Kind - The Nature of Persons (Ch. 2)

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Copyright © Amy Kind 2015 The right of Amy Kind to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK ( of First published in 2015 by Polity Press Polity Press 65 Bridge Street Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK Polity Press 350 Main Street Malden, MA 02148, USA All rights reserved, Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose ok criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reprod In a retrieval system, or transmitted, mechanical, photocopy ing, permission of the publisher, ced, stored in any form or by an recording or otherwise, without tt electronic, e prior ISBN-13: 9780 7456-5431-7 ISBN-13: 978-0-745¢ 5432-4 (pb A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library, Library of ¢ ongress (,.lm\«:umg—m-l’ubhunrm Data Kind, Amy Persons and personal identity / Amy Kind. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and inde: ISBN 978-0-7456-5431.7 (hardback : alk, paper) ~ISBN 978-0-7456-5432-4 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Individualism, 3. Persons. 3, Identity Psychology) 1. Title, B824.KS6 2015 126-dc23 2014046428 Typeset in 10.5 on 12 pt Sabon by Toppan Best-set Premedia Limited Printed and bound in the UK by Cp| Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon The publisher has used its best endeavors to ensure that the websites referred to in this book are correct and active press. However, the publisher h, make no guarantee that remain appropriate, URLS for external at the time of going to s no responsibility for the websites and can a site will remain live or that the content is or will Every cffort has been made to trace all copy right holders, but inadvertently overlooked the publisher will be pleased to incly necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edizige if any have been de any For further information on P politybooks.com olity, visit our website: pyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, Contents Acknowledgements 1 The Nature of Persons 2 The Psychological Approach to Personal Identity 3 The Problem of Reduplication 4 The Physical Approach to Personal Identity 5 From Reidentification to Characterization 6 Narrative Identity Bibliography Index Vi wn (]

26 Persons and Personal Identity provides a useful introduction to legal personhood. Frank- furt’s view of metaphysical personhood is developed in Frank- furt (1971). Rorty’s (1976) anthology, The Identities of Persons, contains several useful papers on this topic. Warren (1997) surveys a variety of accounts of moral personhood. For discussion of mental capacity accounts in particular, useful sources include Tooley (1983) and Regan (2004). An important critique is offered in Kittay (2005). The account developed in Dennett (1976) has proved influential in subse- quent discussions of both moral and metaphysical person- hood. Likewise, the discussion in Feinberg and Levenbook (1992), which has the virtue of being particularly accessible, is also relevant to both moral and metaphysical personhood. For a criticism of the coherence and usefulness of the notion of personhood, see Beauchamp (1999). Many of the articles in Cavalieri and Singer (1993) take up issues of personhood relating to gorillas and other apes. Considerable information about Koko is available online at www.koko.org and also in Patterson and Gordon (1993). For an academic discussion of Alex the parrot, see Pepperberg (2002); for a more popularized account, see Pepperberg (2008). A short and accessible introduction to the person- hood of dolphins can be found in White (2010); for more comprehensive discussions, see White (2007) and Herzing and White (1998). There are many works of fiction and film relevant to per- sonhood. I recommend especially the novella Bicentennial Man by Isaac Asimov and the 1982 film Blade Runner qirected by Ridley Scott. (Note that the director’s cut version is better than the original release.) 2 The Psychological Approach to Personal Identity At e In the previous chapter, we dealt with the \dLnnhg.mnnei\“n) i i /e to count as a p ? / S t a being have to coun tion: what properties mus " OIS In this chapter we begin to consider the rc\dumhLL1F|¢>n;qB()rh tion: What makes a person the same person o\'ér nm}e];‘e o . : S i ity. w of these questions concern personal identity. ur] i ificati esti S mchronic question — @ i entification question is a sy d e i : al identity at a time — the reidentification concerning pCl’\(?ﬂ . C()ncerning question is a diachronic question — a questio ersonal identity over time. i a : Suppose you buy a six_—pack of Coke. I;rheie:a‘:n::sfhat which the cans are identical to one another — o ;‘\qsense each can looks exactly like the others. But thereI: a e in which the cans are not identical to one qanhe.\"h rh‘e car;; that there are six different cans. The sense in “, :’:ientir\v~ i are identical is typically referred to as qudllt;\l?ll ense i {v}\ich cans share all their qualities in lcx)mmon. Tde seas ki the cans are not identical is typlcally referLe_nmhu‘ e eslain identity; they are not oné anld the sam?_t‘ (livilv el bt things. Likewise, identical twins are qualita e et numerically distinct. In this ch.:lpter.‘l.r;l m":s f;sxmenESS ot tion of peré(mal identity, the k_md of i len_n }:i.lo()king (i is relevant is numerical identity. Is thns ‘nre()rr e i I've just bumped into in the Qa]las JI\'[;S R person as the energetic young girl who Wee Sl GEwalk summer camp? Is the individual 1 now !

