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Personal Identity

Causality

(Text as at 14/08/2009 12:53:17)

*** THIS IS NOT THE LATEST VERSION OF THIS NOTE ***

I’ve no idea what to make of a remark that made up previous versions of this Note: “Consider “internal change¹” versus “externally-imposed change”, and why some externally-imposed changes preserve² the person³, while others don’t.”

Causality (or Causation) is, however, important in determining which changes⁴ are identity-preserving and which aren’t. There has to be the right kind of causal connection between A and B for A=B. This is sometimes given as an objection to Teletransportation⁵ TEs⁶ - the causal connection between the pre- and post-teletransportation individuals isn’t of the right sort.

Similar objections are sometimes raised in response to tinkering with organisms – for instance siliconisation⁷, brain transplants⁸ and such like. The causal connection between successive states of the supposed same organism isn’t sufficient to preserve identity. Also, memories⁹ sometimes feature – fiddling with or implanting memories doesn’t have the right causal connection to make them my memories, even though they might seem so to me.

This Note is mostly a place-holder¹⁰. See the (rather bloated) categorised reading-list below.