leave out a necessary ingredient which I call "emphatic access."
p. 244. Psychological change is thus survivable on this view as long as there is a coherent narrative of change which makes the latter psychological configuration the heir of the former.
p. 250. Things are even clearer if we look at religious conversion, which is frequently cited as a case of identity-threatening psychological change.
p. 257. My suggestion - although I cannot fully develop of defend it here - is that the most satisfying view of personal identity will be a combination of narrative view with empathic access.
As I mentioned yesterday, I think that we need to begin by considering Schechtman's notion of "subtle survival." Consider something she says on p. 253: "What I want in survival is that I be represented in the right way in the future." You might well agree that that's *one* thing we (appropriately) want. The question for us is: is *that* really what makes the most *important* difference, a difference akin to the difference between life and death?
Is there a classics major in class? What about "empathic access" in Sophocles' Ajax and Philoctetes?
10 Human Concerns without Superlative Selves by Mark Johnson
p. 261. The minimalist has it that such metaphysical pictures are mostly theoretical epiphenomena; that is, although ordinary practitioners may naturally be led to adopt such pictures as a result of their practices and perhaps a little philosophical prompting, the pictures have relatively little impact on the practices themselves.
I lost intertest in this chapter and did not finish it.
11 The Unimportance of Identity by Derek Parfit
p. 293. But, when philosophers discuss identity, it is numerical identity they mean.
p. 296. Though persons are distinct from their bodies, and from any series of mental events, they are not independent or separately existing entities.
p. 300. I conclude that in all cases, if we know the other facts, we should regard questions about our identity as merely questions about language.
The argument on p. 309 breads down on the simple fact that, after a body transplant, it would still be me. See the movie "Change of Mind" (1969). Parfit responds to my objection, very well, on the next few pages.
12 The Argument for Animalism by Eric T. Olsen
13 The Self by Galen Strawson
p. 351. It is also a feature of severe depression, in which one may experience 'depersonalization.'
We read part of this in a Metaphysics class focused on self, identity and free will that I sat in on at Whitman College. I finally got around to finishing it. The class by the way was a great experience.
The forty-ninth book I have finished this year.
p. 19. Moreover, there is in each human form just one substantial form, the rational soul, which, as a substantial, is the same in all humans. (Thomas Aquinas)
This is pure (imago dei) Stoicism, and part of the Stoic heritage that Christianity arrogated.
p. 19. There is a theme in Aquinas that bears on debates in our own time about the morality of human abortion.
p. 20. What this means is, first, that the rational soul arrives relatively late in the process of the development of the human embryo, and second, that prior to its arrival, the embryo has no human soul and no soul of any kind that is capable of surviving bodily death. . . . In fact, technically speaking, it is not even human.
John Locke (1632 - 1704)
p. 31. But let him once find himself conscious of any of the actions of Nestor, he then finds himself the same person with Nestor.
This is - I think? - the aspect of John Lock that has been interpreted as his claiming we are the sum of our memories, and that got him pilloried by the Scriblerians?
p. 35. So that self is not determined by the identity or diversity of substance, which it cannot be sure of but only by identity of consciousness.
p. 37. In general, when Locke used the phrase "is conscious of", in the context of talking about personal identity over time, he meant "remembers".
Samuel Clarke (1675 - 1729) and Anthony Collins (1676 - 1729)
Clarke (on p. 41) richly anticipates the Star Trek "transporter."
Joseph Butler (1692 - 1752)
p. 44. Butler's death, in 1752, marks the end of an era in which religion dominated the philosophy of human nature.
This folks marks the end of the Middle Ages, a process that took ~ 100 years.
David Hume (1711-1776)
p. 47. In claiming that , "without breach of the propriety of language, " we might regard the two churches as the same church even if the first was of brick and second "of free-stone," he added the caveat, " but we must observe, that in these cases the first object is in manner annihilated before the second comes into existence; by which means, we are never presented in any one point of time with the idea of difference and multiplicity; and for that reason are less scrupulous in calling them the same."
This just is the "transporter problem." Captain Kirk is able to have people "transported" through solid rock: matter is not being transmitted. You step into the transporter, and are digitally copied and destroyed. At the other end, you(?) are reconstituted with the same memories. Would you step in?
Thomas Reid(1710-1796)
p. 48. But whereas he assumed that the need for substance is an argument for immaterial substance, actually, so far as his argument goes, it shows at most only the need for substance of some sort.
p. 49. That which has ceased to exist cannot be the same with that which afterwards begins to exist.