28 Persons and Personal Identity ahead of me the same person as the individual who cut in front of me in line at the supermarket last week? The distinction between qualitative and numerical identity does not exhaust the senses of identity in play in ordinary discussion of personal identity. Sometimes when we talk about someone’s identity we are picking out the role that they play in a particular situation. In one context someone migh'[ be a philosophy professor, in another context a soccer mom, and in yet another context a volunteer firefighter. Sometimes when we talk about someone’s identity we mean to be refer- ring to how they would identify themselves, or how they think of themselves “first and foremost.” Here there are many possible candidate identities — one might think of oneself as a Democrat, as a Christian, as a veteran, as a lesbian, as a Latina, and so on. Identity in this sense is what makes someone who they really are. We will turn to these sorts of issues about personal identity in chapter 5 when we turn to the characterization question, As we noted in chapter 1, our inquiry into persons and personal identity in this book is a metaphysical one. The quesr@on of reidentification that we are interested in is thus a question about what makes it the case that someone is the same person over time, not a question about how we can tell thgr someone is the same person over time. Suppose I had a childhood friend with an extremely distinctive laugh. Decades lafe_r, at my twenty-fifth high school reunion, someone unfa- mllmr-l_ookmg greets me by name. As she realizes that I don’t recognize her, she starts laughing. And then, all of a sudden, e o vy e i Whorhe th()uyhe}yr a]ug ;hrhats'hnw I cou»ld tell epistemological critz'ri(mgforer < Ipmvl(_i(ﬂ e W'”h i ool a";’e_rsona identity over time, it makes her the same person ovelrnry". £l s noneha berilaashiceci ot £k S ime. Even were she to lose - injury, she would still be € person. Although sometimes our epis- of reidentification wi : will be related to the metaphysical facts, these two dj iteri wapay ifferent i T criteria might well be Metaphysical questions of reide; to persons. We might wonder, f ntification are not unique Or example, what makes The Psychological Approach to Personal Identity 29 something the same table over time, or what mak_es s(;]m?e- thing the same car over time, d‘ﬂd so on. These quesn’nns da\ i particular force when the entity in question Lxl}dtl}()cs than matic qualitative change, as when a table is repainted or W el a car gets an entirely new engine. One compelling ex.'1m[’) e that is often invoked in discussions of object identity ()\gr time concerns the Ship of Theseus, a sailing vessel n'mhe entirely of wood. After some time on the seas, (nfie (zt t et- ship’s boards rots and is rep‘|;1ccxi4 L.Imrl,\: the rcpl.ke]munB(I[ a single board does not affect tl‘\c identity m, the n'lp ! 1)r over a period of time, as the ship is regularly in use, “. 1fh boards begin gradually to rot as well, and they dl:' t}l: replaced one by one. Eventually, each Imflrd of (hhc-.> 1p' nllsl been replaced by an entirely new one. None of the origi ‘h matter of the ship remains. So is the ship we cnd.ed up w 1}(] ! the same ship — that is, numerically the same ship — as the e that we started with? g | (mgl‘}[:l‘:;\\\l\/kllv case was first introduced into discussion in thg: first century by the Greek historian Plutarch, but an lmvp((rv tant twist was later added in the seventeenth ccmury’ v]\ English philosopher Thomas Hobbes. S.upp()?:’ that ;d;; time we remove a rotting board, we place it in a storage Sh‘L d. And suppose also that, once all of the original ho.irlds la\e been removed and stored in the shed, we r_mssemb edt 1€\r,n in the same configuration as had been pre\'lously'du?e - uc: now have two ships: one that has been regular]y' an u)ntmm ally in use, and one that appears to _have just come mh existence but that contains all the o.nglnal matter frfvhm toef ship that had first set sail. So which one is the Ship eseus? . i Th:\s:l\lz\/e consider the reidentification_qgestlon overfthe ;;12: three chapters, we will encounter similar ?orlt}s o 51711Iiné that arise with respect to persons. Some of tvess cll) 5(,¢ia< cases — such as situations involving amnesia a;\ Onsh s tive identity disorder — are drawn from rea_l‘:: & tb;:jieg be they Freaky Friday-like scenarios in 'Whuh' ;,w:mind % seem to swap minds or upload scenarios In \l/v 1cr g transferred from body to machine —are, at 685); S\'h-\t 2 purely hypothetical. As we _wnll see, snrtmgn(isa (m;icui.[ requi-red for the continued existence of a perso task.

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30 Persons and Personal Identity 2.1 Locke's Memory Theory Just as contemporary discussions of personhood have b grelatly influenced by the work of seventeenth-century En: FE: p.hllosopher John Locke, so too have conrempomr'\' dif i sions of pgrsonal identity over time. In fact, l.oc‘ke‘ is ocfrs- credited “’I[h originating the philosophical disuusx‘ion’ 1boen personal identity. He was really the first philnsufwher r:) 'ljt attention to the subject in its own right. i C()l:\ssistwiens‘:}\:'e I::‘l‘d‘h?.m't‘l" 1, Locke considers personhood to e i; p.uhl.m;:. for reason and reflection. On his o |f> Is a thinking, intelligent being who can “con- r it self as it self” (Locke 1689/1975, 335). This account f’f pe.rsonh(md leads naturally to an account <f‘ b ; identity over time: 5 e since C C @ vay: o []:x‘xlm.l(iusnms always accompanies thinking, and ’tis at, that makes every one to be, wk 1 y y , what he calls self; and thereby disting . e &S HEaS e ‘Imwil(x‘x;‘l:u: himself t[mm all other thinking things, in this E ists personal Identity, i.e . ¢ , i.e. the samene r e ! Y, 1.e ameness of a rational : And as far as this conscious as sciousness can be extended back wards to any cti § Gy e [n}: p;sr Action or Thought, so far reaches the S ‘h:! erson; it is the same self now it was then; 4 s sa 9 s ; & el me self with this present one that now reflects , that that Action was done. (1689/1975, 335) To exte 'S consci thus Lo:kde';)?}fs consciousness backwards is to remember; ForkTooks p:l?s‘gnl:loftjn r_eferred to as the memory theory. ) ident o T G : T ity consists in connections of Of course : ticularly rele:famnfnlzory ‘comes in many different forms. Par- experiential memo El‘el l}i the distinction between factual and remember that C)rl)‘/'f ave all kinds of factual memories — [ that Boardwalk isat;)()rhq‘a was granted statehood in 1850. et sy, o t}?e i%};?t\-x\//alued property in Mom)p()lv’ orld C c /2 my factual m : % up, and so on. Some 0! v N(e)r:u)nle? are directly correlated with ex eri:uiij 1 remcmh.er wa(tmhy do I remember that German r\)/von but factual memoriescml’n%y the victory on ‘CIE‘Vision.yM\' <;th2r i - ight not be correlated with any experi - For example, I wasn’t alive whenyC:IPfenen. ifornia _ The Psychological Approach to Personal Identity 31 achieved statehood and I don’t even recall learning this fact. Experience memories are essentially firstopersnnal, that is, they are remembered from the first-person perspective. Impor- tantly, this is not to say that I can’t have experiential memo- ries involving other people. My memory of watching the final match of the 2014 World Cup, for example, includes my older son, who was sitting next to me on the sofa as we watched. But my memory of the experience is from my per- spective, not his. I cannot remember watching the World Cup from my son’s perspective because 1 did not