Persons

One of the classic debates in metaphysics concerns what it is

for me to survive from one time to another.

This is known as ‘identity over time’ or ‘diachronic identity’.

A strict way of formulating this question is to demand the

completion of the following statement:

Necessarily, if x is a human person at time 1, and y exists at

another time 2, x = y if and only if…
 Persons
So note that in that formulation, we take the being at one
point at time to be a person.

But what is a person?

We have Aristotle’s view that man is ‘the rational animal’ but

this defines humans, and a person may not be a human.

Most philosophers tend to find John Locke’s characterisations

fairly plausible…
 Locke’s Account
A person is… “a thinking intelligent being, that has reason and
reflection, and can consider itself as itself, the same thinking thing
in different times and places; which it does only by that
consciousness which is inseparable from thinking, and, as it seems
to me, essential to it... For since consciousness always accompanies
thinking, and it is that which makes every one to be what he calls
self, and thereby distinguishes himself from all other thinking
things; in this alone consists personal identity, i.e. the sameness of
a rational being

An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 1694

'Of Identity and Diversity' (Ch. 27, Book II)
 Implication
Now if we suppose that a person is a self-conscious thing we
should still be careful concerning whether a person is a property
(technical term ‘phase sortal’) or a substance.

Where this gets clear is when asking whether I could survive the
loss of personal characteristics. For instance, do I still exist if I fall
into a persistent vegetative state?

People disagree on this vital question.

Today we are going to focus on a view that would deny your

survival in this case: the psychological continuity view.
 Psychological Continuity
Certain thought experiments tend to motivate our views on
personal identity.

Suppose your brain were transplanted into my head. Put

question beggingly- ‘you’ would wake up in a new body, and
find that ‘you’ now have radically different physical qualities.

Or imagine a ‘teleportation’ machine that records the entire

informational state of your brain.

This information is then transmitted far away, and used to

construct a being from new atoms. This new being may well
think it is you.
 Psychological Continuity
But maybe a brain transplant is like a liver transplant. It simply
moves a special organ from one person to another.

That is, you would lose of your thoughts and abilities, while I
would suddenly know my way around your house and
remember your childhood.

Similarly, in the teleportation case, a new being may simply

acquire certain new psychological properties. You have not
transported to his or her body.
 Psychological Continuity
People who think they move with the psychology adopt the
psychological continuity view.

This view was originally proposed by Locke, and became

dominant in Western philosophy by the mid 20th century.

It is notoriously difficult however, to get from the basic

conviction of psychological continuity to a clear definition of
persistence.
 Memory
What psychological relation might persistence consist in?

The simplest view of psychological continuity appeals to

memory:
A being existing at another time is you if and only if you can
now remember an experience she had then, or she can then
remember an experience you are having now.

Or more technically:
A person P1 who exists at t1 is identical to a person P2 who
exists at a later time t2 if and only if P2 at t2 remembers any
of the thoughts or actions of P1 at t1.
 Circularity
Joseph Butler objected as follows:

“… one should really think it self-evident, that consciousness

of personal identity presupposes, and therefore cannot
constitute, personal identity, any more than knowledge, in any
other case, can constitute truth, which it presupposes.”
Butler, The Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, 1736

That is, it only counts as ‘memory’ if it belongs to the person

who experienced the event.

So if memory presupposes personal identity, it is circular to

analyse personal identity in terms of memory.
 Quasi Memory
Sydney Shoemaker (1970) gives us a more careful way to
express the memory criterion:

You have a quasi-memory of a past experience iff:

1. you seem to remember having an experience,
2. someone did have this experience, and
3. your apparent memory is causally dependent, in the right
kind of way, on that past experience.

You then remember the past experience iff you are identical to
the person who had the experience
 Thomas Reid
However, Reid showed in the 18th century that the memory
criterion is logically inconsistent.

“Suppose a brave officer to have been flogged when a boy

at school for robbing an orchard, to have taken a standard
from the enemy in his first campaign, and to have been
made a general in advanced life; suppose, also… that, when
he took the standard, he was conscious of his having been
flogged at school, and that, when made a general, he was
conscious of his taking the standard, but had absolutely lost
the consciousness of his flogging.”
 Transitivity
By the simple memory criterion, the young thief is the brave
officer, the old general is the brave officer, but the general is
not the young thief.

Identity is a transitive relation. If a = b, and b = c, then a = c.

Yet memory continuity is not.
 Indirect Connections
We could fix this problem by switching from direct to indirect
memory connections.

That is, the old general is the young thief, because he can
remember experience he had at a time when he could
remember being the thief.

However, even this won’t fix all problems.

There are times in my past that I can’t remember at all. E.g. I

cannot recall anything that happened to me while I was asleep
last night and not dreaming.
 Connectedness
To solve these problems, Shoemaker explains the
psychological relation in terms of causal dependence.

He defines two notions: psychological connectedness and

psychological continuity.

Psychological connectedness: I am in the psychological states I

am now, in large part because of the psychological states the
past person was in then.

That is, I directly inherit my memories, preferences, intentions

from this past person.
 Continuity
Connectedness resolves the sleep problem because we can
still say that I have my capacities and preferences while I am
asleep.

