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Personal Identity

Thesis - Chapter 01 (Introduction)

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Chapter Contents

  1. Abstract1
  2. Methodology2
  3. Introduction3
  4. Note Hierarchy4
  5. Main Text5
  6. Concluding Remarks6
  7. Links to Books / Papers to be Addressed7
  8. Works Read8
  9. Further Reading9
  10. References & Reading List

Abstract
  1. This Chapter provides a motivating statement for the study of the particular path through the topic of Personal Identity I have decided to pursue and gives a brief historical survey of the subject to situate my particular stance.
  2. Why should we care about the topic of Personal Identity? In one sense, this question of “why” hardly needs answering, as it’s just about the most important question to be posed by a reflective (if maybe self-obsessed) person.
  3. Historically, answers to the question of what Personal Identity consists in have provided – or so Locke hoped – grounds for the possibility of life after death.
  4. Yet, the question of what personal identity consists in is difficult and has had many attempted solutions offered. While some philosophers10 think there is no problem left to solve, there is no consensus as to the solution. In any case, before we can answer this question, we need to clarify it and decide what sort of beings we persons are.
  5. My favourite paradigm – in the sense of the one I think most likely to be correct, rather than necessary the one I’d like to be correct – is Animalism11. This is the claim that we are human animals and that consequently death is the end of us. This sensible – if to many disappointing – view is only supported by around 17% of philosophers, according to a 2009 poll12 with about twice as many philosophers supporting some form of psychological view13.
  6. In one sense it is just obvious that we are – in some sense of that weasel word “are” – human animals. But then the problem cases kick in – whether actual real-life cases or thought experiments (hereafter ‘TEs’) that may never be real-life possibilities.
  7. About 36% of the respondents in the aforementioned survey though we could survive teletransportation14 – though 31% thought that the result would be death.
  8. Transhumanists15 think we can be uploaded16 to computers, which makes no sense if we are animals. Or so I claim.
  9. So, how did we get to this lack of consensus?


Research Methodology

Chapter Introduction22
  1. This chapter could cover more ground than any number of PhD Theses. Its purpose is simply to prepare the ground – and clear the way – for detailed investigation of the dispute between Animalism23 and the Constitution View24, as well as to demonstrate that I do – at least to some degree – understand more of the wider question than that in the narrower focus pursued in detail later.
  2. There are many fine introductory books – and General Surveys25 – on the topic of Personal Identity, and I don’t intend to compete with them here. What I want to do is situate what I want to say in its historical context. I haven’t supplied this section with a detailed scholarly apparatus.
  3. Of course, the modern discussion of Personal Identity has been a series of footnotes to Locke26, so it’s important to understand just what Locke thought on the subject, what positive insights he had, and how – in my view – he led us all astray on the subject. One positive aspect of his thought is to stress that the topic is a Forensic27 one; it has ethical implications and motivations.
  4. Historically – and indeed presently – the majority of philosophers (and probably most ordinary people) hold to some form of Psychological View28 of personal identity. Our Psychology29 is deemed so important to us that it is (allegedly) constitutive of what we are. The Psychological Criterion30 is supposed to explain how we persist over time.
  5. We need to analyse Psychological Continuity31 in general, but the backward form falls prey to reduplication objections: multiple distinct individuals may consider themselves the psychological continuers of a single individual, but the logic of identity32 denies that this is possible. But, it’s difficult to gainsay the psychological view in the face of experiential Forward Psychological Continuity33. If it seems to me that I continue to exist during some adventure during which I’m continually conscious, it would be difficult to deny that I do; or so it seems to me.
  6. There’s a major sub-plot of the psychological view to do with Memory34, which – while admitted not to be the only psychological element of importance – has been beset with problems since Locke’s days, having been refined into quasi-memory35 to avoid begging the question. David Lewis’s Methuselah36 thought-experiment also stresses the memory-criterion.
  7. Finally, there’s the question of dreamless Sleep37. Just what happens to the persistence of the person during this period, in the absence of either the Body or the Organism defining identity?
  8. In this section, I at least briefly discuss the positions of some of the major philosophers who have held neo-Lockean views (or other views not discussed later in this thesis). This would be an endless task, and the ones chosen – Descartes38, Leibniz39, Hume40, David Lewis41 and Derek Parfit42 – are those that happen to have come up43.


Note Hierarchy
  1. General Surveys44
  2. Locke45
    1. Forensic Property46
  3. The Psychological View
    1. Psychological View47
    2. Psychology48
    3. Psychological Criterion49
    4. Memory52
    5. Sleep55
  4. Other Philosophers of Note
    1. Descartes56
    2. Kant57
    3. Leibniz58
    4. Lewis59
    5. Parfit60
    6. Wittgenstein61
See also:-
  1. My Current Stance62