experience it from his perspective in the first place. When Locke accounts for personal identity in terms of memory, he has experiential memory in mind. To make this more explicit, we might specify his theory as follows: Locke’s memory theory: A at time t1 is identical to B at some later time t2 if and only if B remembers an experience had by A. In offering his memory theory, Locke is reacting at least in part against previous writers who defined personal identity in terms of the soul. On Plato’s view, for example, each indi- vidual is composed of two parts: a body and a soul. While the body is mortal, the soul is not. A soul that’s joined with a particular body existed before the body came into existence and will continue to exist after the body goes out of existence. Plato does not think that the soul carries any experiential memories with it. Were a particular soul that had previously been joined with one body now to join with a new body, it would not bring along with it any memories from its previous embodiment. It’s for this reason, says Locke, that personal identity cannot consist in sameness of soul. As this suggests, his criticism does not depend on the assumption that souls do not exist. Even if there are such things as souls, our pos- session of a soul is not what makes us the same person over time. To develop this criticism of the soul theory and to help motivate his own view, Locke proposes a thought experiment using figures from Greek mythology such as Nestor and Ther- sites. According to legend, both of these men were Greek soldiers who were present at the siege of Troy. Now suppose i A

32 Persons and Personal Identity that immortal souls exist, and that you happen to have the soul of one of these men. Does that make you identical with him? Locke thinks the supposition is absurd. For example, as depicted by Homer in the Iliad, Thersites was struck across the back and shoulders by Odysseus in response to his having sharply criticized Agamemnon; after being hit, he sat cower- ing, crying, and in pain. But presumably you don’t have any memory of that experience and even now, upon hearing the story, you presumably don’t feel that you were once beaten by Odysseus. On Locke’s view, having the same soul as Thersites is as incidental to your personal identity as if your body happened to be made up of some of the same particles of matter that once constituted Thersites’ body. As he argues: “the same immaterial Substance without the same consciousness, no more [makes| the same Person, by being united to any Body, than the same Particle of matter without consciousness united to any Body, makes the same Person” (Locke 1689/1975, 339-40). Were one to find oneself with experiential memories of Thersites’ actions, however, then matters would be different. To have experiential memo- ries of Thersites’ actions is to be one and the same as Thersites. 2.2 Senility and Sleep Though there’s something intuitively appealing about Locke’s account of personal identity, there also appear to be some hll.l']_\' obvious problems with it. One such problem was first raised by the Scottish philosopher Thomas Reid, a contem- porary of Locke‘s. Reid (1785) presents us with the following case: C(mslder a brave officer who achieves an important military victory. At the time of the victory, the officer remem- bers that.as a young boy he once stole some apples from a nelghhr)nr}g orchard. Now consider the officer many years later. Having retired from the military at the rank of ger;eral he has hec_()meAsenlle‘ Though he remembers the glory of hi; military victories, he has forgotten the indiscretions of hi; youth and h : : Aapples‘ as no memory of having stolen his neighbor’s The Psychological Approach to Personal Identity 33 Since the retired general remembers the brave officer’s victory, Locke’s theory treats them as one and the same person. Likewise, since the brave officer remembers the naughty boy’s theft, Locke’s theory treats him them as one and the same person. But since the retired general does not remember the naughty boy’s theft, Locke’s theory does not treat them as one and the same person. Unfortunately, this means that Locke’s theory commits him to a violation of the principle of the transitivity of identity. According to this principle, if a is identical to b, and b is identical to c, then a is identical to c. So if the senile general is identical to the brave officer, and the brave officer is identical to the naughty boy, then it should follow that the senile general is identical to the naughty boy. But, as we’ve seen, this is something that Locke has to deny. Our intuitions often pull us in different directions, so it would be rare for a philosophical theory to be able to accom- modate all of our intuitive judgments. One usually has to bite some bullet or other. To violate the transitivity of identity, however, is to reject not just an intuition but a core logical principle. The problem raised by Reid’s brave officer case is thus a very serious one. Moreover, the brave officer case is not an isolated example. Things happen to us that we remem- ber distinctly for a while, and then such memories fade from view. At 20 years of age, you might distinctly remember your 16th birthday, but not your 12th birthday — even though you distinctly remembered your 12th birthday when you turned 16. Fortunately, there is a simple modification that can be made to Locke’s theory to account for this kind of case and thereby avoid violating the principle of the transitivity of identity. As stated, Locke’s theory requires there to be a direct memory connection between two persons in order for them to be the same person. But, still in keeping with the general spirit of the theory, we can focus on continuity of memory instead. Consider a long braided rope. There might be no single strand of fiber running from beginning to end. But there are overlapping strands throughout the entire rope, so that even when there is no direct strand between two points, there will be strands from each of those points to other points such that we can trace a continuous path of fibers for the

34 Persons and Personal Identity entire length of the rope. We might think of the memories of a person forming a similar kind of braid. Though there is no ‘strand’ of memory directly connecting the senile general to the naughty boy, both of these stages are connected by memory strands to the brave officer, and so they both form a part of the same braid of memories. This gives us the following modification to Locke’s theory: The modified memory theory: A at time t1 is identical to B at some later time t2 if and only if there is continuity of expe- rience memory between B and A. Given that this modification allows a memory theorist to avoid the problem raised by Reid, we seem to have a signifi- cant improvement over Locke’s original account. Unfortu- nately, however, another problem immediately arises: there seem to be segments of an individual’s life that are entirely disconnected from the braid of memories. In fact, such seg.