Lecture 10 (last one of term!) Personal Identity… Part B

Topics for this lecture: Review problem of divided selves. Fusion

Reminder of last week… (With duplication possibility in mind) Suppose someone believes he is Napoleon. Crazy? What if he is just like Napoleon? Apparent memories and personality. Well he only has quasi-memories. Must be connected in the right way the historical guy.

That’s the revised psychological theory of personal identity (PI) at work. But then on that view a self could divide. So longer as each self is a psychological and causal descendant of the original guy each as a claim to be him.

But the two descendant are distinct, non- identical, so how can the both be identical with the original person? (Transitivity) Teletransportation or brain hemisphere transplant cases.

Someone might say that neither of the two is a survivor. But if only one survived (e.g. in a stroke or operation) then the person survives… and how can whether that person is a survivor of the original depend on what happens to the other one?

Think about it from the first-person point of view. Either you have survived or you haven’t. It can’t be vague or a matter of degree or a matter of how we feel like describing it. From the third-personal point of view it doesn’t seem so black and white.

Fission If we can divide we can also fuse, it seems. This would be like… a hyper-marriage… Do you survive, partly, or wholly?

What we care about: what is it we want when we want to survive? –Body, brain, soul, personality, memories? –What we want to not mere bodily or soul survive but, it seems some survivor with some of my psychological profile who is psychological connected to me... –But the whole debate over identity of the person is supposed to be about numerical as opposed to qualitative identity. –

Why even require connectedness? Why wouldn’t someone like me do? It all starts to get confusing! And with that …

I, or some descendant of me will see some descendant of you next term…. Have a good break... Don’t forget term is almost over (your first term at university); you can make it. Read some epistemology over the holidays to prepare for next term.