1. Personal identity seems to have normative significance N. 2. Personal identity seems to consist in P. 3. P does not guarantee N.

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1 Draft of PHIL 131: Topics in Metaphysics Spring 2015; David O. Brink Topic: Persons & Values Handout #1: Preliminaries We are going to be exploring issues about the persistence and importance of persons. This factors into both metaphysical and normative issues. The metaphysical issues are what is it for the same person to persist through time and various changes and what explains the unity within a life. For instance, what sort of physical or psychological changes would I survive and what sort would make me perish? Would I survive the onset of complete amnesia, a radical change in my personal ideals, transition into a permanent vegetative state, teletransportation, or fission? The normative issues concerns the ways in which personhood and especially personal identity seem to matter. Personal identity seems to have backward- looking significance for responsibility inasmuch as it seems that I can only be responsible for earlier actions if the person performing the action and the person being held accountable are the same person and backward- looking significance for desert inasmuch as desert seems to presuppose that the earlier person earning the benefit and the later person receiving the benefit are one and the same. Personal identity also seems to have forward- looking significance for special concern inasmuch as I have special prudential concern for my own future self. Many think that personal identity has implications for distributive justice inasmuch as consequentialist moral theories, such as utilitarianism, arguably ignore the separateness of persons, treating maximization of happiness across different persons the way prudence treats maximization across different stages of a single life. As we will see, these metaphysical and normative issues interact in various ways. Imagine that personal identity seems to consist in P and also to have normative significance N. But now suppose that P does not guarantee N. 1. Personal identity seems to have normative significance N. 2. Personal identity seems to consist in P. 3. P does not guarantee N. This seems to be either reason to rethink the conception of personal identity in terms of P or else reason to doubt that personal identity has normative significance N. Though we will sometimes pursue metaphysical and normative issues independently, we will be especially interested in ways in which they interact and influence each other. Some of the potential forms of interaction between the persistence and importance of persons are hinted at in the Existential Comics < PERSONS According to John Locke ( ), persons play an important forensic role (Essay II.xxvii.8, 15, 17-21, 23, 26). They are the bearers of rights and responsibilities and the object of special concern. Only persons are responsible; you can only be responsible for your own actions; and each of us has a special concern for his own future welfare and illfare. Persons, as responsible agents, must be able to distinguish strength/authority of desires, deliberate about the appropriateness of desires and form new desires, and regulate their emotions and actions in accordance with their deliberations. If so, we should distinguish the normative category of person from the biological category of human beings. Not all humans are persons, and persons could fail to be humans. PERSISTING SUBJECTS Consider some of Aristotle s claims about the logic of change. In Physics i 7 he claims that change presupposes the existence of persisting subjects. Change, he claims, requires three things:

2 2 (a) an underlying subject of change, (b) a prechange, lack of quality or property, and (c) a postchange, possession of quality or property. Any change has the form of some underlying subject x going from possessing F to a state of possessing F, or vice versa. Aristotle claims that this structure is present in both nonsubstantial change or alteration - - when a single underlying substance (e.g. a candle) undergoes a change (e.g. heat makes a straight candle droop) - - and substantial change - - when a substance comes into being from some underlying matter or goes out of existence into some underlying matter (e.g. when a candle comes into existence from a lump of wax or melts into a pool of wax). Persons are substances. They are subject to both substantial and nonsubstantial change. They persist through some physical and psychological changes (alterations), but not others (substantial changes). PERSONAL IDENTITY Our subject is personal identity, which concerns the unity of a person. There are two kinds of unity. Synchronic unity is unity at a time, what it is that explains what makes different properties and states of a person properties and states of one single person. For instance, what explains how my smell of breakfast cooking in the kitchen, the sound of the dog drinking from her water bowl, the sense of my fingers at the keyboard, and my philosophical ideas all part of one conscious experience? Though questions