Main Text: Brief historical survey of the topic of Personal Identity
  1. General Surveys63
    1. Before starting on the detail of research in Personal Identity, it is necessary to be familiar with the terrain. This involves reading some general introductory books and reading the papers in the standard collections.
    2. There are many fine introductory books on this topic, and I don’t intend to compete with them here. What I want to do is situate what I want to say in its historical context.
    3. A good place to start to survey the field is with "Olson (Eric) - Personal Identity - Oxford Bibliographies Online". I seem to have everything, more or less, on this list – though the list deals with more than general surveys.
    4. The majority of the Introductory texts64 and general surveys that treat of Personal Identity were compiled in the last century and reflect the concerns of the time, which was basically the dispute between holders of the then majority position – the Psychological View65 (PV) – and those supportive of the Body Criterion66. The latter view, which will be discussed in Chapter 267, has largely been replaced by the Biological Criterion68 (Animalism69), though the Brain Criterion70 is still somewhat popular in preserving the advantages of both the PV and the Body Criterion.
  2. Locke71
    1. Locke was responsible for setting the terms of engagement for the modern discussion of Personal Identity.
    2. It was Locke who first – or at least most famously – made the distinction between the Person72 and the ‘Man’.
    3. The ‘Man’ is these days variously cashed out as the Human Being73 or Human Animal74, though for much of the time since Locke the division has been between the Mind75 (thought of as what the person really is) and the Body76.
    4. It is occasionally claimed that philosophers prefer the mind to the body, and are naturally inclined to take the “mental” side in these debates. While that may be true, the consciousness envisaged as definitive of our identity is not that of philosophical contemplation, but the everyday sort enjoyed by cobblers and the rest of us. It includes appreciation of all things bodily, and is the ground of everything that matters77 to us.
    5. Locke was correct in saying that the term Person78 is a forensic concept79; that is, it has to do with ethical matters. He was also right to connect the topic to the then concern with Resurrection80.
    6. However, while he’s correct to distinguish the person from the “man”, I believe him to be wrong in supposing that the “person” is separable from the “man”.
    7. Rather, we81 are human beings (human animals82) who happen to have the property83 of being persons, maybe – and contentiously – only possessing that property for periods of our lives. This property cannot be transferred to some other entity or – if it can – that ‘other entity’ has undergone a change rather than becoming the new container for a mobile and ghostly entity.
    8. For Locke, the Person84 is individuated by a locus of consciousness and extends as far at that consciousness85 extends. No doubt for much of the time since Locke, this locus of consciousness was thought of as an immaterial Soul86, though Locke himself wasn’t specific that this is the case, which makes the thought experiments87 – from Locke’s ‘Prince and Cobbler’ onwards – easier to credit. However, for some time, immaterial souls have not been an option for most philosophers.
    9. All I otherwise have to say on Locke is covered by my final-year BA essay88.
  3. Forensic Property89
    1. Locke90’s recognition that there are important Forensic – that is, moral – aspects to the topic of Personal Identity is as true today as in his own day, even though we might not share his primary concern in justifying the importance of identifying the resurrected91 with the pre-mortem individuals.
    2. Animalism92 says that psychology has nothing to do with the metaphysics of our identity – in that we continue on as the same animal – if we do – irrespective of our psychological states and history. While this may be true, most of what matters93 to us in our Survival94 is psychological, and ethical, and our concerns about praise and blame, and especially punishment, remain.
    3. Also, forensic matters are central to the Concept95 of Person96, even if we are97 not – most fundamentally – persons, and Person is an honorific rather than a Substance98 term.
    4. Forensic matters are central to discussions as to whether – and if so why – all human beings99 are persons for the entirety of their lives.
    5. Finally, Animalism is especially well-motivated in considering – for forensic reasons – whether certain Non-Human Animals100 are suitable for admission to the class of Person, maybe of reduced degree101.
    6. I reject Frankfurt’s proposal (see "Frankfurt (Harry) - Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person") that wantons102 are not persons103, on the grounds that they do satisfy the other standard conditions of personhood: they satisfy rationality and linguistic conditions, have a first-person perspective104 and survival105 matters106 to them.
    7. The issue of the punishment of already-reformed or amnesiac criminals has been thought relevant to issues of personal identity, as though any reluctance to punish was tied to doubts about identity. Such doubts only reflect confusion on the purpose of punishment; it depends whether we think of punishment as reformative, retributive, a deterrent, or merely treat incarceration or execution as a necessary evil for the protection of society107 (by eliminating the source of harm).
    8. Only if we think of punishment as reformative, so there’s no point punishing the seriously repentant, might we have doubts about the propriety of carrying out the punishment. However, the reason isn’t that the criminal is a different person but that the needed reformation has already taken place.
    9. From the other perspectives, for instance the retributive, there is still a point to the punishment of the already-reformed criminal (cf. C.S. Lewis’s advice – probably in "Lewis (C.S.) - Mere Christianity" – to the converted murderer as to his Christian duty – it is “to be hanged”; presumably because this was, in Lewis’s day, his debt to the state, to which, as a good Christian, he must submit), and the temptation to provide reasons not to doesn’t arise.
    10. With respect to amnesiacs, again there’s only a reluctance to punish on the reformatory view, but again the reluctance has nothing to do with questions of identity, but of the attempt at reformation being ineffective or even counter-productive. If I’m punished for something I can’t remember doing, I’m likely to resent the authority that punishes me.
    11. There is a question of whether persons108, as distinct from human beings109, are the subjects of special moral concern, or whether it is the reverse implication – that those for whom we feel a special moral concern should be accounted persons.
    12. Whether all persons are morally equal is another matter altogether. This is relevant because if the Great Apes were to be counted as persons, of what moral status would they be? See "Rachels (James) - Morality without the Idea that Humans are Special", in "Rachels (James) - Created From Animals: The Moral Implications of Darwinism", for “Moral Individualism”, the view that difference of moral treatment should depend only on the individual’s characteristics, not their group membership, though thus baldly-stated this raises huge questions.
    13. The Great Ape Project (absurdly, it seems to me; see "Cavalieri (Paola) & Singer (Peter), Eds. - The Great Ape Project - Equality Beyond Humanity") demands moral equality between humans and the great apes, on the grounds that the latter have intellectual capabilities on a par with human 2-3 year-olds. Even human beings aren’t equal in their capacities, but we can invent a law demanding that we treat them equally, and we can enact a law extending this moral equality to encompass the great apes, or even stones, if we like. If the great apes satisfy the criteria for personhood, they are persons, but the right to equality of treatment is only loosely connected to capacities.
  4. Psychology & The Psychological View
    1. Introduction
      1. In the arguments between those supporting psychological continuity110 and connectedness111, and those preferring bodily continuity112, the question what we are113 often seems to have been forgotten. Maybe it has often been assumed that Person114 is a substance115-concept?
      2. This is still assumed by those who think that Persons – whether as Souls116 or reified First-Person Perspectives117 – are separable from the infrastructure that – in normal circumstances – “grounds” them.