William Hazlitt (1778-1830)
p. 54. . . . Hazlitt reads more like one of our contemporaries than any of his predecessors.
p. 55 - 56. He claimed that such considerations provide a basis for founding morality not on self-interest, which he regarded as an "artificial" value, but on the natural concern people have to seek happiness and avoid unhappiness, regardless of whose it is.
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)
p. 60. In other words, the world as it exists in itself - the noumenal world - is neither spatially nor temporally extended, whereas the world that we experience - the phenomenal world - is both.
William James (1842-1910)
p. 64. The line between me and mine is difficult to draw. We feel and act about certain things that are out very much as we feel an act about ourselves. Our fame, our children, the work of our hands, may be as dear to us as our bodies are, and arouse the same feelings and the same acts of reprisal if attached. An our bodies themselves, are they simply ours, or are they us?
1 The Self and the Future by Bernard Williams
2 Personal Identity through Time by Robert Nozick
p. 108. The closest continuer theory is the best Parmenides can do in an almost Heraclitean world.
p. 109. Is temporal overlap a koan for philosophers?
p. 109.
mo·nad (mnd)
n.
1. Philosophy An indivisible, impenetrable unit of substance viewed as the basic constituent element of physical reality in the metaphysics of Leibniz.
2. Biology A single-celled microorganism, especially a flagellate protozoan of the genus Monas.
3. Chemistry An atom or a radical with valence 1.
[Latin monas, monad-, unit, from Greek, from monos, single; see men-4 in Indo-European roots.]
mo·nadic (m-ndk), mo·nadi·cal adj.
mo·nadi·cal·ly adv.
monad·ism n.
p. 112. The alternative to a closest continuer schema is Heraclitean flux, down through all levels. If it becomes legitimate, because necessary, to use the schema at some level, then why not simply begin with it?
3 Why Our Identity is Not What Matters by Derek Parfit
p. 116. To seek what is "logically required" for sameness of person under unprecedented circumstances is to suggest that words have some logical force beyond what our past needs have invested them with.
p. 118. As I shall argue later, being destroyed and Replicated is about as good as ordinary survival. [. . .]
p. 118. Physcialists could accept the Psychological Criterion.
p. 119. A person is a separately existing entity, distinct from his brain and body, and his experiences. . . . But this view claims that, thought we are not separately existing entities, personal identity is a further fact, which does not just consist in physical and / or psychological continuity.
p. 122. It might be objected that my description ignores 'the necessary unity of consciousness'. But I have not ignored this alleged necessity. I have denied it.
p. 124. We cannot explain these two unities by claiming that all of these experiences are being had by me at this time.
4 Survival and Identity by David Lewis
From Mitch:
(1) Identity is about persons existing across time, while relatedness is about "person-stages" at different times. So, they're talking about different things. Ordinarily, they clearly match up: the existence of a person across time is easily seen as a set of person-stages that are closely related to each other. In some cases, like division/fission and fusion, they *seem* to diverge. But we can use some of the technicalities to rework the two claims so that they do match up.
(2) The key to doing that is to recognize that a single person-stage can actually be a part of more than one person. But...how could THAT be? Well, read the article to see his explanation, as well as how he thinks this approach can solve some other puzzle-cases -- then we'll talk about it tomorrow and see if his views are convincing!
p. 144. I answer, along with many others: what matters in survival is mental continuity and connectedness. . . . My total present mental state should be but one momentary stage in a continuing succession of mental states.
Does this mean "continuous" or "continual?" What if I am transported (destroyed and reconstituted) while asleep and do not realize it?
p. 144. Change should be gradual rather than sudden, and (at least in some respects) there should not be too much change overall.
Aging? Radical prostatectomy?
p. 145. What matters in survival is survival.
Being transported while asleep fails this test. Survival is like pornography: I will know it when I see it.
p. 145. What matters in survival is identity.
Does sleep or anesthesia eliminate the difference between "identity" and "person-stages?"