— ments seem to occur each night during periods of dreamless 5|cpp. During that time, an individual has no experience mem- ories of what she’s done while awake, nor does she later remember anything from that time. So there is no continuity of memory between periods of dreamless sleep and other times of her life. But surely Jane asleep is the same person as Jane awake. ‘ We mlght worry about other possible disconnected periods efas well. Sometimes a person is briefly knocked unconscious, ;;nzziiwg(i;es_()metlmes peop!e ha\'e‘ temporary hnyts_of times a person might go into a deep meditative trance where she completely empties her mind. When someone ;ifuwswely Eroclaitr)n;lht)w meditation has changed her life, ever, she pro 14 3 a numericallypdiffearerz][(?J(:‘:I)r: rr];lfa'n s ‘ha't Sh_f S ring her meditative states. Faced with such problems, we mig should abandon the memor: B o however, it seems worth ¢ fication that again seems what Locke had in mind. ¥ account. Before giving up hope, onsidering another possible modi- t"])'hbe withlin the general spirit of is i ies crucially ona disti_nction between nccurrer?:(;crl\ffif:fzc;ﬂrlffln:rrl:c‘:g\y] states. Right now you have all sorts of beliefs that are not present to your mind. Consider your belief that earathe is a Q‘\(; e The Psychological Approach to Personal Identity 35 planet. Now that you've read the previous sentence, this belief is present to your mind. But before reading that sen- tence, it (presumably) wasn’t. Beliefs that are present to the mind are what philosophers call occurrent beliefs. Beliefs that are not present to the mind are non-occurrent beliefs. Memo- ries too can be either occurrent or non-occurrent. Much as he might dwell on his former glory, the retired general pre- sumably doesn’t have his memory of his brave deeds as an officer before his mind during his every waking moment. Sometimes those memories are non-occurrent. So now let’s conduct a very simple experiment. Recall some proud achievement from your past and bring your experience memory of it to mind. Prior to complying with my instruction, your memory of the achievement was not before your mind; now it is. But even prior to complying with my instruction, it seems clear that you were the same person as the person who accomplished that achievement. So memo- ries do not need to be present before your mind to belong to a continuity chain of memories — rather, what seems to matter is that they could be brought before your mind if you tried. This suggests that we should further modify the modified memory theory: The re-modified memory theory: A at time tl is identical to B at some later time t2 if and only if there is continuity of memory between B and A, where continuity of memory does not require that memories are actually occurrent but only that they be potentially occurrent. This modification seems to be able to handle nicely the problem of dreamless sleep. While in a dreamless sleep, though you don’t have any occurrent memories, you have all sorts of potentially occurrent memories. It also seems to handle the problem of meditative trances. But what about cases where someone is briefly knocked unconscious? Here matters start to get slightly trickier. Do we really want to claim that memories are potentially available to the uncon- scious individual? The trickiness here can be made more vivid by considering When someone has been in longer cases of unconsciousness. \ I it seems slightly more a coma for weeks, months, even years,

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36 Persons and Personal Identity troubling to say that the memories are potentially available to her. On the one hand, it’s tempting to insist that they are potentially available to her. If she weren’t in a coma, she could call those memories to mind. But, on the other hand, this leads us down a troubling slippery slope. For we coulci also say something similar about a corpse: after all, if she weren’t dead, then she would be able to call those memories to mind. And perhaps even worse, the memories might be said to be potentially available to another individual entirely: after all, if she had been the one to have those npcrlcnuc“s. IhCIT she would be able to call those memories to mind too. 1h.c prnl\lem is that we need some principled way of dis- tinguishing when memories are potentially occurrent from when they are not. Unfortunately, it turns out to be remark- ably hard to draw this distinction, and it is not clear that it can adequately be done. This problem also relates closely to another problem, one that arises from an attempt m‘pm down whar_ counts as a genuine memory. Exploring these issues — which are often referred to as the problem of circu- larity — will be the task of the next section. 2.3 The Problem of Circularity ?;erPUSE So;nleone.dldn t knpyv what an umiak is, and I offered the following definition: “an umiak is an umiak.” ;\f]g;‘::{g(}; I huve said something true, the definition l';'e R en(:ierser;v[ ;i‘;}eil ?“l.thmg about what an umiak is and A At elp! llld In order for my definition to be at o term!swof \Vfiu ha_ve to explain the notion of an T sl somet}?’t erl_’ll"“en% preferably familar ones. So e L k:i;ik lblel,t stn‘FL:mlal; ils a boat similar in The unhelpfuln e el arge(."‘ ety s o 2 ol ki cn e Py : ircular, i.e., the same term hre)pcircular e:‘::f;?i;gf Mhechitutions Buta i donmigds sideshGonsioki ot o same wordldoes not occur on both Dictionary.com: “a bodowr;rflg o liveagetion use common to a peo lg whwmds o for theit p! 0 are of the same community or /*fi - s The Psychological Approach to Personal Identity 37 nation, the same geographical area, or the same cultural tra- dition.” Though the definition does not appear to be circular, when we then look at the definition of “word” we find: “a unit of language, consisting of one or more spoken sounds or their written representation, that functions as a principal carrier of meaning.” Thus, the notion of language is defined in terms of the notion of word, which is itself defined in terms of the notion of language. In such a case, the circularity is hidden beneath the surface. When the charge of circularity is levied against the memory theory, it is a circularity of this Jatter sort. On the surface, defining personal identity in terms of continuity of memory does not seem to involve a circle. But, as initially noted by Joseph Butler, an eighteenth-century English bishop and philosopher, a proper understanding of the notion of memory seems to presuppose the notion of personal identity (Butler 1736). Thus, we have a circle — albeit a hidden one. Why might one think that memory presupposes personal identity? To see this, let’s consider two teenagers, Stella and Bella, both of whom are big Beyoncé fans. Last night, Stella went to a Beyoncé concert, had a great time, and now cher- ishes her memories of the experience. But tickets were really expensive, and Bella couldn’t afford one. Fortunately for Bella, her uncle is a skilled hypnotist (and willing in this case to work for free), and after reading detailed descriptions of the concert on social media, he hypnotizes her so that she now believes that she went to the concert too. It seems to her exactly as if she’d been there. She can tell you how Beyonce looked from where she takes herself to have been sitting, what songs were played, how she felt when she danced along to “Single Ladies,” and so on. Just like Stella, she takes herself to have cherished memories of attending the concert. From the internal perspective, Stella and Bella are very similar. Both of them take themselves to have experienced the concert and to now remember having done so. But while it seems natural to treat Stella’s memories as real, it also seems natural to treat Bella’s memories as fake. What Bella takes to be memories are only psvudu-memuries. Importantly, though, her pseudo-memories might be every bit as vivid and detailed as Stella’s. To explain why Bella’s pseudo-memories are merely apparent, then, it looks like we cannot rely on ~ !

