On Mon, Jul 18, 2016 at 11:01 AM, Russell Standish <li...@hpcoders.com.au> wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 18, 2016 at 08:51:32AM -0500, Jason Resch wrote: > > > > > I have only come across two theories of personal identity that are > > consistent and void issues inherent to body-continuity and > > psychological-continuity theories. The two consistent personal identity > > theories I am aware of are no-self (you are only a single thought moment > > and nothing else) and universalism (you are all thought moments and all > > people). Anything in between is bound to fall flat when you try to limit > > the scope of experiences you my ascribe that person to some biological or > > some psychological continuation when both of these continuations can > > changes over time. What are the practical limits to allowable change > which > > preserve that person? It seems entirely arbitrary to me. > > > > I am not convinced that they are the only two possible > outcomes. Remember my skepticism of the Parfit Napoleon thought > experiment. > > There may be other theories of personal identity that are consistent. I only mention that there are two I am aware of that are. What was your skepticism regarding Parfit's thought experiment? > However, ISTM that the real issue being discussed here is transitivity > of the notion of personal identity. Why should identity be transitive? > After all, why shouldn't your identity be tied up with whoever you > remember being? I think theories of personal identity should aim to be objective. That is, be capable of definitively and objectively answering the question of what experiences belong to which persons. A theory of personal identity based on memory cannot be used to make predictions on what future experience will belong to which persons, and it seems to have difficulty with cases of memory loss or amnesia. E.g. who was it that experienced the 5th bite of your dinner from 58 nights ago, if not you? > If B and C both remember being A, then they can claim > to being the same person as A, in spite of the fact that B and C are > different people. > > What is the problem with that point of view? > Identity relations, by definition, are transitive. If A is identical to B, and A is identical to C, then B is identical to C. Jason "This is also the resolution of the tension between the rival criteria for personal identity, psychological and bodily continuity. As with brain bisection, there is here an embarrassment of riches. Either side of the classic debate has the upper hand when it argues positively that the person could remain the same if its own pet criterion was maintained even if the other was wholly absent. And, indeed, one could easily imagine a person going along into another body with a transfer to that body’s brain of his pattern of memories. And yet one can also easily imagine the person’s continuing in the same body with an experience of amnesia or false memories. It seems that all such content of experience, in different bodies or with differing mental states, could be mine. In fact, all the mental content in different bodies and differing mental states actually is mine. For all of it has everything that it takes to be mine–the first person character that is common to all experience." --- Arnold Zuboff -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