      3. But, for most people these days it is – or ought to be – obvious that the default position is that “we” are human animals, and that the consequences that stem from this have to be lived with.
      4. But it is difficult not to be – and maybe correct not to be – satisfied with this. We may end up with a “Hybrid118” account: we are animals, but even so, we “go where our psychology goes”. In particular, the brain transplant119 intuition is difficult to escape from.
      5. If this is so, the answers to our questions will rest on just where our “psychology” does – or can (in the widest sense) – “go”.
      6. Transhumanists120 imagine all sorts of scenarios whereby “we” are uploaded121 to a computer. Even were this practical it assumes that “we” are our mental contents rather than the things that enjoy these contents. This strikes me as continuing a mistaken route in the history of philosophy taken by supporters of the psychological view122, and continued by Parfit123 and his supporters.
    2. The Psychological View124
      1. The Psychological View – hereafter the PV – is the view, originating with Locke125, that the matter of primary importance in matters of personal identity is psychological continuity126 (or maybe of psychological connectedness127). Indeed, this view – which was dominant until fairly recently (and maybe still is, given the Bourget & Chalmers survey) – is stronger, in saying that psychological continuity and connectedness are constitutive of Personal Identity.
      2. No-one denies that our psychology128 is important to us129, but making it constitutive of our identity has led to much confusion and paradox.
      3. I think, however, that Elselijn Kingma is incorrect in diagnosing the popularity of the PV as due to philosophers being intellectuals.
      4. The PV encourages the idea that the same human being130 may not be the same person131 throughout its life132, or that the same person may “hop” from one human being to another as has been considered in many TEs133.
      5. I wish to deny both these possibilities.
    3. Psychology134
      1. If we adopt the Psychological View135 of Personal Identity – which I don’t – then it is psychological factors that are important in determining our persistence criteria136.
      2. However, while these factors do matter137 to the survivor138, they don’t matter in the binary sense of “have I survived or not” unless we take the Psychological View139 and make such factors constitutive of personal identity. As an animalist140, I do not.
      3. Supporters of the PV141 - or even the CV142 - tend to stress the discontinuity between the psychologies of human and non-human animals143. Animalists144 tend to focus on similarities, or continuities, as an evolutionary argument for animalism145.
      4. Because Psychology is so important to us, it is important to consider just what is important in it, and how it is grounded in our brains146 and bodies147. The idea of the Embodied Mind148 is very important when we consider phantastical ideas such as Uploading149.
      5. We must consider not just memory150 but other psychological capacities, including character.
    4. Psychological Criterion151
      1. The Psychological Criterion is the use of psychological facts as a criterion of personal identity, as definitive of whether we persist or not. So (on this view) if we want to know whether a person survives or not, it’s matters of psychological continuity or connectedness that we must investigate.
      2. In general, doubts arise about whether an individual has persisted if there are too radical changes in its properties in
        1. a short space of time (failure of continuity) or
        2. over longer stretches of time (failure of connectedness).
      3. These factors can be in tension152, as had been noted since Reid’s “Brave Officer” objection to Locke’s “memory criterion”, and Lewis’s Methuselah153 case. Identity is an equivalence relation, so transitivity is expected. Yet it is not necessarily respected in the case of memory – because continuous so-called memory-identity fails to lead to connectedness over long periods of time.
      4. Another factor I have noted is that there’s a distinction between the evidential force of forward and backward psychological continuity, covered later.
      5. Roughly speaking, the Psychological View (PV)154 of Personal Identity is that which argues that
        1. Questions of our identity are settled by psychological facts.
        2. We are most fundamentally psychological beings.
        3. We come and go when our psychology comes into or goes out of existence.
        4. We cannot survive radical changes to our psychology.
        5. And so on.
      6. I reject this whole approach if matters of identity are uppermost in our minds. However, if we’re talking about what matters to us in survival, then psychology is obviously important.
      7. In relation to the above distinction between continuity and connectedness, …
        1. See "Blackburn (Simon) - Has Kant Refuted Parfit?" for what Blackburn calls the Unity Reaction155: we cannot envision fissioning156: our FPP157 would just seem to go on in one direction only.
        2. Because of reduplication158 problems – as in the “inconceivable” fission case above – at least in the absence of perdurantism159 – no amount of backward psychological continuity is sufficient for identity.
      8. This is all rather complex:
        1. We anticipate forward psychological continuity – and while we’re continuously conscious, this is what we experience, and this seems to be evidentially sound.
        2. Yet our checking is always based on backward psychological continuity. But, in the absence of evil demons, this doesn’t seem to be a problem.
        3. The issue arises in the case of traumatic cases of discontinuous consciousness, where we don’t know how we arrived in our present state. We’d then need to rely on third parties. My point is that no amount of inner conviction is sufficient proof, as distinct from when we are continuously conscious.
      • Psychological Continuity160
        1. Like any persisting thing, the persistence161 of a psychology requires continuity to an appropriate degree of the entity supposedly persisting: hence ‘psychological continuity’.
        2. I’m not quite sure what ‘a psychology’ is supposed to be, but it is supposedly constitutive of personal identity for those accepting the Psychological View162
        3. Popularly, we say that an individual is ‘not the same person’ as they were before if their character or aims differ too much from that former state. Hence, such characteristics would seem to be constitutive of a psychology.
        4. It is usual for someone’s character to develop gradually over time, often in a positive sense, though there may be Dorian Grey like declensions. However, there can also be sudden changes, as when someone has a religious or political conversion experience, though – even there – there is continuity of more general psychological factors.
        5. We are comfortable with gradual changes – new memories are added and lost gradually, and tastes stay fairly constant; knowledge is acquired gradually. But, over time, these gradual changes accumulate to the degree that one might not recognise the child in the adult, say. But usually, we allow that such gradual changes are identity-preserving, even though psychological connectedness163 is to some degree lost.
        6. All this is associated with one’s First Person Perspective164 (FPP), one’s window on the world165 from which standpoint one anticipates the future, enjoys the present, and remembers the past.
        7. So, psychological continuity (and connectedness166) is central to personal identity for those who adopt the Psychological View167. However, it is said by some animalists168 - Eric Olson in particular – to be irrelevant to our survival169, given that we are170 Human Animals171.
        8. Following on from discussions on survival172, maybe the way to put things is that without psychological continuity I might survive, but not with what matters173 to me in survival.
        9. If “Person174” is a phase sortal175 of “Human Animal176”, can there be sequential but different persons within the same animal (as Lewis177 suggests, though not from the perspective of animalism178, in his “Methuselah179” case) or can there be different and encapsulated First Person Perspectives180 (either synchronically – as in MPD181 – or diachronically) within the same animal?
        10. “Person” may indeed come apart from “animal”, but even then, the person cannot “float free” of the animal, but supervenes182 upon it. See the CV183 for this.
        11. I also distinguish between backward and forward psychological continuity184. The former – traditionally involving memory185 and psychological traits – is the usual focus, but it is not necessarily identity-preserving even for those espousing the PV186, on account of reduplication objections187. The same may be true of fission188 of the FPP189, but this is more difficult to imagine.