" 38 Persons and Personal Identity anything about her mental state itself. Instead we have to rely on the fact that she wasn’t actually at the concert. Since she didn’t actually have the experience, any apparent memory of such an experience cannot be a real memory. : As (his.examplc makes clear, then, for whwrhing to count as a genuine memory of some event, that event must actually bm‘e been experienced by the person who seems to remember it. We can put this more formally as follows: Mem}m’y: A’s apparent memory M of some event E is a genuine memory of E only if E was experienced by A. Bm_that means that the definition of memory presupposes the notion of same person: for some apparent memory of an experience to be a real memory of yours, you must have been the person to have experienced it. . Although philosophers love to invoke hypnotists, for those teat{gri‘ skeptical of such fanciful devices, the same point t)(f)ttn in:s:erree;r:]‘/rnade wn_h more mun.d;mc ex}unplc’& We of e ,Wflp;}:n])vpnate[he experiences of our friends, S e believe them to have happened to us. you ever found you rself telling : 5 funny ng a story about some me!?” If it wasn’t fSP()nhi Hey that wasn’t you. That was G Z’: w ‘0 had the experience, then your vivid — cannot be 0 matter how d}'t‘ply engrained and ¢ a genuine one. In this way, the notion of memory presupposes St ; : personal identity, a Vdefinit tion of personal identit ¥, and thus any defini lematically circular. To defend against the char; y that relies on memory seems prob- rist has to find a 8e Of_ circularity, a memory theo- way of defining memory that does not resu 0S/ 1 1 Fo givr:zpuseapszonral héeﬂt'TY-_Any such account would have et memoZie: istinguish real memories from merely without invoking the notion of same of knowledge and ay, “Stephen is at he name “Stephen” The Psychological Approach to Personal Identity 39 refer to my son and not to Stephen Hawking or Stephen Colbert or some other Stephen? According to the causal theory of reference, my utterance of the name “Stephen” refers to my son because of a causal connection between it and him. The causal theory of knowledge relies on a similar insight in explaining what counts as knowledge. Until the 1960s, many philosophers treated knowledge as equivalent to justi- fied true belief, but an important paper by Edmund Gettier revealed this account to be lacking in certain ways. The problem arises from the fact that I might have a justified belief that happens to be true despite the fact that it is entirely unconnected from the truth. For example, suppose I turn on the television just in time to see Cuban baseball player Yoenis Céspedes being crowned the champion of the Homerun Derby. 1 then form the belief, “Céspedes won this year’s Homerun Derby” — a belief that’s plausibly justified by what I just saw on television. But though it’s true that Céspedes is the victor of the 2014 Homerun Derby, it so happens that what was playing when I turned on the television was a replay of the 2013 Homerun Derby, an event that Céspedes also won. My belief, though both true and justified, is only acci- dentally so. It is not appropriately connected to the state of affairs in the world that makes it true. It thus doesn’t seem that my belief rises to the level of knowledge. The causal theory of knowledge adds a further condition to rule out cases of accidental connection: knowledge requires a causal link, i.e., there must be a causal connection between some- one’s belief about an event and the event itself. So now recall Stella and Bella. Both have apparent memo- ries of having seen a Beyoncé concert but only Stella’s is a real memory. Importantly, though, Stella’s apparent memory was caused by the concert, while Bella’s was caused by the hypnotist. If we require a causal link between a memory of an event and the event itself, it looks like we can explain the difference between Stella and Bella without having to invoke the notion of same person: Causal theory of memory: A's apparent memory M of some event E is a genuine memory of E only if M is causally con- nected to E.

40 Persons and Personal Identity Here we can see a direct parallel to the causal theory of knowledge: just as my belief about Céspedes cannot be kr]()\}lcdgc because it is only accidentally connected to the fact in the world that it represents, Bella’s apparent memory of the Beyoncé concert cannot be a real memory because it is only accidentally connected to the event in the world bthat it represents. In this way, the causal account seems to offer us a solution to the problem of circularity. Unfortunately, however, matters are not quite this simple. Consider Ella, who .1l;<) ]o\'e; Beyoncé and who, like Stella, went to the concert. As the years go by,vh()wcver, Ella has forgotten everything about it. Thlb seems like such a shame, especially since she’s ;ri]l a huge tfan of Beyoncé, so we take her to Bella’s uncle, who does for Ella what he'()nce did for Bella. Though Ella once had genuine ::;}T:(;:)e\s Z:et:f)[c;)}?cert,]rhe apparent memories that she has e o Burer}r:se‘ves genuine; they’ve been implanted flsin: ‘.},is \r e ta‘usal account does not give us the S txoas;.e ths'beca‘use Ella went to the concert connection - albeit an indi:ei‘:(;:sety—?:]d '50 Ih:’f .'\‘ e e L etween the concert and Eila s Lo e causal theory thus has to accept Perhaps we caj g'enume. e thiz ;ir:jn;if tchae ca:?al theory of memory to connicopy A A se. A thopgh there is a causal oo s memories of the concert and the s esn’t seem to be a causal connection of the right sort. We ; . We can thus build a f; ; ; " u . the causal the()ry AT e rther requirement into Modified causal fied causal theory of memory: A’s apparent memory M of some event E is i a genuine mem f i i ally connected in the right way [()(gy i e Importa G ther:)rist n\:g’v:orliihls account to be of use to the memory ou ) the right way” wirhr:,e:? @ way to spell out the notion of “in identity. Whether this capr:els):rifosmg the notion of personal one detailed attemp one remains to be seen. (For ! oL, see Perry 1975 i ltslffore closing thls section, it wil] bé) useful i e problem raised at th B o el € € i nd of the previous section. As S e The Psychological Approach to Personal Identity 41 we saw, the memory theorist needs to provide an account of what it is for a memory to be potentially occurrent, i.e., the memory theorist needs to be able to distinguish between a sleeping individual (of whom we can truly say: were she to be woken, she could bring the memories before her mind) and a corpse (of whom we can truly say: were she to be alive, she could bring the memories before her mind). In essence, then, the memory theorist needs to explain when memories are potentially occurrent in the right way. Here too, any specification of what counts as “in the right way” will have to avoid presupposing the notion of personal identity. 2.4 The Psychological Theory Despite the problems with the memory theory, memory does seem to play a key role in personal identity over time. But we might naturally think that memory doesn’t tell the whole story. Consider Clive Wearing, a British musician who in 1985 contracted amnesia as a result of a serious brain infec- tion. In addition to losing his ability to form new memories, Wearing also was afflicted by retrograde amnesia. As the neurologist Oliver Sacks describes it, Wearing suffered “a deletion of virtually his entire past” (Sacks 2007). But despite his amnesia, Wearing maintains many of his character traits —his musical ability, his elegant style, his fondness for dancing, and his deep and abiding love for his wife Deborah. Those who know him have no doubt that he’s still Clive — a very changed Clive, no doubt, but still Clive. As this case suggests, it seems that a person can survive severe memory loss. For this reason, we might naturally be led to think about other psychological connections that play a role in our per- sonal identity over time. Last night before I went to bed, 1 formed the intention to exercise first thing this morning. I acted on this intention. While memories are backward-looking, connecting an individual to her past self, intentions are forward-looking, connecting an individual to her future self. Other connections run in both directions. The beliefs, desires, character traits, and habits that I have When I woke up, B

