meekerdb wrote:
On 6/22/2015 5:37 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote:
meekerdb wrote:
On 6/22/2015 2:56 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
On Tuesday, June 23, 2015, meekerdb <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
On 6/22/2015 3:11 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
I diverge from my previous self from moment to moment in ordinary
life, but I still consider that I remain me. If I woke up
tomorrow taller because I had a growth spurt during the night I
would still consider that I was me; yet by the "closest
continuer" theory, I would stop being me if a copy that hadn't
grown was made somewhere else.
I think waking up somewhere else would count strongly against
being the closest continuation.
What if, while both are asleep, the original is moved to another
location and the copy moved to the original's bed?
That would help, but there's an implicit assumption that
asleep=mindless. Anesthetic would make a better example. But won't
both the original and the copy find himself in a disjoint location
incompatible with where he was before?
I think part of the problem here is that the first-person impression
is taken to be definitive. Since the closest continuer theory weights
bodily continuity fairly highly in the metric whereby 'closest' is to
be determined, what happens to your body, whether or not you are
conscious of it, is an important consideration.
It was my understanding that closest continuer was to be judged entirely
in terms of conscious thoughts, e.g. memories. Of course these include
memories of ones body so noticeable physical changes would count
against, but discontinuity that was not noticeable wouldn't. Causal
connection doesn't count because the idea is to explain everything,
including causality in terms of consciousness. I'm not even sure the
theory is coherent. I want to ask; continuer of what? It seems to
intuitively rest on the idea a being or soul that *must* continue and so
must attach to some best vehicle.
That might be Bruno's idea -- he defines personal identity solely in
terms of memories of one's previous selves. In fact, in the way you put
it here, such a theory seems to be inherently dualist.
But in my opinion, Bruno's definition is too narrow, and self-serving.
The closest continuer theory as discussed in the philosophical
literature on personal identity is much broader. It takes account of all
features of a person -- memories, bodily features, environment, causal
connections, values, temperament, personality, skills, etc, etc. The
definition of a 'person' is seen as irreducibly multi-dimensional. Of
course, that means that one must define a metric across those dimensions
in order to determine what is 'closest'. The metric is not absolutely
specified by the theory, and I think it can, in fact, be flexible, in
that one weighting of factors might be more appropriate in one setting
than in another.
The point is that one should capture as much of the notion of personal
identity that we use everyday as is possible. In particular, it should
take account of those difficult cases where memory is lost or impaired
in one way or another. Bruno's definition is just too restrictive to be
of any use in the real world.
Bruce
But maybe Stathis should explain what he means by the theory.
Brent
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