Survival must equal identity to reconcile?
p. 151. A further premise is needed that partial overlap of continuant persons is impossible.
p. 155. This completes my discussion of fission and fusion. To summarize: if the R-relation is the I-relation, and in particular if continuant persons are maximal R-interrelated aggregates of person-stages, then cases of fission and fusion must be treated as cases of stage-sharing between different, partially overlapping continuant persons. If so, the R-relations and the I-relation are alike intransitive, so there is no discrepancy on that score. If it is granted that we may count continuant persons by tensed identity, then this treatment does not conflict with our opinion that in fission one person becomes two; nor with our opinion (it if really is our opinion that in fission one person becomes two; nor with our opinion (if that really is our opinion) that in fusion two persons become one.
5 Personal Identity and the Unity of Agency: A Kantian Response to Parfit by Christine M. Korsgaard
* The conclusion that Korsgaard reaches at the end is that personal identity is a matter of "authorial psychological connectedness." Let's work backwards from there:
- What does she mean by that phrase?
p. 170. In choosing our careers, and pursuing our friendships and family lives, we both presuppose and construct a continuity of identity and agency.
- How would it apply to some of the examples and puzzle-cases that we've been considering?
p. 170. . . . the body which makes you one agent now persists over time, . . .
p. 171. The unity of our life is forced upon us, although not deeply, by our shared embodiment, together with our desire to carry on long-term plans and relationships.
- How does it compare to the views of our other authors, especially Schechtman and Parfit?
"authorial psychological connectedness" seems very much like "empathic access."
* Leading up to that conclusion, Korsgaard sketches a view of personhood itself (not always exactly in those terms).
- What is that view?
p. 172. And when a group of psychological functions occupy the same human body, they have an even more imperative need to become a unified person.
p. 172. My argument supports a physical criterion of identity, but only a conditional one.
- How does Korsgaard see the issues of personhood and personal identity as relating to each other?
p. 174. Consciousness, then, is a feature of certain activities which percipient animals can perform. . . . Consciousness is not a state that makes these activites possible, or a qualification of the subject who can perform them.
Word games! Yes it is: see definitions below.
per·cip·i·ent
pərˈsipēənt/
adjective
1.
(of a person) having a good understanding of things; perceptive.
"he is a percipient interpreter of the public mood"
noun
1.
(esp. in philosophy or with reference to psychic phenomena) a person who is able to perceive things.
per·ceive
pərˈsēv/
verb
1.
become aware or conscious of (something); come to realize or understand.
"his mouth fell open as he perceived the truth"
synonyms: discern, recognize, become aware of, see, distinguish, realize, grasp,understand, take in, make out, find, identify, hit on, comprehend,apprehend, appreciate, sense, divine; More
2.
interpret or look on (someone or something) in a particular way; regard as.
"if Guy does not perceive himself as disabled, nobody else should"
* At the outset, Korsgaard emphasizes that she's approaching these issues in a "practical" rather than a "metaphysical" way.
- What does she mean by that distinction?
p. 169. First, there is the raw necessity of eliminating conflict among your various motives. . . . You are a unified person at any given time because you must act, and you have only one body with which to act.
p. 169. The second element of the pragmatic unity is the unity implicit in the standpoint from which you deliberate and choose. . . . Instead it is a practical necessity imposed upon you by the nature of the deliberative standpoint.
p. 172. Obviously, a state is not a deep metaphysical entity underlying a nation, but rather something a nation can make of itself.
The implication here is that things I cannot change (I am half Mexican half Scottish) are "metaphysical." Things I can change (I am a Robles not a McCourtie) are "practical."
- How does she think the two are related?
(Is there a useful similarity here to Schechtman's distinction between "basic" and "subtle" survival? How so, and/or how not?)
p. 172. The main point of the argument is this: a focus on agency makes more sense of the notion of personal identity than a focus on experience.
Yes. "basic" survival is irrelevant. "subtle" is what matters for identity.
* Finally, it will be important for me (with your help!) to save at least a few minutes to set up the transition from this first chunk of material and the issues of "personal identity" to the next chunk of material and the issues of "the self."
p. 172. We have a state only where these citizens have constituted themselves into a single agent.
p. 173. . . . even when interrupted by deep sleep or anesthesia.
6 Fission and the Focus of One's Life by Peter Unger
p. 186. Having already fissioned, and lost much of my life's focus, I have already benefited, somewhat, as regards the awfulness of this pain that will soon occur. But, as each of their lives is fully focused, and will remain so, there is nothing here to reduce, for them, the awfulness of the protracted pain that soon will begin to occur.
No. There has not been a definition of the fission process: notwithstanding that to the contrary it seems that the original person must either have ceased to exist or become on of the fission products. Who is the being with the "loss of focus?"