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42 Persons and Personal Identity today connect both to the beliefs, desires, character traits, and habits of my past self and to those of my future self. Of course, I gain and lose beliefs and desires all the time, and my character traits and habits may also change over time, perhaps even dramatically so. But when there are overlapping chains of psychological connections over time — connections not just of memory, but also of intention, beliefs, desires, character traits, habits, and so on — we have psychological continuity. According to the psychological theory of personal identity, Locke’s focus on memory was too narrow. Instead of trying to account for personal identity in terms of continu- ity of memory, such theorists instead account for personal identity in terms of continuity of psychology: The ps;v(lJO]ogiral theory: A at time tl is identical to B at some later time t2 if and only if there is continuity of psychol- ogy between B and A. In contemporary discussion of personal identity, the memory theory has largely been replaced by the psychn.loglml rheur,\". C(?n(emp(>rary' philosophers who have endorsed versions of this theory include Sydney Shoemaker, Derek Parfit, John Perry, and the late David Lewis, all of whom have made important contributions to its development. To avoid some of tl_\e prn_blems facing the memory theory, psvchulngical continuity is often explained in terms of qtras}-;r10v;1r>r)v rather than memory itself. According to Parfit (1984, 220), we can define quasi-memory as follows: guasx-memwy: A has a quasi-memory of some event E if (1) haz:exfi to rem_emb?r having experience E; (2) someone did ; is experience; and (3) A’s apparent memory is appro- priately causally dependent on that past experience. Quas_l-memory isa wider concept than genuine memory. All genuine memories will be quasi-memories, but there mu be quasi-memories that are not genuine }nemories Unlike E(e):;;nize?:teitrnorsy, (;]ufiasi-memory does not presupp;OSc per- - quasi-meny{ory e Cfl"ng psychological continuity in terms : y (and, analogously, other quasi-states), the psychological theorists can avoid problems of circularit;’ The Psychological Approach to Personal Identity 43 There are two primary competitors to the psychological view. The first is the physical theory. While the psychological theory attempts to reduce personal identity to facts about continuity of psychological states, the physical theory attempts to reduce personal identity to facts about continuity of the body and/or biological continuity. As this suggests, despite the important differences between the psychological theory and the physical theory, they share a common commitment to reductionism; both theories are thus typically referred to as reductionist views. We will turn to a more complete discus- sion of the physical theory in chapter 4. The second competitor to the psychological theory is the further fact theory. On this view, personal identity cannot be reduced to either psychological facts or physical facts. Rather, personal identity consists in some irreducible further fact. Someone who defines personal identity in terms of a soul, or a bare ego, offers this sort of view. Because this view denies the possibility of reduction, it is often referred to as a non- reductionist view. Many of those who believe in the further fact view are motivated at least in part by considerations independent of personal identity. For example, religious commitments might give them independent reasons to believe in the existence of souls. But proponents of the view have also given philosophi- cal justification for the existence of some such further fact. For example, let’s return to the view of Bishop Butler, whose criticisms of Locke we encountered above. For Butler, we need to draw a distinction between two kinds of identity: identity in the loose and popular sense versus identity in the strict and philosophical sense. In the former sense of identity, we might say that an entity is the same even if its parts have undergone all sorts of change, but this will not be true in the latter sense of identity. In order to have identity in the strict sense, there must be something unchanging, i.e., there must be some further fact. As we continue our discussion of the reidentification ques- tion, we will focus largely on the debate between the psycho- logical theory and the physical theory, though we will briefly consider the further fact view in chapter 5. In the remainder of this chapter, however, we will first look in more detail at the psychological theory itself. <

Y 44 Persons and Personal Identity 2.5 Transplants, Avatars, and Teleportation Much of the motivation for the psychological theory ste from the consideration of puzzle cases. Normally, as we m ::S our way through life, psychological mnnnum'.:u}d h\'sf'i continuity go hand in hand. My present self is both ps;v' ‘l}:a lng‘lcally and physically continuous with my past IZ-\i;rt-o?d- self, and I assume the same goes for your present ;efr and your past 12-year-old self. However, there are ‘caxe; - h‘mh real and hypothetical - in which physical continuity and Fwstuh()l()glcal continuity can be seen to come apart. Accord- lsr:li}:()‘ad\\uu}l]res.ut the psychological approach, reflection on cases shows us that psychological continuity is what m‘mer.s f(}r identity over time. A [m;‘;i‘nse gr;roszimzlfier rhe‘ case of brain transplantation. Bl e u-Lure in which scientists have achieved s :L _n(;)lngy necessary for such a procedure bl ﬂ: rrlle ().ur. Apd !eF's also imagine a hor- o W:Sr eaves two individuals in critical condi- o ()ver,the ma'orirn:apfp]:d in the car, has suffered severe et IDeS y o hlS body and his other organs are W Ll hpltz the f‘act. that all of his brain func- e Ca; uls( eath is imminent. Bodie, who was e Unf()rrunatelp "}: impact, suffered only minor bodily fori R Iy, d.owever. he hit his head against a i afimhulzn ing, and the force was so great that braigdd b the:::&r:acl}es the hospital he is declared lies, Brian’s brain is trans ]a\:[\i\tjth g Sodic & oo Hokhed b planted into Bodie’s body. R magine the case from here? When the with Bodie’s body and Brian’ i i BB~ wakespee: el rian’s brain — call him have the intuition that BBy‘i\: Ehas survived? Many people you yourself don’t yet haye cIet T o sobianal it.might helpstotconsidanc far Intuitions about this case, tive. If you were in Brian’s rom the first-person perspec- terrible crash and your bod: p()smon‘,.