You said this:
He treats both, and makes definitive conclusions on each, as to identity. It’s extremely hard to believe you have read Parfit, given how objectively wrong this was - and in the fact of my presenting the evidence for that, you’ve ignored it. It definitely feels like trolling mate. I suggest addressing mistakes like this will put you in better stead to reply to the issues at hand. Onward..
I’m not entirely sure what you mean here - psychological continuity is a brute thing. It isn’t contingent - either you share a psychological continuity with an earlier “you” or you don’t (terms murky there, I know - but the first refers to “you” the abstract identity, and the second to you, DarkNeos with whom I am conversing so please don’t get stuck).
Sleep has nothing to do with this. Even if there was a total break in consciousness, if upon waking it is restored, that is continuity per above. There’s a philospher named Jason Weberloff who belives we die every time we sleep and every time we get black-out drunk. It’s a very peculiar view that I do not think comes to much (although, I very much like Jason).
It is exactly the same paradox. He is describing the exact thought experiment without calling it Theseus’ Ship. Here is the passage, whcih I have already provided to you in part:
"Suppose that a wooden ship is repaired from time to time while it is floating
in harbour, and that after fifty years it contains none of the bits of wood out of which it was first built.
It is still one and
the same ship, because, as a ship, it has displayed throughout these fifty years full physical continuity. This is so despite the fact that it is now composed of
quite different bits of wood. These bits of wood might be qualitatively identical to the original bits, but they are not one and the same bits. Something similar is partly true of a human body. With the exception of some brain cells, the cells in
our bodies are replaced with new cells several times in our lives."
If you can tease out where this diverges, in any significant way, from the Ship of Theseus thought experiment, feel free. Fwiw, Parfit goes on to explicitly talk about whether it is hte “same” body over time, despite these materials changing entirely. The analogy holds. The TE is the same one.
Do you mean section 82 of the Book?
All he’s treating there is what he calls the “further fact” view of identity and providing cases where it cannot be true, concluding:
“Have we good evidence for the belief in reincarnation? And have we evidence to believe that psychological continuity
depends chiefly, not on the continuity of the brain, but on the continuity of some other entity, which either exists
unimpaired, or does not exist at all? We do not in fact have the kind of evidence described above. Even if we can
understand the concept of a Cartesian Pure Ego, or spiritual substance, we do not have evidence to believe that such
entities exist.”
False. There is a question whether it is exhaustive, but is the most-subscribed view among those investigating these things. Realism seems to be the most common response to almost all world-oriented beliefs among philosophers. Something I find odd, but there we go. If you could send me to the source for that view being “found to be incorrect” that would be great.
Because that is what philosophers do: engage their objectors. He gives an argument by another philosopher, Bernard Williams, and (imo) roundly defeats it. This is absolutely standard, and once again shows me you have not read the book. At all. See Concluding Chapter of the book. Excerpt below:
“I disagree. I believe that
what matters is Relation R, psychological continuity and/or connectedness. In arguing that this is what matters, and
that physical continuity does not matter, I was again attacking what is, in one way, a more impersonal view. On this
view, what matters is a feature that we share both with mere animals and with mere physical objects. On my view, what
matters is what makes us persons.”
It would really, really help if you could read the book before commenting on it.
I directly dealt with what ways in whcih I think they can come together, and come apart. You did not engage.
Yeah, what if? But that’s not the thought experiment. That would fundamentally change the question being asked by it. And the branchline case already deals with this. At length. Again - please read the book.
I don’t think it obtains. I cannot understand any claims for it that aren’t based on supernaturality like a further fact.
Thank you for the paper. Some comments, althought, I’ve printed this for reading after work in more detail:
- the author clearly does not quite understand Parfit’s arguments for this criterion:
" George—suffers from retrograde amnesia, meaning he has
no memories of events that occurred before the onset of the condition, then he
might as well count as an entirely new individual under the psychological criterion."
The answer is yes.
“However, is it really possible for an entirely new personal
identity, or an entirely new person, to be created simply by altering somebody’s
psychological state?”
The answer is yes.
“George would still be
George, but with a different set of memories.”
This is incoherent, on the Psychological view which has not been even objected to yet, other than to say it’s incorrect. This is absolutely terrible philosophy.
The argument she offers is part of Williams arguments which Parfit treats in it’s own section in R&P
“The true difficulty lies in explaining how the amnesiac
individual, somebody with absolutely no internal psychological connection to
the pre-amnesiac individual, could possibly empathize with that pre-amnesiac individual.”
I empathize with people I’ve never even met, let alone that have been me. This is short-sighted and does not touch the argument Parfit has made.
Having briefed the rest of the essay (and will read in detail and respond more if wanted/needed) the author has unfortunately not actually made an argument against the psychological continuity position. They have simply insistent that empathy defeats it.
This is clearly wrong. For instance, this line is perplexingly stupid:
“George merely has to come across the knowledge of his condition, which will automatically generate a psychological connection between the pre-amnesiac and amnesiac George.”
The connection alluded to has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with personal identity, and about knowledge of another person. This is not interesting or relevant.
This is not, as she purports, the current “definition” of the psychological criterion. It doesn’t actually give one either - it just asserts that a certain case rebuffs it, without ever stating it. She seems to think that any connection with another person defeats the Relation R position. It plainly doesn’t even touch it. She doesn’t even posit that George things he is hte same person after finding out he is an amnesiac. And indeed, it is extremely rare for amnesiacs to take that view, as best I know.