of synchronic unity are complex and interesting, they will not be our main focus. For the most part, I will assume that synchronic unity is largely a matter of functional integration roughly properties and states of people are properties and states of one person when they do or can interact as part of the operation of a single system in which input and output are mediated by other states. So when a breakfast smell can bring to mind an image of pancakes or lead to inquiries about when breakfast will be served or movement from the study to the kitchen, then these states are part of a single functionally integrated psychic economy. Diachronic unity concerns the unity over time of a person. Here the question is what makes individuals at different points in time one and the same person. What, if anything, explains the persistence of persons over time? This issue can be rephrased in the language of substantial change. Persons are substances. Which kinds of changes are mere alterations in a person, which the person predates and survives, and which changes are substantial changes that mark the beginning or end of the person s life? Intrapersonal diachronic unity will be our focus. In framing this issue, we largely assume synchronic unity and ask what is it for a person at one time (P1) and a person at a later time (P2) to be one and the same. DISTINCTIONS We talk about identity and diversity in different ways that are easily confused but need to be distinguished. Numeric identity: x and y are one and the same substance. I am numerically identical with the father of Ben Sweeney and with the father of Sam Brink. Qualitative identity: x and y are qualitatively indistinguishable. These two pennies in my pocket are qualitatively identical (but numerically distinct). Compositional identity: x and y are composed of the (numerically) same materials. This house is compositionally identical to the house I built, because no parts of it have been changed. Our principal focus is numeric identity over time. Numeric identity appears to require neither compositional identity (e.g. the ship of Theseus persists even if some of its pine planks are replaced

3 with numerically distinct pine planks) nor qualitative identity (e.g. the ship of Theseus persists if some of its pine planks are replaced with cedar planks or white planks replaced with pink planks). Personal identity over time is a matter of numerical identity over time. Intuitively, a person can persist despite compositional diversity over time (e.g. Socrates persists despite new dermal cells replacing old ones) and qualitative diversity over time (e.g. Socrates persists despite getting a sunburn, developing a beer belly, or switching political allegiances to the Thirty). CHARACTEROLOGICAL IDENTITY It s important also to distinguish the philosopher s concern with personal identity as numeric identity from the concerns with identity involved in certain kinds of social theory. This latter identity is sometimes referred to as characterization or characterological identity. Here, the focus is on people s self- conceptions, the roles that they identify with, and properties and values that inform their lives and sometimes seem to be a source of meaning for them. Some social theorists also seem to treat identity in this sense as giving agents reasons for action. For instance, on such views, my self- conception of myself as an academic and philosopher gives me reason to make some choices, rather than others. Characterological identity is presupposed in what is often called identity politics. Self- conceptions can of course be important for all sorts of reasons, and characterological identity can be an important concept. But it should not be confused with personal identity understood as numeric identity. Characterological identity is perhaps a kind of qualitative identity. But few self- conceptions or roles are literally constitutive of numeric identity, such that changing one s self- conception or losing one s role is literally a substantial change. I may identify as an academic and philosopher, and if I lose my job as a philosopher and cannot find another, I may experience this as a great and transformative loss. It may force me to change, but I don t literally cease to exist. Indeed, to explain how such changes in role or self- conception can be experienced as a loss, it is most natural to say that the loss befalls me, which seems to require that I survive the change. If so, some of the normative claims made on behalf of characterological identity actually presuppose that fixity of character is not necessary for persistence. We should in any case be careful about endorsing the assumption, made by some, that characterological identity gives reasons for action. It s hard to believe that roles give reasons for action, independently of normative content or quality of those roles. The woman who has a domineering husband may, as a result, be self- abnegating and identify with the role of supporting her husband, rather than making a life for herself. But this is a pernicious role or self- conception, and we should be loathe to claim that her reasons for