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Personal Identity
Thesis - Chapter 10 (Thought Experiments)
(Text as at 05/04/2016 23:19:41)
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Abstract
- Any account of personal identity needs to give an account of what is going on in the various thought experiments that have been thought relevant to the topic. It’s also the area that’s most fun. Indeed, I think that the entire Thesis will be an exercise in inference to the best explanation. It needs to account for our intuitions (if there is a universal response) or explain them away as confused. I will firstly briefly consider the propriety of using thought experiments in this domain of enquiry, and then consider the usual suspects, including the following:-
- Fission
- Fusion
- Replication
- Commissurotomy1
- Multiple Personality Disorder2
- Brain-state Transfer
- Brain Transplants3
- Teletransportation
- Siliconisation
- Transhumanism
Research Methodology
- Follow this Link4 for a generic statement of how I intend to pursue each Chapter.
- The method is broken down into 12, possibly iterative, stages.
- Follow this Link5 for my progress dashboard on these tasks.
Chapter Introduction
- To be supplied.
Main Text
- To be supplied.
Links to Books / Papers to be Addressed6
- In this Chapter I will consider the following papers or book chapters (together with some others referenced by these). There are doubtless many more that are relevant and which will be addressed in the course of the thesis, but these are probably sufficient to get us going.
- I have segregated the papers by sub-topic, but some would fit into more than one category.
- Theory
- "Baillie (James) - Methodology Matters", Baillie
- "Brennan (Andrew) - Personal Identity and Personal Survival", Brennan
- "Brook (J.A.) - Imagination, Possibility, and Personal Identity", Brook
- "Brown (James Robert) & Fehige (Yiftach) - Thought Experiments", Brown
- "Cohnitz (Daniel) - Personal Identity and the Methodology of Imaginary Cases", Cohnitz
- "Gale (Richard) - On Some Pernicious Thought-Experiments", Gale
- "Harris (Henry) - An Experimentalist Looks at Identity", Harris
- "James (Susan) - Feminism in Philosophy of Mind: The Question of Personal Identity", James
- "Papineau (David) - The Importance of Philosophical Intuition", Papineau
- "Sorensen (Roy) - Thought Experiments", Sorensen
- "Wilkes (Kathleen) - Real People: Personal Identity Without Thought Experiments", Wilkes
- "Wilson (Jack) - Beyond Horses and Oak Trees: A New Theory of Individuation for Living Entities" (Section 4), Wilson
- Brain State Transfers7
- Brain Transplants
- Commissurotomy
- Fission
- "Carter (William) - Artifacts of Theseus: Fact and Fission", Carter
- "Dennett (Daniel) - Where Am I?", Dennett
- "Garrett (Brian) - Fission", Garrett
- "Martin (Raymond) - Fission Rejuvenated", Martin
- "Merricks (Trenton) - Fission and Personal Identity Over Time", Merricks
- "Nussbaum (Martha) & Sunstein (Cass R.), Eds. - Clones and Clones: Facts and Fantasies About Human Cloning", Nussbaum&Sunstein
- "Perry (John) - Can the Self Divide?", Perry
- "Roache (Rebecca) - A Defence of Quasi-Memory", Roache
- "Robinson (Denis) - Can Amoebae Divide Without Multiplying?", Robinson
- "Rovane (Carol) - Branching Self-Consciousness", Rovane
- "Unger (Peter) - Fission and the Focus of One's Life", Unger
- Fusion
- Multiple Personality Disorder
- "Braude (Stephen) - First Person Plural: Multiple Personality and the Philosophy of Mind", Braude
- "Braude (Stephen) - Multiple Personality and the Structure of the Self", Braude
- "Hilgard (Ernest R.) - Dissociative Phenomena and the Hidden Observer", Hilgard
- "Hirsch (Eli) - Divided Minds", Hirsch
- "Humphrey (Nicholas) & Dennett (Daniel) - Speaking for Our Selves: An Assessment of Multiple Personality", Humpfrey&Dennett
- "Lizza (John) - Multiple Personality and Personal Identity Revisited", Lizza
- "Radden (Jennifer) - Divided Minds and Successive Selves: Ethical Issues in Disorders of Identity and Personality", Radden
- "Wilkes (Kathleen) - Fugues, Hypnosis, and Multiple Personality", Wilkes
- "Wilkes (Kathleen) - Multiple Personality and Personal Identity", Wilkes
- Replication
- Siliconisation8
- Teletransportation
- Transhumanism10
- Many aspects of these papers will need to be either ignored or reserved for other chapters.
- The motivation for these works is as follows:-
The Cut
- There had already been a lot of cutting in the various selections of the original reading list – the reading lists attached to the Notes run on and on – and these items just represent the works in my possession (though I have sought out all that I’ve heard of that look relevant).
- However, the items in the lists following were given some attention, and have been culled – at least temporarily – from the lists above, where they originally appeared. I’ve not always given a reason as I’ve not studied them sufficiently closely. But, you have to draw a line somewhere.
- I’m well aware that the cut has not been sufficiently rigorous. Further items beyond the items below are likely to be culled when I come to process them.
Links to Notes
- Propriety of Thought Experiments13
- Principal Examples:-
Final Remarks
- This is work in progress24.
In-Page Footnotes
Footnote 1: This is more an experiment than a thought-experiment, as commissurotomies are actual.
Footnote 2:
- Again, this is – allegedly – an existent pathology rather than a TE.
- Moreover, it might be better situated in Chapter 9 (Click here for Note) as a critique of the idea of an individuating FPP.
Footnote 3: We need to distinguish Whole-Brain Transplants (WBTs) from single or double Cerebrum transplants, and these from brain-tissue transplants, which shade off into Brain State Transfers.
Footnote 6:
- See the section on Research Methodology for what is to be done with these.
- The author’s surname is repeated in the text to make it easier for me to see what’s going on in the encoded text I work on.
Footnote 7:
- There must be many more papers than the classic one by Williams (and commentaries thereon) – I just haven’t got them correctly categorised.
- Under this head should be included references to “Brain Zaps” and the like.
Footnote 8: Footnote 9:
- Tye seems to be discussing brain-partition, with silicon transceivers. But he uses Unger’s term “zippering”.
- He is indebted to Arnold Zuboff, who may be worth following up.
Footnote 10: Footnote 11: I’ve read this book, but it’s insufficiently philosophical for its arguments – such as they are – to be worth considering as a priority.
Footnote 12: Cover in the next Chapter.
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