      • Forward Psychological Continuity190
        1. I think there’s a conceptual difference between:-
          1. Forward psychological continuity, and
          2. Backward psychological continuity.
        2. For example, in the teletransportation191 thought experiment192, it seems to me193 that a new person wakes up, but I don’t wake up, nor do I experience anything, though the new person claims to be me. Incidentally, it’s not just a new person194, but a new human being195 who wakes up.
        3. Imagine the case where196 I’m put into a duplicating machine197 that is intended to take a backup copy of me while preserving the original but where something goes wrong and my body is destroyed by the duplication198 process, though my duplicate wakes up perfectly happily. Then, it seems to me, I199 would never wake up and would have no future experience after entry to the duplicating machine. I would have no forward psychological continuity.
        4. However, my duplicate200 would have backward psychological continuity. Any duplicate of me, looking backward, would consider himself to be “me”, having my memories201, abilities, plans and so forth, and a body looking just like mine. But would I202 ever wake up as the duplicate? My intuition203 on the endurantist204 account, as I have said, is that I would not, though I suspect that on the perdurantist205 account, this might be seen as a case of intended fission206 in which I was intended to wake up twice, provided we consider that the right sort of causality207 is in place.
        5. The above considerations raise issues similar to those in closest continuer208 accounts of personal identity, and the Only 'X' and 'Y' Principle209. How can what happens to someone else affect whether (so to speak) I am me? How could the “right sort of causality” have anything to do with how I experience things?
        6. Fission is, in any case, hard to imagine happening to oneself. Just what does it mean to “wake up twice”? I dare say one could get one’s head(s) around it. The two selves would then be distinct individuals, with distinct consciousnesses, but with a shared past. On the perdurantist account, we were always distinct, but had stages co-located with everything in common.
        7. I think there are connections here with the topic of Intermittent Existence210. There is backward psychological continuity after putative intermittent existence, but no forward psychological continuity.
        8. Let’s consider forward psychological continuity in everyday life. What ensures forward continuity of consciousness211 in the normal case of sleep212 and temporary unconsciousness? I cannot know “from the inside” that when I awake I’m even the same human being213 as the one that went to sleep in my bed. The reason I believe that I am – rather than that a duplicate body has been created and my psychology transferred into it – is for external reasons: duplication214 is not physically possible (or at least practical), and in any case I have no reason to believe it happened to me last night. Other people assure me that there was nothing out of the ordinary going on.
        9. Andy Clark215, raises this question about what ensures psychological continuity – more or less than in the case of Teletransportation – in the case of dreamless sleep, or (hypothetically) being frozen and then thawed out. We might ask what it is in the normal waking case. Maybe the whole thing is related to the arrow of time216 or in the distinctions between forward-looking psychological properties – desires and intentions yet to be satisfied or acted upon – and backward-looking memories of what has already taken place.
        10. This distinction is the sort of question that the Logical Positivists would denounce as meaningless, as no empirical evidence can decide it.
        11. I will try another thought experiment217 I’ve been considering. It’s often said in the literature that if Teletransportation218 became commonplace as a means of travel, and was conventionally219 deemed to be such, rather than as a means of death220, then life would carry on just fine. Indeed, no-one could notice and difference, either from the inside or outside.
        12. Let’s try a variant: imagine (as maybe many US citizens do) that each night when you’re tucked up in bed technologically-advanced aliens spirit you away and perform horrible experiments on you, in the process scanning your whole body so they can replace your mangled corpse with a perfect duplicate of the original that had been sleeping happily, and return this simulacrum to your bed. Naturally, your partner and anyone else would be unaware of any of this. Also, the person who wakes up – just like the teletransportee – would have no reason to think anything amiss. He would consider himself the same person as went to sleep221 the night before. Life would carry on ‘happily’. Yet in this – admittedly phantastical situation – our sleeper only lives for under 24 hours before coming to a grizzly end and being replaced by someone else. His experience ends on the operating table aboard the starship. If the reality became known, no-one would dare go to sleep. Maybe teletransportation is less grizzly, but it leads to the same death and recreation.
        13. Maybe one could cavil at the details of the experiment: maybe it’s just not possible to extract the information from a human body sufficient to create a duplicate222 without destroying the original, so all the medical experimentation isn’t possible without a mangled body being returned, which would certainly be noticed. So, we might need to modify the TE so that your body is scanned – without anaesthetic, of course, to ensure this isn’t an experience you’d be comfortable with – and two copies are created – one for experimentation and the other for returning to bed. Then, one copy-you lives on happily for a day, and the other meets the grizzly end.
        14. Now, what could make the waker the very same consciousness223 as the sleeper in this scenario? Usually, it is said that there needs to be the ‘right sort’ of causal connection224, in particular one internal to the continuant. In this case, there is a causal connection, but it is imposed externally by aliens and their (maybe tendentiously named) duplicating machine. Are objections based on causality of the wrong sort anything more than intuitions that others might not share? I leave this open at the moment.
        15. On the Constitution View225, we are individuated by our First Person Perspective226. As far as I can see, all these duplicates are qualitatively identical227 (that is, exactly similar228), and so are their FPPs.
    5. Memory229
      1. Obviously, if I were to become tempted by the Psychological View230 (PV) of personal identity, I would have to give a detailed account of memory here. But as I’m not, I won’t.
      2. Though quasi-memory231 is the more relevant concept for those espousing the Psychological Criterion232, it depends on the concept of memory itself.
      3. While neither version of memory is constitutive of personal identity, even for those who espouse the PV, memories represent much of what matters233 to us in Survival234.
      4. In this regard, I might note in passing that some of the supposed memories that matter most to us may not be true accounts of what actually happened – assuming there even is such a single true account, and especially one that includes any ‘mattering’, in the first place.
      5. It may be his supposed memories that convince the experiencer thereof that he has survived some escapade in a TE235 when in fact he has not.
      6. Loss of memory – amnesia – occurs as a regular trope in Thought Experiments236 associated with the PV. We are asked to consider whether such memory-loss is sufficient – on this view – to make it the case that one Person237 ‘dies238’ (or, at least, ceases to exist) and another comes to be.
      7. As a reminder, there are two forms of amnesia:-
        1. Retrograde Amnesia: see "Wikipedia - Retrograde amnesia". This condition can occur in cases of trauma where all memories prior to the date of the injury are lost. More recent events can be remembered (and forgotten) as normal.
        2. Anterograde Amnesia: see "Wikipedia - Anterograde amnesia". In this case, a brain injury or other factors prevent the laying down and recall of memories after a particular date. See "Wearing (Deborah) - Forever Today - A Memoir of Love and Amnesia", for example. Earlier memories can usually be recalled as normal.