I did not read all of this chapter. Perhaps I am missing something in the (missing) definition of "fission," but the whole discussion seems nonsensical. Could there be a reason Mitch did not assign this chapter?
7 Surviving Matters by Ernest Sosa
p. 200. What we can retain, which remains intrinsically important for Parfit, is the appropriate causal relation that links together the stages of a life so long as it does not branch.
p. 207. What one wants for such future stages relative to one's present stages would seem to be primarily high quality of line and not necessarily either (a) casual derivation, or (be) similarity).
p. 207. B Main arguments against survival
p. 212. If so, there seems little merit in fearing such an outcome.
I could not disagree more: there are many things in my life (intimacy with my wife, etc.) that I would not care to share with a copy, who would begin to become a different person as soon as we had different experiences. Sosa gets this:
p. 214. But the basic pattern is ubiquitous: consider marriage, and all sorts of competitions an prizes.)
8 Fission Rejuvenation by Raymond Martin
p. 216. However, the fate of the remaining third-phase development, the revolutionary idea that identity is not what matters in survival, still hangs in the balance.
The scenario on p. 218 would have the advantage that I would "know then" (at age 20) what I know now (at age 75). I (age 65) am trying to imagine what it would be like to be dumped into a 20-year-old body ten years from now: I see some hazards. (See p. 229.)
9 Emphatic Access: The Missing Ingredient in Personal Identity by Marya Schechtman
Schechtman is working within a framework that accepts that some sort of psychological relatedness is what underlies identity/survival. She considers and rejects two versions of that approach: one based on psychological continuity (a la Parfit and Lewis), and one based on "narrative." We haven’t read any narrative theorists, but you should accept her discussion of that view as fair and accurate.
p. 239. With respect to the intuitions generated by these thought experiments, I claim, both psychological continuity theories and narrative view leave out a necessary ingredient which I call "emphatic access."
p. 244. Psychological change is thus survivable on this view as long as there is a coherent narrative of change which makes the latter psychological configuration the heir of the former.
p. 250. Things are even clearer if we look at religious conversion, which is frequently cited as a case of identity-threatening psychological change.
p. 257. My suggestion - although I cannot fully develop of defend it here - is that the most satisfying view of personal identity will be a combination of narrative view with empathic access.
As I mentioned yesterday, I think that we need to begin by considering Schechtman's notion of "subtle survival." Consider something she says on p. 253: "What I want in survival is that I be represented in the right way in the future." You might well agree that that's *one* thing we (appropriately) want. The question for us is: is *that* really what makes the most *important* difference, a difference akin to the difference between life and death?
Is there a classics major in class? What about "empathic access" in Sophocles' Ajax and Philoctetes?
10 Human Concerns without Superlative Selves by Mark Johnson
p. 261. The minimalist has it that such metaphysical pictures are mostly theoretical epiphenomena; that is, although ordinary practitioners may naturally be led to adopt such pictures as a result of their practices and perhaps a little philosophical prompting, the pictures have relatively little impact on the practices themselves.
I lost intertest in this chapter and did not finish it.
11 The Unimportance of Identity by Derek Parfit
p. 293. But, when philosophers discuss identity, it is numerical identity they mean.
p. 296. Though persons are distinct from their bodies, and from any series of mental events, they are not independent or separately existing entities.
p. 300. I conclude that in all cases, if we know the other facts, we should regard questions about our identity as merely questions about language.
The argument on p. 309 breads down on the simple fact that, after a body transplant, it would still be me. See the movie "Change of Mind" (1969). Parfit responds to my objection, very well, on the next few pages.
12 The Argument for Animalism by Eric T. Olsen
13 The Self by Galen Strawson
p. 351. It is also a feature of severe depression, in which one may experience 'depersonalization.'
December 20, 2024
A fantastic volume collecting some of the most important papers on personal identity in analytic philosophy. Martin and Barresi clearly put a lot of though into the selection of texts. The papers selected aren't all of the same quality. Many, including Bernard Williams', Robert Nozick's, Derek Parfit's, David Lewis', and Christine Korsgaard's, are excellent. However, others, like Peter Unger's, Ernest Sosa's, and Marya Schectman's, are quite poor. What's important, though, is that the papers respond to each other and build on each other in such a way as to provide a thorough overview of the relevant debates. A great resource for anyone interested in the philosophy of personal identity.
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