Keyboard Shortcuts?

×
  • →Next step
  • ←Previous step
  • ↓Skip this slide
  • ↑Previous slide
  • mShow slide thumbnails
  • nShow notes
  • hShow handout latex source
  • NShow talk notes latex source

Click here and press the right key for the next slide (or swipe left)

also ...

Press the left key to go backwards (or swipe right)

Press n to toggle whether notes are shown (or add '?notes' to the url before the #)

Press m or double tap to slide thumbnails (menu)

Press ? at any time to show the keyboard shortcuts

 

Psychological Continuity and Fission

psychological continuity and fission

Inconsistent quartet, personal identity: \begin{enumerate} \item Beatrice is not identical to Caitlyn. \item Ahmed is psychologically continuous with Beatrice. \item Ahmed is psychologically continuous with Caitlyn. \item The Psychological Continuity View of personal identity is true. \end{enumerate}

numerical identity : inconsistent triad

Beatrice is not identical to Caitlyn.

Ahmed is identical to Beatrice.

Ahmed is identical to Caitlyn.

personal identity : inconsistent quartet

Beatrice is not identical to Caitlyn.

Ahmed is psychologically continuous with Beatrice.

Ahmed is psychologically continuous with Caitlyn.

The Psychological Continuity View of personal identity is true.

Work out what this quartet is inconsistent

so?

If fission is possible, the Psychological Continuity View of personal identity is false.

But is it possible?
Following, roughly, \citet{johnston:1989_fission}.

1. The removal of one brain hemisphere would not break psychological continuity.

2a. You might have an identical twin whose brain had been removed.

2b. Your brain could be transplanted into the body of your debrained twin.

2c. Successfully transplanting your brain into your twin’s debrained body would ensure psychological continuity.

2d. The removal and destruction of one brain hemisphere followed by transplant of the other hemisphere would ensure psychological continuity.

3. You could be psychologically continuous with two distinct future individuals.

psychological continuity and fission

[Olson’s formulation] If a person exists at one time and something exists at another time, under what possible circumstances is it the case that the person is the thing?

Answer 1: psychological continuity

Under exactly those in which the person can, at the first time, remember an experience the second mentioned thing has at the second time, or vice versa.

If fission is possible, the Psychological Continuity View of personal identity is false.

Fission is possible.

one response

‘What this must mean, then, is that the identity relation just is not what matters (or is not what matters very much) in survival; instead, what matters has to consist in psychological continuity and/or connectedness (what Parfit calls “Relation R”). As long as that relation holds between me-now and some other person-stage---regardless of whether or not it holds one-one---what happens to me is just as good as ordinary survival. Call this the Identity Doesn't Matter (IDM) view.’ \citep{shoemaker:2019_personal}

‘What this must mean, then, is that the identity relation just is not what matters (or is not what matters very much) in survival;

instead, what matters has to consist in psychological continuity and/or connectedness (what Parfit calls “Relation R”).

As long as that relation holds between me-now and some other person-stage---regardless of whether or not it holds one-one---what happens to me is just as good as ordinary survival.

Call this the Identity Doesn't Matter (IDM) view.’

Shoemaker, 2019

\citep{shoemaker:2019_personal}