      8. I just remark here that there’s a distinction between the loss of memory and failure to recall. This applies to retrograde amnesia and – of course – in everyday life for most of us. In anterograde amnesia, the condition is not – in real life cases – so severe that no memories are saved at all, but they only retained briefly and are lost in a matter of minutes, as in the case in the book cited above.
      • Methuselah239
        1. David Lewis’s Methuselah thought experiment240 - in "Lewis (David) - Survival and Identity" - seems to be a reductio ad absurdum of the psychological connectedness241 approach to personal identity.
        2. I’m unimpressed by Lewis242’s solution. Firstly, can there really be an uncountable infinity of persons243 residing in a single body244? But why not? Lewis thrived on pressing credibility so we might let this pass.
        3. The “no prudential concern for the future” argument also seems to be another reductio of the connectedness approach. If I’m not the same person as the future occupant of my body, why make provisions for him. Yet, he’ll share my first-person perspective245 and I’ll be psychologically continuous246 with him.
        4. Of course, Lewis’s model (of a 137-year cut-off for psychological connectedness) is admittedly too crude. Parfit247 sees temporally extended persons as persons of reduced degree248, according to the degree of connectedness. However, this seems to destroy the natural growth and maturation of the person.
        5. I’m still the same person as was my immature self, even though most of my hopes and desires have changed. If I’m in control of my life, I own these changes, brought them about, and often think them for the good.
        6. What about where I don’t own them, but regret my corruption (moral and physical)? It’s still my corruption that I regret. I’m the same human being249.
        7. It depends what concept250 we want to use the term “person” for. We always have to distinguish personality251 from persons.
        8. Finally, consider Saul Kripke on individuation by origin252. Is this a possible objection to overlapping persons? If a person’s origin is what individuates253 him, how is it possible for persons to have vague254,255 origins as in an un-simplified Methusalah case? There are two issues here that need spelling out.
      • Quasi-Memory256
        1. One problem with Locke’s memory theory of Personal Identity257 is that it is prima facie circular. A memory can properly only be had by the person who had the experience, so cannot be used to analyse “Person258”.
        2. However, “Quasi-” prefixes do not presuppose ownership.
        3. Snowdon puts it this way259:-
          1. There is a causal linkage L linking a person’s memory to that person’s history.
          2. There is – we may suppose – a neural trace laid down at the time, and re-activated during an act of remembering.
          3. This trace might be transferred – again we may suppose – to some other subject by micro-surgery.
          4. This new subject thereby Q-remembers an event that he did not experience.
          5. So, since Q-remembering does not presuppose the identity of the person doing the Q-remembering with the person involved in the event Q-remembered, Q-predicates can without circularity be used to analyse personal identity in terms of psychological continuity and connectedness.
          6. Or so it is said.
        4. In "Snowdon (Paul) - The Self and Personal Identity" (reviewed here260), Paul Snowdon attributes the establishment of the terminology to "Parfit (Derek) - How We Are Not What We Believe", pp. 219-23, and a major critique to "Wiggins (David) - Personal Identity".
    6. Sleep261
      1. In the context of Parfit’s262 Teletransportation263 TE264, the thought265 is that the “pulling yourself together” that the individual does on awaking is very closely analogous to what happens in the “reception pod” in teletransportation. If this is right, then either the awakening sleeper is not identical to the one who went to sleep, or the teletransportee is indeed identical to the individual who set off, and teletransportation is indeed a form of travel.
      2. I don’t believe any of this. However, it needs to be considered carefully as it’s central to the Psychological View266, which says – roughly speaking – that we are267 most fundamentally mental substances, and there has – since Descartes – been an issue about whether the thinking thing has to be continually thinking, and the dreamless sleep was the classic case of when it appeared not to be.
      3. Another context in which the word “sleep” is used is in the New Testament (Pauline) account of (believers’) death268 – and the state of the dead between death and resurrection269, which is described as “sleep”. This is also referenced in Hamlet’s soliloquy (“perchance to dream270”).
      4. There’s a mildly heretical Christian view – called “soul sleep” by detractors (though those that hold the view tend not to believe in immaterial souls) – that the individual experiences nothing between death and resurrection271.
      5. Of course, we refer to the euthanasia of animals as “putting to sleep”, but this isn’t understood to mean anything significant about the post-mortem state of the animal272.
  5. Other Philosophers of Note
    1. Introduction273
      1. Apart from Locke, discussed above, almost every major philosopher – both historical and contemporary – has had something to say about personal identity, whether or not it has been a major area of concern. How could it be otherwise?
      2. I have chosen a few that have featured in my researches. Some of these – together with other philosophers – will appear again in later Chapters.
    2. Descartes274
      1. Descartes is important as the initiator within modern philosophy of the psychological view275 that we are276 thinking things (res cogitans).
      2. He also initiated the use of Thought Experiments277 in the topic of personal identity. In my view he introduced (or confirmed) the muddle within philosophy that what is (clearly and distrinctly) conceivable is possible278. This will be considered in Chapter 10279.
      3. He will be considered further in the Chapter 2280, under the head of Cartesian Egos281.
    3. Leibniz282
      1. I’m uncertain whether I will have anything to say on Leibniz apart from Leibniz’s Law(s), which are covered under the Logic of Identity283.
      2. However, Leibniz’s critique of Locke’s account of personal identity, in "Leibniz (Gottfried) - What Identity Or Diversity Is", may be worth following up.
      3. As may his wider criticism of Locke in "Leibniz (Gottfried), Remnant (Peter), Bennett (Jonathan) - New Essays on Human Understanding", though I suspect life’s too short.
    4. Lewis284
      1. David Lewis’s views on personal identity are characterised by his espousal of perdurantism285.
      2. As is discussed under that Note, perdurantist metaphysics avoids the reduplication286 problems for identity-preservation following fission287. See also my Note on Counting Persons288.
      3. Lewis is also important for espousing realism with respect to possible worlds. The modal289 counterpart relation is used as an analogy in exdurantism290. I will not discuss any of this here.
      4. Lynne Rudder Baker charges Lewis with trying to reduce the First Person Perspective291.
      5. Lewis discusses the Thought Experiment292 of Methuselah293, important for the Psychological View294 of personal identity. Lewis espouses the PV295 and thinks that several Persons296 can exist successively in a single human animal297.
    5. Parfit298
      1. Parfit is famous for the dictum “identity is not what matters in survival”.
        1. I have a note – What Matters299 on this, which I cover along with other general metaphysical matters in Chapter 4300.
        2. My view remains that there must be some confusion in this dictum, in that survival301 is the same as persistence302, and without identity there is no persistence, so identity is a necessary condition for survival and must, therefore, “matter”.
        3. There may well be situations wherein other things matter – either to others or to myself – more than my survival, but this is not the same thing.
        4. Also, Parfit espouses a psychological view303 of personal identity, and has many interesting things to say on whether – given the psychological difference between myself now and my future self – I should make provision for someone to whom I am only weakly psychologically connected304, and whether others should honour advance directives made by my former self305.
        5. My view on that remains that I’m stuck with my FPP306, which persists (though it may degrade) through all the changes in my psychology, and that prudence demands that I take this into account. It matters.
      2. In addition, Parfit has invented or refined a number of interesting TEs307 to do with Fission308, Fusion309 or Teletransportation310, which will receive attention in their due place in Chapter 10311.