|f g ibesiyinte Y Was failing, would you opt to have your brai rain transplanted the point, w ted into a new body? surv?ve> ’Wll(;utl}? you consider this a case in v\zlhifl:nd(‘) it Eg 3 € person who wakes up after the . W()uh surgery be The Psychological Approach to Personal Identity 45 you? Again, many people answer these questions in the affirmative. So what do these intuitions show? Since BB has Brian’s brain, it’s natural to suppose that BB has Brian’s psychology. He remembers (or, at least, he quasi-remembers) the crash from Brian’s perspective, not Bodie’s. More generally, he has Brian’s personality traits. He thinks of Brian’s family as his family. He mourns the loss of his friend Bodie, though he is grateful for the generosity of Bodie’s family in allowing him to use Bodie’s body. In fact, we might think the case has in some way been incorrectly described as a brain transplant. That description suggests, on analogy to heart transplants, that one person receives a new brain. But it’s not really Bodie who gets a brain transplant; rather, it's Brian who gets a whole body transplant. And just as a successful heart trans- plant does not threaten one’s identity, a successful whole body transplant does not threaten one’s identity. This sort of case thus seems to support the psychological theory of personal identity, since the lack of bodily continuity does not seem to prevent BB from being Brian. Rather, it’s the psychological continuity between BB and Brian that dictates that it’s Brian rather than Bodie who has survived. Of course, consideration of this case does not provide definitive support for the psychological theory. Some propo- nents of the physical theory do not share the intuition that they would survive such an operation, and they likewise insist that BB is identical to Bodie, not Brian. Such a view has been forcefully defended by the fictional character Gretchen Weirob in John Perry’s Dialogue on Personal Identity and Immortal- ity (1978). Facing near-certain death due to various bodily injuries she’s sustained in a motorcycle accident, Weirob turns down the kind of procedure we have imagined. Though the survivor of the operation might seem to remember doing what she has done, and might even claim to be Gretchen Weirob, those facts are not enough to settle who the survivor is. As Gretchen says, that alone “does not make her me. For this could all be true of someone suffering a delusion, or a » (Perry 1978, 45). Other proponents of dmit that BB is identical to Brian but he psychological theory. On hological continuity but subject of hypnosis the physical theory a deny that this commits one to € their view, what matters is not psyc

46 Persons and Personal Identity continuity of the physical brain. Since BB has Brian’s brain, BB is Brian. We will look at these sorts of responses when we look at the physical theory in more detail in chapter 4. In the meantime, however, it will be useful to consider some of the other cases often invoked to support the psy theory. The 2009 film Avatar directed by James Cameron takes place in the mid twenty-second century, at a time when Earth’s natural resources have been severely depleted. The action occurs on Pandora, a planet whose atmosphere is toxic to humans and that is inhabited by a species of 10-foot-tall blue-skinned humanoids called the Na'vi. To make contact with the Na'vi and to gain their trust, the humans explore Pandora by way of the operation of what they call avatars - remote, artificial bodies that are human—Na’vi hybrids. The overall plot of the movie need not concern us here. For our purposes, what’s most interesting is what happens at the end (and I apologize for the spoiler). One of the humans, Jake Sully, has his consciousness permanently transferred into his avatar body by a special Na'vi ritual and lives happily ever after among the Na'vi. This fictional case seems clearly to presuppose the psychological theory. Sully cannot live happily ever after among the Na'vi unless it’s Sully who survives. M()ref)ver, unlike in the transplant case considered above, her§ it’s only the consciousness that's transferred, not the brain. Sully’s original brain dies along with his original body. This further supports the claim made by psychological theo- rists about the previous case that what matters for survival is psych_ological continuity, not brain continuity. Turning to one other case from science fic(iz)r{, consider the transporter, a te]epo'rtation device used in the fictional world of Star _Trele. As depicted _by the shows and movies, the trans- porter is a form of near-instantaneous travel from one loca- Pon o e e fom sty Bt oo i it Liel;ten:g lhspeakmg, the transporter departure, records her “patterm“ dura. Uil poistof imposes that pattern on new :1’ R i lictiand hen Assuming the transporter worksatter i ol of arnival L ! correctly, there seems to be 10 question that it’s Uhura who has arrived at th i coordinates. Though various Starfl o rileet officers have their chological H . U The Psychological Approach to Personal Identity 47 worries about using the transporter, their fear seems fx‘llﬂnﬂ:o the kinds of fear that people often have about air travel. The worry is that the device will fail, not that s‘m}cfssml ()pc_ranqn of the device amounts to death. Here then is Jnmhs’f Llas:‘illl\l which psychological continuity seems to be prized over bodily or even brain continuity. 2.6 The Method of Thought Experiments Psychological theorists have relied he.\f'lly on the 50rt}: otv pll. ;zle cases that we've just considered in an effort to show their theory must be correct. l’hilosnphvers re.nd F()‘rcter “j such cases as thought experiments. Unlike suenn!fiu Expe,:K ments that are conducted in a physical laboratory, t gu‘i., : experiments are conducted in rhe. laboratory of fhe}n]mn ;h‘:lm the use of thought experiments is commonp!ace ¢ rouf.),k7 . philosophy — not just in memphy_sncs_hut 315(_) in e_plste_my Bi( ethics, and every other area of phllosophlcal. 1nql:11r4\._;-m. however common the method, it is often met with s epn-u[sha; In particular, when confmnt_ed with thought e)_(pcr}:mer::/imls are purely science fiction, like the examApIes in tGe_p = section, sometimes people are uncomtortable. xlvde el such examples are greatly removed from th; \z?'o_r“ﬂ:i i know it, one might naturally wonder what (‘ ey col o p“Sh sibly show us about real life. The rwennet.h‘—glenltureyx ljfi: = phi[()S()pher Kathleen Wilkes has}veen Parfi; :r«lrti_\t'v hgs i expressing this kind of concern: Personal ,e i the stamping-ground for bizarre, er}terta}l]nmg?,“urin A sive thought experiments. To my mind, these al 0%31- e have led discussion off on the wrong t_rack_s? mor;ev léad = they rely heavily on imagination ar}d mt-um(_)p.l:‘ . no solid or agreed conclusions, s:_r?celmtuxt::nslv ‘p;vch(). imaginations fail” (Wilkes 1988, vii). mPO\r'ukin'v. b logical theorists are not t.he only onles‘“?n discissi()ns o experiments. This method is commonp aclf_ld e personal identity. But in the face of the hm““eS ;)f e expressed by Wilkes, a response along t gde s c()mpellifig one is doing it” probably does not pr}(\m o defense. Moreover, it is true that thought exp ) =