However, connectedness doesn’t resolve Reid’s problem. The

old general has not directly inherited the young thief’s
experiences and preferences.

Instead he is psychologically continuous.

The general is psychologically continuous with the boy

because there is a causal chain of psychological connections.
 Causal Dependence
This leaves open what sort of causal dependence it takes for
there to be psychological continuity.

Suppose my lecture is so persuasive that your beliefs about

metaphysics are caused by my earlier beliefs. Does this count
as psychological continuity??

If not, what is the right sort of causal dependence?

We seem to have the right sort in the brain transplant case at

least. The transplant recipient seems to end up with the very
psychological states the donor had.
 Teleportation
It is less clear in the teleportation case (new atoms).

Captain Kirk coming out of the transporter derives his states

from the pre-transporter Kirk.

But these states are not continuously present in Kirk’s brain.

The chain goes via the transporter machinery.

Similarly in the case of Christian resurrection, the person’s

mental states go via the mind of God.

There should be a difference between bringing someone back

to life and simply creating a replica.
 Branching
A more serious worry for the psychological continuity view is
raised by what are known as branching cases.

First, it has generally been accepted that transplanting a

cerebrum could maintain psychological continuity

Second, people can survive hemispherectomies- a procedure

sometimes used to treat otherwise inoperable brain tumours.

So what if both halves of your cerebrum were transplanted

into new heads?
 Branching
There seem to be four options here:
1. You persist as both Lefty and Righty.
2. You persist only as Lefty.
3. You persist only as Righty.
4. You no longer exist, as either Lefty or Righty.

Now both Lefty and Righty are psychologically continuous with

you.

But they are not numerically identical to each other. One thing
cannot be numerically identical with two things.
 Branching
Suppose we were to simply say that one of them was you but
not the other.

This sounds arbitrary, but maybe you can reject the demand
to explain why.

Still, this would mean abandoning the psychological continuity

view.

Instead, could you be partly Lefty and partly Righty? It sounds

ok, but what does it mean?
 Non-Branching
Shoemaker says that neither Lefty nor Righty is you. They both
come into existence when your cerebrum is divided.

Shoemaker stipulates that you are identical with a future

being if that being is psychological continuous AND there’s no
branching.

So suppose I cease to exist in the branching case, but then one

of the offshoots dies. Have I started to exist again?

We might deny this by stipulating that no one else either then,

or at any intermediate time, can be psychologically continuous
with you.
 Non-Branching
Van Inwagen calls the non-branching condition an ‘epicycle’ in
Shoemaker’s view- a kind of posthoc fix.

It has the surprising consequence that if one hemisphere is

transplanted, you survive. But if both are, you cease to exist.

We would expect that if survival depends on the functioning

your brain, the more preserved the better.

Consider: from a self-interested perspective, would you prefer

one hemisphere to be destroyed?
 Extrinsic Relations
Indeed, note that you die if one of your hemispheres is
transplanted and the other is left in place!

So note the non-branching view denies that persistence is

determined solely by causal and spatiotemporal relations
between the earlier being and later one.

Now you are dependent on things outside the region in which

the body exists, and the transplanted brain exists.

How could things happening outside this region make any

difference to what goes on within it? There is no force
exerted.
 A Different Reply
Considerations like these have lead Derek Parfit to argue that
we don’t really want to continue existing.

Parfit: “Identity is a one-one relation. So any criterion of

identity must appeal to a relation which is logically one-one.
Psychological continuity is not logically one-one. So it cannot
provide a criterion. Some writers have replied that it is enough
if the relation appealed to is always in fact one-one. I suggest
a slightly different reply. Psychological continuity is a ground
for speaking of identity when it is one-one. If psychological
continuity took a one-many or branching form, we should
need, I have argued, to abandon the language of identity.”
 What Matters
Suppose we are facing a choice whether to keep both halves,
destroy one, or destroy both.

On Shoemaker’s non-branching view, to prefer the

preservation of both halves is to prefer death over continued
existence.

Still, though you die in the 2-sided case, it’s not nearly as bad
as dying in the ordinary way.

Thus Parfit concludes that strict personal identity isn’t what is

important.
 What Matters
Suppose you are told that whoever wakes up from the
operation will be in terrible pain unless you pay a large sum
for morphine.

Suppose you are completely selfish. Would you be less willing

to pay the same money for both people in the 2-sided case,
than the same money for a 1 sided case?

If not, Parfit concludes, you can have an entirely selfish reason

to care about someone other than you.
 What Matters
This suggests, as Parfit puts it, that identity doesn’t matter.

The reason you care about what happens to you tomorrow is

not that the person is you.

What does matter then, if not identity? Parfit says it’s

psychological continuity (generously construed).

That is, you want there to be someone psychologically

continuous with you, whether or not he/she is you.
 Gradual Change
Parfit bolsters his claim with various thought experiments
designed to show gradual change in identity.

These include:
immortal beings who gradually change all their psychological
features.

Beings that fission and fuse repeatedly.

Beings that have their psychology gradually replaced with that

of another.