Metaphysics 10.08.18

Metaphysics 10.08.18

1. Assuming that persons have identities that persist through time.

2. Solopsisim: I can only prove my own existance.

3. Do persons exist?

   • When someone dies: What is not there now?

4. Assuming you are the same person as your five year old self, what makes this identity hold?

   • Stole money
   • Rescued a dog
   • If you are a different person when you grow older, are you still responsible for moral credit?
     • Numerical Credit must be true in order to account for moral credit.
   • Whatever you, are cannot be your body for your body changes every 7 years
     • Identifying marks that persist through time? A mark can be dismembered.
       • DNA? Identical twin is not me. so no.
   • HOW DO WE EXPLAIN PERSONAL IDENTITY OVER TIME?
     • PLATO
       • The soul is distinct from the body and mind
       • The soul hypothesis accounts for moral credit
       • Soul, your conciousness
       • The soul is the pincushion and your mind is the pins
       • Soul is related to your mind
       • The soul will survive the death of the body
       • If you loose your mind- do you loose your soul?
         • Do you loose your personhood?
           • There is still personhood

5. Scrutinize the soul

   • Does science support the soul?
   • Even if your soul exists, they do not make a person a person
     • If the real we must each have different souls
       • How then do you tell one soul from another?
         • A soul is immaterial and thus cannot be different by location
           • What is a soul made of?
             • immaterial is a negative description
             • If you have the same soul but different memories, are you the same person?
               • We need mental continuity
             • if the soul is not the body or mind, how do you know you haven't switched souls?
               • Can you transfer the soul's contents?
               • A difference that makes no difference- is not a difference!
             • Altzimers questions
             • The unchangeable truths about a person
     • Is a soul your thoughts?

6. The soul hypothesis in not supportable

   • What if instead- it is memory?
     • Mental continuity
     • John Locke: Memory is the key to personhood over time
       • If you are reborn- are you the same person?
         • According to Locke, yes: Continuity of memory
       • The senile general problem
         • you do not share the same memories with yourself at different stages
         • Thomas Reed
       • Victenshtein
         • A rope is made of intertwining strands, no single strand reaches the whole length
     • What if you loose your memory?
       • What if you remember something incorrectly
         • What if you forget your memories?
         • What if you hurt someone while drunk but you can't remember? are you still responsible?
           • YES

7. CONCIOUSNESS

   • The bouncer at a nightclub which chooses which