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48 Persons and Personal Identity Aln c]spg‘lally crucial role in motivating the case for the psy- chological theory. Thus, it’s worth considering what pr()pb- nents of the theory might say y might say in response to worries this method. e R el . ; oughly speaking, psychological theorists seem to have three different possible answers available to them. First they n}:)g‘hr rely on recent scientific developments that suugés‘r that r1 cst:’ N}c}: are not as bizarre or far-fetched as they initially ;)E[{Vt(:lfr.m";:llfi?eluch‘cn\cs may at present be u‘chlmlogicall:v ach, they are not — to use a term of Parfit’s — “deeply impossible.” For example: i Scientists in the early 1980s successfully transplanted a Elcct of one mouse’s brain into another’s, and the recipi- Of‘llfe:ﬂ([:ltjsr:);::r\;ved in seven out of eight attempts. More- rdes qinc:ar},t t]r‘ansplanrs have been successfully SUCCBSSfully'\ e t If ate 1960s, and doctors have also el splanted kidneys, livers, lungs, pancre- Bty ev;n fl::t-esnr;esj as well as eye tissue, bones, Vi o m}:es.} uch transplants vt‘\'pl('d”_\' involve S er 1L§rr‘rxans but sometimes involve arti- e wairin.g - dnts who have received artificial hearts emt e Suc}:)qated hearts to _heamu- available have ReEiE e u_nplanted devices for several years. i s into the development of artificial 8S, pancreases, and oth, ilevit (o other organs. So, while it’s true g stillam mlwrmng, th§ idea of human brain nob A moEs On:'e_)’ hypf)thetlcal, the possibility is The iny might think. > inventor and futurist Ray K engineering at Google, upl(_)ad the brain to 2 ly Kurzweil, now director of predicts that we will be able to nCd0lthput§r or android body via a -tr: P % 7 theslzreR RO I anster procedure sometime in emerging technologies th scan-and-transfer brain enable us to make a gr form. First, in the 2020s i : we wi i brains through the use of ill begin to augment our The Psychological Approach to Personal Identity 49 cognition will be carried out by nonbiological means. The nonbiological portion of our cognitive architecture will begin to dominate by the 2030s, and it will continue to increase exponentially in capability. Then “Although we are likely to retain the biological portion for a period of time, it will become of increasingly little consequence. So we will have effectively uploaded ourselves, albeit gradu- ally, never quite noticing the transfer. There will be no ‘old Ray’ and ‘new Ray,” just an increasingly capable Ray” (Kurzweil 2005, 202). e In May 2014, a group of Dutch scientists succeeded in the “unconditional quantum teleportation™ of data from one spot to another. As reported in the journal Science, experi- ments enabled the scientists to transfer information con- tained in one quantum bit to a different quantum bit located 3 meters away without the information having travelled through the intervening space. Though this is still a far cry from the teletransportation of objects, let alone human beings, it makes that possibility seem less remote. This first response tries to deny that the examples used are mere science fiction. But psychological theorists also have available to them a different kind of response, one that accepts that such scenarios are unlikely to be realized any time soon (or perhaps ever). For, even if consciousness trans- fers and teleportation will never be actually achieved, the mere possibility of such scenarios is meant to be enough to show that the psychological theory is correct. Theories of personal identity are not just meant to be truths but are meant to be necessary truths. Consider other necessary truths, like the claim that four is an even number or that a circle has no corners. Since these are necessary truths, we cannot even coherently describe a situation in which four is an odd number or in which there is a cornered circle. Any such apparent descriptions wouldn’t make sense. Likewise, if it{ were neces- sarily true that personal identity consists in physical continu- ity, we shouldn’t be able to coherently describe a case in which A is the same person as B even hough there is not physical continuity between them. Such a case should make as little sense as a case in W hich there was a cornered circle. =

50 Persons and Personal Identity Since the scenarios above involving consciousness trans- fers and teleportation seem coherent when we explore them carefully via imagination, it looks like physical continuity theories must be false. And one could say something similar about the further fact view. . ) To my mind, these first two responses on behalf of the psychological theorist are pretty compelling. But, should there still be doubts, the psychological theorists might try a third kind nf response. In particular, they may ~ug};cs( that we can turn from science fiction and futuristic scenarios back to real life. In their view, there are real-life cases (or cases drawn very closely from real-life situations) that support their theory just as strongly as the science fiction cases already considered. We will consider some of these cases in detail in later chapters. For now, to give just one example, we might l(.)ok to cases of dissociative identity disorder. In this condi- tion, \A_vhlch used to be called multiple personality disorder, an individual’s identity has fragmented into what seem to be two or more distinct personalities. Given the vast differences among such personalities — from different likes and dislikes, to different genders, to different abilities it has often been Zuggevste.d that they are different persons. Insofar as this WZSZTTIEftl};)ir;l(:ifn?ifpl;eneormen‘f)pdseex_ns plausible, it reveals that pipittn oo getz dslts)[rl s: _er;’nry in psychological terms. R ai Signific:;n[ i ofmg,,uls ed _trom an,“rh,” because psychological continuity between them. i i i i : é'n _We. w1llAretu.rn to a more complete discussion of dis- sociative identity disorder in chapter 4 Further Reading For a general discussion a reidentification (includin, case), see Chisholm (19 addressing the reident bout the metaphysical issue of 7g discussion of the Ship of Theseus 75 ch. 3). Two excellent collections ification question with r d espect to persons are Perry (2008) and Martin and Barresi (2()5;)' the papers in the first three sections of p P erry (2008), including exge}:pt from Locke (1689/1975), areyparticli;;;lurill:sai‘z to the memory theory. Perry (1978) provides a short and The Psychological Approach to Personal Identity 51 accessible introduction to the reidentification question via a dialogue format. Shoemaker (1984) and Parfit (1984, pt. 3) both provide influential defenses of the psychological theory. In addition to Wilkes (1988), Gendler (2002) also provides a useful discussion of the role of thought experiments in discussions of personal identity. For those interested in learning more about Ray Kurzweil, I recommend Barry Ptolemy’s 2009 documentary Transcen- dent Man. Christopher Nolan’s Memento (2000) and Michael Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) are two gr}ar films relevant to the role of memory in personal identity. Total Recall, a film based on the Philip K. Dick story “We Can Remember It For You Wholesale,” provides a vivid example of the distinction between apparent memories and real memories. Personally, ’'m partial to the original version from 1990 starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, but the 2012 remake is also good.