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Write-up₁ (as at 06/07/2023 00:43:12): Unity of the Person

Plug Note²

• Thesis Text:
  1. There’s a presumption in the philosophy of personal identity that the person³ is a single well-defined individual. This is probably a hang-over from the days of Cartesian⁴ Dualism⁵ or when it was assumed that each of us had an indivisible Soul⁶. Nevertheless, this, depending on what the referent of person⁷ is supposed to be, can seem (and maybe is) quite sensible.
  2. However this unity has been disputed – for instance in the different interpretations of Multiple Personality Disorder (PMD⁸):-
     1. Supporters of the Psychological View⁹ argue that cases of MPD¹⁰ show that there can be multiple persons sharing the same body. This assumes that a person is some sort of well-integrated personality, no part of which is shut off from the rest (as is allegedly – though doubtfully – the case in MPD¹¹). So – on this view – each of the multiple personalities¹² is deemed to be a separate person¹³, and so (it is said) the person cannot be identical to the human being¹⁴ that houses it. Of course, any idea of integration ought to have gone out when Freud came in.
     2. However, animalists¹⁵ (and others) would argue that this is all a mis-description, and that all we have is a fragmented self¹⁶ (as is implied – maybe – in the current terminology – Dissociative Identity Disorder), or some other cognitive disorder¹⁷ within a single human animal¹⁸ (to which the title “person” is properly addressed, they say, though only in the sense of a phase sortal¹⁹).
  3. Lynne Rudder Baker²⁰ – a proponent of the Constitution View²¹ – (CV) claims (fairly plausibly) that each of us²² is individuated by a First Person Perspective²³ (FPP). According to the CV, we – the persons – are separate from our bodies, but form a unity with them. In the case of your fission²⁴, she thinks (implausibly) that there would be a fact of the matter (somehow), as to which of the two fission products received your FPP²⁵. You would just know. Well, you wouldn’t, unless there was continuity of consciousness²⁶ throughout the process of fission, as I argue under the topic of the Reduplication Objections²⁷.
  4. This intuition that the person is a unity is referred to as the Unity Reaction in "Blackburn (Simon) - Has Kant Refuted Parfit?" and some other works.
  5. I suppose there could be some discussion of the doctrine of Divine Unity within a Trinitarian framework, but I’ll treat this as out of scope, and probably incoherent.

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  Further Remarks:
  1. This topic overlaps on various related ones which don’t have their own Notes, and so are covered by this one, and I’ve included items related to them in the reading lists below:-
     1. Psychological Unity, and
     2. Unity of Consciousness₂₈
     3. Unity of Bodies, and related matters
        
  2. Topics with their own Notes, and therefore excluded from the reading lists below include:-
     1. Cartesian Ego²⁹
     2. Commissurotomy³⁰
     3. Consciousness³¹
     4. Counting Persons³²
     5. Logic of Identity³³
     6. Multiple Personality Disorder³⁴