action flow from her (characterological) identity. Not only would she survive loss of that identity, she has reason to make this change. In making these normative claims, we identify the woman as an agent who would persist through major changes in self- conception. CRITERIA OF IDENTITY Philosophers often talk about criteria of identity in ways that are potentially ambiguous. We should distinguish metaphysical and epistemic criteria of identity. A metaphysical criterion of X tells us what X consists in or what makes something X. An epistemological criterion of X tells us how to ascertain whether something is X. This is like the distinction between essence and symptom. The fact that you have certain spots might be a reliable symptom (epistemological criterion) of your having chicken pox, but having chicken pox consists in having a certain virus (metaphysical criterion). Our inquiry is into the metaphysical issue about what personal identity consists in. But, if we are not skeptics, our metaphysical criterion must explain why our normal epistemic criteria are generally reliable. If so, metaphysical and epistemological criteria of identity are distinct, but they need not, and perhaps should not be, completely independent of each other. 3

4 PUZZLES ABOUT PERSISTENCE One puzzle involving qualitative change appeals to Leibniz's Law (x = y iff x and y have all and only the same properties), in particular, the indiscernibility of identicals, according which to which identical things must have all and only the same properties. 1. X = Y, then they share all and only the same properties. 2. The leaf at t1 is F (e.g. green). 3. The leaf at t2 is F (e.g. red). 4. Hence, the leaf at t1 the leaf at t2. This puzzle is fairly easily dissolved; Leibniz's Law only requires that identicals be indiscernible at the same time. If X = Y, then the leaf cannot be F and F at either t1 or t2, but it can be F at t1 and F at t2 (or vice versa). Another puzzle involves compositional change. This puzzle has a familiar Heraclitean pedigree. 1. The river at t1 = water The river at t2 = water Water- 1 water Hence, river at t1 river at t2. This puzzle appeals only to the transitivity of identity (if A = B and B = C, then A = C) and is a little trickier to dissolve. However, the key to resolving the puzzle seems to involve resisting its link between compositional and numeric identity. (a) One view treats the persistent subject - - the river - - as a compound object created out of nonpersistent objects - - temporal slices of the river. The relationship is that of part to whole: the parts are four- dimensional objects, and the whole is the temporally ordered series of such objects. If the expression "river at t..." refers to the whole, premises (1) and (2) are false. Alternatively, if the expression "river at t..." refers to a temporal part, then the argument as a whole is sound but (4) establishes nothing about the persistence of the river. (b) Another solution is to reject (1) and (2) on the ground that objects are constituted by but not identical with the stuff out of which they are made (cf. the way that it is said that a statue is constituted by, but not identical, to the gold of which it is made). REDUCTIONISM AND NONREDUCTIONISM Parfit offers a bivalent classification of conceptions of personal identity that is supposed help us sort historical and contemporary conceptions in a useful way (RP 210). Reductionism claims that personal identity can be analyzed in terms of familiar facts about (e.g. relations among) the physical and/or psychological states of persons. Nonreductionism claims that personal identity cannot be analyzed in terms of such facts but must remain a "further fact". We will offer a similar, but more complex, taxonomy below. Especially since we will be focusing on reductionist views of one kind or another, it s useful now to get a clearer picture about what reductionism is. A common view of the identity of physical objects is reductionist, claiming that the persistence of objects consists in spatio- temporal continuity. On one such view, an object persists just in case it meets three conditions. 4

5 1. It traces an uninterrupted path through space and time. 2. At each point in the path, the object is qualitatively similar (though not necessarily qualitatively identical) to the object at the immediately previous point on the path. 3. The existence of an object at each point on the path is counterfactually dependent on the exis- tence of the object at the immediately previous point on the path. Many of the debates about personal identity concern the prospects for a reductionist view of personal identity. Reductionists debate among themselves what kind of continuity is involved in personal identity, and non- reductionists often motivate their views by the alleged inadequacies in reductionist accounts. The persons we know are all human beings and, hence, are in some sense embodied minds. This means that there can be both bodily and mental or psychological continuity that we might track (we will specify these criteria more carefully later). Speaking loosely, we might say that for most of us