Concluding Remarks
  1. To make any progress on this topic, we need to come to a conclusion as to what sort of thing we are. We discuss this in the next Chapter312.


Links to Books / Papers to be Addressed313
  1. This section attempts to derive the readings lists automatically from those of the underlying Notes, but removing duplicated references. The list is divided into:-
  2. 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.
  3. The purpose of this Chapter is to introduce and motivate the Thesis. As such, I need to situate it in the history of the topic. This is done in a number of introductory books, General Surveys, or collections of Papers that are standard fodder in courses on Personal Identity.
  4. Consequently, I will review the various Surveys of Personal Identity that feature in the standard reading lists, both to demonstrate that I’ve read them, and to ensure I’ve missed nothing major.
  5. If a Paper in a Collection or Chapter in an Introduction is specific to a later Chapter in this Thesis, its major consideration may be reserved until a later Chapter, even if the Book itself is not. These will be noted in due course.
  6. As the topic of Personal Identity stems primarily from Locke’s account, I need a brief statement of what this is. Most of the relevant material will appear in due course in the anthologies, but a few items not anthologised are listed below.
  7. I have largely ignored the many works by Lynne Rudder Baker and Eric Olson in this Chapter, as they feature heavily later in the Thesis.
  8. Other works were considered and either cut or reserved for later. The easiest way to see all the works considered is via the reading list at the end of this Note.


