Countering the Appeal of the Psychological Approach to Personal Identity

Philosophy

Volumn 79, Issue 3, 2004, Pages 447-474

  Hershenov, David ^a  

^a NONE   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 60950572026     PISSN: 00318191     EISSN: 1469817X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0031819104000373     Document Type: Article

References (27)

1. Parfit, Derek. Reasons and Persons. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983) pp. 245–280. See also his
2. ‘The Unimportance of Identity,’ ed. Harry Harris, Identity. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995) pp. 13–45.
3. See Dean Zimmerman, ‘Theories of Masses and Problems of Constitution.’ Philosophical Review. 104 (1995) pp. 55–110.
4. W. R. Carter, ‘Our Bodies, Our Selves.’ Australasian Journal of Philosophy. 1988 vol. 66 No. 3 pp. 308–319.
5. Eric Olson, ‘Material Coincidence and the Indiscernability Problem.’ The Philosophical Quarterly. Vol. 51. No. 204. (2001).
6. The Human Animal: Identity Without Psychology. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997).
7. The brain transplant thought experiment was first put forth by Sidney Shoemaker in his Self Knowledge and Self Identity, (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1963), p. 23. It is a materialist twist on Locke's famous account of consciousness swapping between the Prince and the Cobbler. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. Peter Nidditch, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975), chapter XXVII p. 340.
8. Eric Olson coined the phrases ‘vegetable intuition’ and ‘coma intuition’ as well as ‘transplant intuition.’ The Human Animal: Identity Without Psychology. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997) p. 39 A permanent vegetative state is distinguished from a coma in that a being in the former has a working brainstem. Some vegetables donʼnt even need a respirator. See Ronald Cranford, ‘The Persistent Vegetative State: The Medical Reality (Getting the Facts Straight.)’ Hastings Center Report. February-March 1988. pp. 27-32.
9. When I mention brain transplants in this chapter, I mean only the transplant of the ‘upper brain,’ the cerebrum, which no sensible commentator thinks is an organism. Matters are more complicated if the whole-brain and brainstem are transplanted. Peter van Inwagen and Eric Olson believe that such a procedure would be the transplanting of the human animal---though a mutilated one. See van Inwagen's, Material Beings. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991) pp. 168–179 and Olson's, The Human Animal: Identity without Psychology. pp. 122-4. Nathan Salmon also expressed this view in conversation. Olson and van Inwagen stress that it is the lower brain (the brainstem, in particular) that is essential for the functioning of an organism, and that a detached whole brain and brainstem would meet the conditions for being an animal since there would still be a system that functions as a unit in the manner characteristic of biological entities.
10. David Wiggins, Sameness and Substance. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980)
11. Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983). See also
12. Parfit's ‘The Unimportance of Identity’ in Identity. ed. Henry Harris, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995) pp. 13–45. If readers are doubtful that we can draw any lessons from bizarre thought experiments involving brain splitting and hemispheric transplants, perhaps a case of multiple or split personality, what is now called, ‘Dissociative Identity Disorder,’ may provide the same lesson but in a more realistic and reliable manner. Imagine that the original personality is shattered rather than preserved and awaiting reintegration or reestablishment as the only person realized by the organism. Instead, two new distinct personalities have emerged, each with an equal amount of psychological contents qualitatively similar to those of the original. The new mental lives are each completely unaware of any experiences and plans of the other. If advocates of the PAPI maintain that unity of consciousness is necessary to individuate persons, then the two personalities belong to different persons. Assume that the original person knew that the two persons would emerge in his wake. What sort of concern would he show to those ‘descendents?’ If readers put themselves in his place, I would expect their reactions to parallel those that Parfit experiences when he contemplates undergoing the brain fissioning scenario. Thus the Parfitian claim that identity is not what matters can be established independently of the more farfetched transplant thought experiments.
13. David Lewis's claim that there were two people co-located before the fissioning means that there could be a world just like ours up to the moment of fissioning, but since fissioning doesnʼnt occur there, it would possess only one person where ours contained two. For such a criticism, See John Perry's, ‘Can the Self Divide?’ reprinted in his Identity, Personal Identity and the Self. (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishers, 2003). pp. 44–45, 62. There also doesnʼnt seem to be any fact which could warrant why one of the two co-located people survives as one rather than the other post-fission person. David Oderberg pursues this line of criticism in his
14. ‘Coincidence Under a Sortal,’ Philosophical Review. Vol. 105. no. 2. 1996. pp. 145–171.
15. See John Perry's, ‘Can the Self Divide’ reprinted in his Identity, Personal Identity and the Self. (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishers, 2003) pp. 52.
16. Parfit, ‘The Unimportance of Identity.’ p. 28.
17. Parfit, ‘The Unimportance of Identity’ pp. 43–44.
18. Peter Unger, Identity, Consciousness and Value, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), p. 268.
19. Unger, Identity, Consciousness and Value. pp. 217–223.
20. There is a problem with Unger's reliance on conventions, but I cannot go into it here. Van Inwagen notes this in his critical study of Unger's book. Van Inwagen, Unger's “Identity, Consciousness and Value.” Nous. (1993) pp. 372–379.
21. Lynne Rudder Baker claims that since the organism constitutes the person, it is derivatively a person and thus refers to the person when using first person expressions. It would be too much of a digression to explain here some problems with Baker's constitution solution. See her Persons and Bodies: A Constitution Approach. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000) pp. 196–204.
22. See Jeff McMahan, The Ethics of Killing: Problems at the Margins of Life. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002) pp. 35–39, 60-1, 87-8. And
23. Ingmar Perssons's, ‘Our Identity and the Separability of Person and Organism.’ Dialogue, (1999) 38, pp. 525–527.
24. McMahan, p. 39.
25. Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, p. 342.
26. Parfit obviously can do it. But it should be pointed out that he has recently abandoned the view that he is essentially a person. He believes ‘person’ should be considered a phase sortal. In a volume dedicated to Sydney Shoemaker's work, Parfit writes: ‘Shoemaker defends a pure version of the Psychological Criterion, according to which some future person would be the same as some present person if and only if these persons would be uniquely psychologically continuous. Though I once defended this criterion, I wouldnʼnt do so now. And Shoemaker assumes that what we are essentially is persons, while I regard it as acceptable to claim wthat what we are essentially is human beings, treating the concept “person” as a phased-sortal, like “child” or “chrysalis,” so that we exist before we become persons and we continue to exist after we cease to be persons.’ ‘Experiences, Subjects and Conceptual Schemes.’ Philosophical Topics. Vol. 26, no. 1 & 2 Spring and Fall, 1999, p. 218.
27. This point is stressed by W. R. Carter in his ‘Do Zygotes Become People?’ Mind. vol. XCI, (1982) pp. 77–95, and Eric Olson in his ‘The Human Animal.’ pp. 92-4.