our mental and bodily careers coincide. Our mental life, however rudimentary, begins when our bodily existence begins, and, if we do not believe that we have immortal souls, for most of us, our mental life ends when our body ceases to function. So bodily and mental continuity coincide for most of us, and this may make it hard for reductionists to decide whether personal identity consists in bodily continuity, mental continuity, or some combination of the two. Even though the two kinds of continuity normally coincide, this need not be so, and we could look to cases in which they come apart as crucial experiments that might help us decide which, if any, version of reductionism is most plausible. Some crucial experiments are actual, and not just hypothetical. Some persons enter persistent vegetative states. In one such case, a person s cerebral cortex might die for lack of oxygen, effectively killing consciousness and any higher mental functions, involving belief, desire, and affect, yet the sub- cortical regions of her brain might survive, allowing her to maintain vegetative functions involving respiration, circulation, and digestion. Here, a person s bodily career outlasts her mental career. We might ask whether the person survives in such a persistent vegetative state, or whether its onset marks her death. Other cases are, for the time being, purely hypothetical. Suppose that your body has developed cancer or some other degenerative and fatal condition. But neurosurgery has greatly advanced, and your neurosurgeon can successfully transplant your cerebrum into an available donor body, thus fully preserving the continuity of your mental life your beliefs, desires, emotions, memories, and skills. In such a case, it seems, your mental career might outlast your bodily career. We might ask whether you survive the brain transplant in a new body, or whether the transplant marked your death. Parfit asks us to consider thought experiments involving teletransportation, as in the original Star Trek series, from Earth to Io (one of Jupiter s moons). When you enter the transporter, your body and brain states are scanned, your body is destroyed, and the scanned information is used to create on Io a new body that is psychologically continuous with your earlier self. Is teletransportation just an efficient way to travel, or is it a form of death? Parfit also asks us to consider variations on teletransportation in which a duplicate is made, but the original is not destroyed. Here one has the strong sense that one is the original left on earth, not the duplicate on Io. Parfit asks us to consider an apparently tragic variation on the duplication case, which he calls the Branchline Case, in which teletransportation occurs with one important difference. The teletransportation process is complete, and I am able to Skype with my duplicate on Io, when one of the technicians on Earth pulls me aside and tells me that due to a malfunction in the scanner on Earth, my heart has been damaged and I now have only a few hours to live. Parfit asks how I ought to react in the Branchline Case. My duplicate on Io is my psychological heir, and this provides me with some consolation. It is better to die with heirs than without any. Nonetheless, I am about to lose consciousness forever. Branchline seems like death. Here, again, my mental career outlasts my bodily one. But in this case it s harder to believe that personal identity tracks psychological continuity. 5

6 SOME OPTIONS If conceptions of personal identity are claims about what the persistence of persons consists in, then they have implications for persistence in hypothetical as well as actual circumstances. One kind of condition of adequacy for such conceptions is that they agree with our explicit or tacit beliefs about persistence in these circumstances. Reductionists try to subsume and explain our beliefs about our persistence in various actual and possible circumstances, and one kind of reductionist will argue against other kinds of reductionists by appealing to thought experiments that she regards as crucial experiments. Some forms of non- reductionism might appeal to our belief in the immortality of the soul to argue against any form of reductionism. But those arguments will only be as plausible as belief in immortality of the soul is plausible. Other non- reductionists treat some form of non- reductionism as a fallback position, as a reasonable response to what they view as intractable problems with various forms of reductionism. It is this second kind of non- reductionism that will occupy our attention. This preliminary discussion suggests several possible views about personal identity. First, we might distinguish between realists (see below), who believe that there is such a thing as personal identity through time, and skeptics or nihilists, who deny the reality of personal identity (e.g. Heraclitus, Hume* and Buddhists). Realists might then be divided into reductionists and non- reductionists, depending on whether they think that personal identity just consists in physical and/or psychological facts. Reductionist views might be purely psychological (e.g. Locke, Grice, Quinton, Parfit, Shoemaker, early- Wiggins, Lewis, Nozick, Unger, Rovane, Johnston), purely physical (e.g. Williams, Thomson, and Olson), or mixed (e.g. Nagel* and the later- Wiggins*). Nonreductionist views treat personal identity either as simple and unanalyzable (e.g. Butler and Reid) or as consisting in the persistence of a special entity (typically mental), such as the soul or ego (e.g. Plato, Descartes, Swinburne). Personal Identity 6 Realism Skepticism Reductionism Non- reductionism Physical Psychological Mixed Soul Simplicity It s fair to say that the predominant contemporary approach to personal identity is reductionist and that the predominant contemporary conception of reductionism is some form of psychological continuity. While we should not make philosophical decisions by appeal to authority, these trends will influence our discussion. In many ways, Locke inaugurated serious discussion of personal identity, and his conception involved a form of mental continuity that focused on memory. Though Locke attracted non- reductionist critics, such as Joseph Butler ( ) and Thomas Reid ( ), and skeptical critics, such as David Hume ( ), much contemporary work on personal identity has sought to vindicate some version of the Lockean approach. METHODOLOGICAL PRIORITY? We noted that personal identity seems to be invested with various kinds of normative significance. Locke mentions both responsibility and special concern. He means that only persons are responsible, and persons must be agents who are capable of reasoning about the appropriateness of

7 their desires and options and regulating their actions in accordance with these deliberations. But Locke also believes that personal identity limits our responsibility, inasmuch as we can only be responsible, he thinks, for things we did earlier. Locke also notes that each of us is specially concerned about his own welfare and illfare. Locke is no psychological egoist. He recognizes that we care about things and people other than ourselves. Nonetheless, he thinks, we each have special reason to be concerned about our own fates that we don t have to be concerned about the fate of others. One way to bring this out is to note that we might be concerned about the prospect of someone being tortured in cellblock #9 tomorrow. But that prospect takes on completely new significance when someone reliably informs me that the person suffering in cellblock #9 tomorrow will be me. Once we see the way that personal identity seems to be implicated with normative and emotional significance, we might wonder whether personal identity is a metaphysical concept, a moral concept, or both. This question also arises when we consider various thought experiments deployed to undermine some conceptions of personal identity and/or support others. For when we test a conception of identity against our intuitions about such cases, there s the question what is driving those intuitions. Are we appealing to autonomous metaphysical beliefs, or are we de facto appealing to normative ideas about what relations we would or should care about? Later in the course, we will examine arguments that purport to show that some claims about personal identity have interesting, maybe even surprising, normative implications about prudential concern, responsibility, and distributive justice, among other issues. That might suggest that we can do metaphysics first and draw normative conclusions later. That picture makes metaphysics explanatorily prior to ethics in a certain way. But we might question this picture. For one thing, one person s modus ponens is another person s modus tollens. If we conclude that the normative implications of some conception of personal identity are too implausible to believe, we might treat that as reason to reject the metaphysical conception of personal identity in question. This would at least preserve the autonomy, if not the priority, of ethics to metaphysics. But there is a further way in which we might question the metaphysics first methodology. In doing the metaphysics of personal identity, we typically appeal, at least in part, to arguments involving thought experiments and our intuitions about persistence in those scenarios. But if the intuitions we appeal to are driven by our views, express or tacit, about which relations and forms of continuity matter, that is, are normatively significant, then there is an important respect in which our metaphysics is infused with ethics (broadly understood). On this picture, metaphysics is not explanatorily prior, ethics is. In light of these and other issues, we might distinguish various methodological possibilities. Relationship between Metaphysics and Ethics 7 Interaction Independence Priority No- Priority Metaphysics First Ethics First My sympathies lie somewhere between No Priority and Ethics First, but they are tentative and defeasible. I raise these issues here, not to try to settle them, but to bring them to your attention. We should bear these methodological issues in mind throughout the course, but a sensible verdict can be reached, if at all, only at the end of the course.