Flashcards
Personal Identity
Flashcards do conjunto (15)
- 1What, according to Locke, does identity consist in for a mass of matter? What about for a living body?A mass of matter changes in identity if atoms are added or taken away. But an oak tree growing from a small plant to a big tree is still the same oak.
The identity of living bodies consists in continuity of organisation—it does not change when lifeless parts are reshuffled or added, so long as these parts are in succession vitally united to the thing. - 2Why does Locke reject the suggestion that the identity of humans consists in the identity of soul alone?This would make it possible that 'Seth, Ismael, Socrates, Pilate, St Austin, and Caesar Borgia to be the same man'. The idea that corresponds to the identity of a human being is just of an animal with a certain form.
- 3What, according to Locke, does personal identity consist in? How is it related to sameness of substance?Personal identity consists in the sameness of rational being/ the continuity of consciousness. This is the case independently of whether this same consciousness is united to just one or to a succession of different substances, physical or non-physical.
- 4How does Locke regard the claims of a man who was persuaded that his had once been the soul of Socrates?Even if this were true, this would not make him the same person as Socrates unless his consciousness reaches back to consciousness of Socrates' past actions. Otherwise this no more makes him the same person as Socrates as it would make him the same person as Nestor on account of his body consisting of some of the atoms that once formed Nestor's body.
- 5How does Locke respond to the following objections to his account of personal identity: (1) If I irretrievably lose a significant portion of my memories, am I not still the same person who performed those past actions/ thought those past thoughts etc.? (2) If Locke is right, why do we punish a sober man for crimes that he did while drunk (and cannot remember doing)?(1) Locke bites the bullet—in this case the same man would at different times make different persons.
(2) This is best practice in the law because we cannot reliably distinguish real and counterfeit pleas of this sort. - 6Imagine two people, A and B, enter into a machine and have all their psychological features extracted from their brains and implanted into the other's. What considerations suggest that we should describe this procedure as A and B switching bodies?Reflection on what each would say after the procedure suggests that A's selfish concern should be for what happens to the B-body person, and vice versa.
What would be a good motivation for undergoing the procedure: (1) To get the other person's body, or (2) to get the other person's psychological features. Again, reflection on what each would say afterwards supports (1) as a good reason but not (2). - 7What thought-experiment does Williams describe that suggests that the psychological criterion is false?Someone is told that they will be tortured tomorrow. They fear this. Their fear is not mitigated when they are told, in succession, that before the torture they will:
1) Have their memories wiped
2) They will have them replaced by different memories
3) These other memories will be the memories of another living person
4) All this will be achieved using the same procedure as for A and B above... - 8Why does Williams think that there is an 'incurable difficulty' in thinking about indeterminate cases of personal identity?If I engage in projective imaginative thinking (what it will be like for me), I indirectly answer the question that is, by supposition of indeterminacy, not answerable. If I do not engage in this thinking, I also answer the question, but in the other direction.
- 9What do many non-reductionists believe about the unity of consciousness, and what might cause trouble for this view?Many non-reductionists believe that the unity of a person's consciousness is explained by the fact that the different experiences constitutive of this consciousness are all being had by the same person, or subject of experiences.
Parfit's imagined case of My Physics Exam causes problems for this view, because in this case there are different sets of experiences being had by the same person, and yet which are not united. - 10What empirical evidence is there that, in the case of My Division, the 4 suggested possibilities for what might happen to me are not really distinct possibilities?It seems that there cannot be different possibilities unless we are separately existing entities (such as Cartesian Egos). But:
(i) brain states do seem to determine psychological features, and
(ii) the real cases of divided brains suggests that the carrier of psychological continuity is not indivisible.
This implies that 'the Cartesian view can only be advanced in the form that does not connect the Ego with any observable or introspective facts.' - 11What is an empty question?One that does not ask about truly different possibilities, and there is no matter of fact answer (although there may or may not be better and worse answers we could choose to give to the question).
- 12Why does Parfit think that, even though the best description of the case of My Division is that neither of the resulting people is me, it should still be regarded as survival?It is a fact that someone can survive if half their brain is destroyed/removed. Given that my relation to each of the resulting people in My Division contains what matters in ordinary survival, there is nothing intrinsic to the nature of the relation that prevents me from surviving as each half. The problem can only be duplication. But "double survival" is not the same as death.
- 13What is Relation R, and under what further constraints can we use the language of personal identity, according to Parfit?Relation R is psychological continuity and/or connectedness, with the right kind of cause (which, for Parfit, can be any cause). When R takes a one-to-one form, we can use the language of personal identity, and PI just consists in the holding of this relation. And R is always what matters.
- 14According to Williams, the criterion of personal identity must meet two requirements. What are they?1) Whether a future person will be me must depend only on the intrinsic features of the relation between us.
2) Whether identity holds cannot depend on a trivial fact.
(Parfit thinks no criterion of identity can meet these requirements, but that relation R can meet the analogous requirements, providing further evidence that R is what matters.) - 15—
Informações
- Descrição
- Locke on identity; the psychological criterion of personal identity (Williams); selfish concern; indeterminate cases; divided minds; the argument that identity is not what matters (Parfit).
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