Works on this topic that I’ve actually read316, include the following:-
  1. General Surveys317
  2. Locke
    1. Locke327
    2. Forensic Property336
  3. The Psychological View
    1. Psychological View340
    2. Psychology342
    3. Psychological Criterion344
    4. Memory
    5. Sleep366
  4. Other Philosophers of Note
    1. Descartes367
    2. Kant368
    3. Leibniz369
    4. Lewis371
    5. Parfit373
    6. Wittgenstein382

A further reading list might start with:-
  1. General Surveys384
  2. Locke
    1. Locke395
    2. Forensic Property397
  3. The Psychological View
    1. Psychological View398
    2. Psychology399
    3. Psychological Criterion400
    4. Memory
    5. Sleep408
  4. Other Philosophers of Note
    1. Descartes409
    2. Kant410
    3. Leibniz413
    4. Lewis414
    5. Parfit416
    6. Wittgenstein420


In-Page Footnotes

Footnote 10: Footnote 12: Footnote 22: Footnote 43: Footnote 64: Key texts include:-
  1. "Baillie (James) - Problems in Personal Identity"
  2. "Haslanger (Sally) & Kurtz (Roxanne), Eds. - Persistence : Contemporary Readings"
  3. "Hirsch (Eli) - The Concept of Identity"
  4. "Kolak (Daniel) & Martin (Raymond), Eds. - Self and Identity: Contemporary Philosophical Issues"
  5. "Martin (Raymond) & Barresi (John), Eds. - Personal Identity"
  6. "Munitz (Milton) - Identity and Individuation"
  7. "Noonan (Harold) - Personal Identity"
  8. "Noonan (Harold), Ed. - Identity"
  9. "Noonan (Harold), Ed. - Personal Identity (Readings)"
  10. "Paul (Ellen), Miller (Fred) & Paul (Jeffrey), Eds. - Personal Identity"
  11. "Perry (John) - Identity, Personal Identity and the Self"
  12. "Perry (John), Ed. - Personal Identity"
  13. "Rorty (Amélie Oksenberg), Ed. - The Identities of Persons"
  14. "Shoemaker (Sydney) & Swinburne (Richard) - Personal Identity"
Footnote 88:
  1. "Todman (Theo) - Locke on Personal Identity".
  2. The literature on Locke – even restricted to this topic – is vast.
  3. We start from "Locke (John) - Of Identity and Diversity", of course.
  4. Then "Ayers (Michael R.) - Locke's Theory of Personal Identity".
Footnote 165:
  1. Note, however, that for Lynne Rudder Baker the FPP is bound to her concept of a Person. The ‘P’ is ontological rather than merely grammatical.
  2. So, for her, non-persons may have a window on the world, but not a FPP.
Footnote 193:
  1. I want to make this more than just an Intuition, one that many – but by no means all – philosophers share.
  2. See "Bourget (David) & Chalmers (David) - The PhilPapers Surveys: What Do Philosophers Believe?".
Footnote 196:
  1. On an endurantist account of persistence.
  2. I treat of the distinction between endurantism and perdurantism in Chapter5: Persistence and Time.
Footnote 197:
  1. I don’t think this – ‘duplicating’ – is here a tendentious term.
  2. The intended use of the machine is to produce an exact copy without destroying the original.
  3. So, this isn’t the same as Dennett’s “Telecloning” machine in "Dennett (Daniel) - The Mind's I - Fantasies and Reflections on Self and Soul: Introduction", where the destruction of the original is intended, yet (despite the ‘cloning’ label) the machine is used as a means of transport.
  4. The Teletransportation TE is covered in detail in Chapter10: Thought Experiments.
Footnote 215: In "Clark (Andy) & Kuhn (Robert Lawrence) - Aeon: Video - Andy Clark - Virtual immortality".

Footnote 259:
  1. In "Snowdon (Paul) - The Self and Personal Identity".
Footnote 265:
  1. In Paul Broks’s contribution to "Smith (Barry C.), Broks (Paul), Kennedy (A.L.) & Evans (Jules) - Audio: What Does It Mean to Be Me?".
Footnote 270:
  1. “To die, to sleep – to sleep, perchance to dream – ay, there’s the rub, for in this sleep of death what dreams may come…”
    → Hamlet, Act-III, Scene-I, Lines 66-68
Footnote 273: Footnote 313: Footnote 320: Footnotes 321, 339: Footnote 322: Footnote 323: Footnote 324: Footnote 325: Footnote 330: Footnote 338: Footnote 350: Footnote 372: Footnote 374: Footnote 376: Footnote 378: Footnote 379: Footnote 380: Footnote 385: Footnote 386: Footnotes 387, 390: Footnotes 388, 389: Footnote 391: Footnote 392: Footnote 393: Footnote 394: Footnote 396: Footnote 412: Footnote 415: Footnote 418: Footnote 419: Footnote 421: Footnote 423:

Live Version of this Archived Note

Date Length Title
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Table of 12 Earlier Versions of this Note (of 24)

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06/07/2023 00:43:12 82654 Thesis - Chapter 01 (Introduction)
28/09/2022 10:24:58 82323 Thesis - Chapter 01 (Introduction)
11/05/2022 18:59:02 82290 Thesis - Chapter 01 (Introduction)
01/05/2022 18:20:10 76054 Thesis - Chapter 01 (Introduction)
11/04/2022 00:01:26 77774 Thesis - Chapter 01 (Introduction)
03/01/2022 23:58:34 54931 Thesis - Chapter 01 (Introduction)
01/10/2021 13:17:46 49027 Thesis - Chapter 01 (Introduction)
29/03/2021 19:23:31 28916 Thesis - Chapter 01 (Introduction)
22/03/2021 00:28:48 15896 Thesis - Chapter 01 (Introduction)
07/02/2021 19:46:34 11920 Thesis - Chapter 01 (Introduction)
14/07/2019 18:05:46 11854 Thesis - Chapter 01 (Introduction)
18/04/2019 18:18:43 8847 Thesis - Chapter 01 (Introduction)


This version updated Reading List for this Topic Parent Topic
14/02/2026 00:41:46 None available Thesis - Chapter 00 (Preface)


Summary of Notes Links from this Page

Animalism (7) Animalism - Arguments For Animalism - Objections Animalists Animals (3)
Atherton - Locke and the Issue Over Innateness Baillie - What Am I? Baker - Personal Identity Over Time Baker - What Am I? BBC: Miscellaneous iPlayer and Podcasts
Biological Criterion Blackburn - Has Kant Refuted Parfit? (4) Body (3) Body Criterion (2) Brain
Brain Criterion Brain Transplants Brandom - Toward a Normative Pragmatics (Introduction) Cartesian Ego Causality (2)
Closest Continuer Concepts (2) Connectedness vs Continuity (7) Consciousness (3) Constitution View (4)
Convention Counting Persons Dancy - Memory Death (3) DeGrazia - Are We Essentially Persons?
Degrees of Personhood (2) Descartes (5) Duplication (4) Endurantism Exdurantism
Fine - A Counter-Example to Locke's Thesis First-Person Perspective (10) Fission (5) Forensic Property (6) Frankfurt - Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person
Fusion Garrett - Personal Identity and Reductionism General Surveys (5) Human Animals (5) Human Beings (7)
Hume Hybrid Theories I (2) Intermittent Objects Intuition
Johnston - Human Beings (2) Kant (3) Leibniz (5) Lewis (7) Life
Locke (7) Locke on Personal Identity (2) Logic of Identity (4) Lowe - Locke on Identity Memory (8)
Methuselah (8) Mind (2) Modality (2) Multiple Personality Disorder Olson - Immanent Causation and Life After Death (3)
Olson - Personal Identity - Oxford Bibliographies Online (2) Olson - What Are We? Animals Olson - What Are We? Brains Olson - What Are We? Temporal Parts Olson - What Are We? The Question
Only 'X' and 'Y' Principle Origins Parfit (8) Parfit - What We Believe Ourselves To Be (3) Perdurantism (3)
Persistence (2) Persistence Criteria Person (14) Personality Phase Sortals
PID Note, Book & Paper Usage (3) Properties Psychological Continuity (8) Psychological Continuity - Forward (6) Psychological Criterion (6)
Psychological View (21) Psychology (6) Quasi-Memory (6) Reduplication Objections (3) Resurrection (4)
Self Similarity Sleep (7) Snowdon - The Self and Personal Identity (3) Society
Souls (2) Status: Thesis Dashboard (2022: December) Sterelny & Griffiths - From Sociobiology to Evolutionary Psychology Substance (2) Supervenience
Survival (7) Teletransportation (5) Thesis - Chapter 01 (Introduction) (11) Thesis - Chapter 02 (What are We?) (2) Thesis - Chapter 04 (Basic Metaphysical Issues)
Thesis - Chapter 10 (Thought Experiments) (2) Thesis - Current Stance Thesis - Method & Form Thesis - Personal Identity Thought Experiments (11)
Time Transhumanism (2) Unity of the Person Uploading (3) Vague Identity
Wantons What are We? (6) What Matters (8) Wittgenstein (3) Wittgenstein - Bodily Sensations
Woolhouse - Leibniz and Substance Woolhouse - Locke’s Theory of Knowledge Works Read - Explanation    

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Summary of Note Links to this Page

Thesis - Chapter 00 (Preface) Thesis - Chapter 01 (Introduction), 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 Thesis - Chapter 10 (Thought Experiments)    

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