The organism view defended

Monist

Volumn 89, Issue 3, 2006, Pages 334-350

  Matthew Liao, S ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD   (United Kingdom)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 61949271527     PISSN: 00269662     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.5840/monist200689315     Document Type: Article

References (39)

1. See, e.g., Carter, W. R. "Do Zygotes Become People?" Mind 91 (1982): 77-95;
2. Quinn, W. "Abortion: Identity and Loss," Philosophy and Public Affairs 13 (1984): 24-54;
3. Snowdon, P. F. "Personal Identity and Brain Transplants," in Human Beings, ed. by D. Cockburn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991) pp. 109-26;
4. van Inwagen, P. Material Beings (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990)
5. and Olson, E. The Human Animal: Personal Identity Without Psychology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).
6. Locke, J. 1993, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, abridged ed'n (New York: Everyman);
7. Grice, H. P., "Personal Identity." Mind 50 (1941): 330-50;
8. Perry, J. "Can the Self Divide?" Journal of Philosophy 69 (1972); 463-88;
9. Parfit, D. Reason and Persons (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984);
10. Parfit, Derek, "Experiences, Subjects, and Conceptual Schemes," Philosophical Topics 26 (1999): 217-70;
11. Nozick, R., Philosophical Explanations (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981);
12. Johnston, M., "Human Beings," Journal of Philosophy 84 (1987): 59-83;
13. Noonan, H., Personal Identity (London: Routledge, 1989);
14. Unger, Peter, Identity, Consciousness, and Value (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990);
15. Martin, R., Self Concern (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998);
16. Unger, P., "The Survival of the Sentient," Philosophical Perspectives 14 (2000);
17. and McMahan, J., The Ethics of Killing: Problems at the Margins of Life (Oxford; Oxford University Press, 2002).
18. Many philosophers believe it is a conceptual truth that one cannot have someone else's memories. Given this, the term 'quasi-memories' is introduced à la Parfit and Shoemaker to avert this possible conceptual mistake.
19. See, e.g., Wilkes, K., Real People: Personal identity Without Thought Experiments (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988);
20. Baillie, J., Problems in Personal Identity (New York: Paragon House, 1993);
21. and Rovan, C, "Critical Notice of Peter Unger's 'Identity, Consciousness, and Value'," Canadian Journal of Philosophy 24 (1994); 119-34. Others have also questioned brain-transplant cases on the ground that identity is not what matters to us. For example, Olson argues that people may be metaphysically misled by their quasi-prudential concern for the recipient of their cerebrum-based psychology to think that they would have switched bodies when their cerebrums have (The Human Animal, [cited in n. 1, above]).
22. McMahan, The Ethics of Killing, p. 35.
23. See, e.g., Puccetti, R., "The Case for Mental Duality: Evidence from Split-brain Data and Other Considerations," Behavioral and Brain Sciences 4 (1981): 93-123.
24. Robinson, J. "Personal Identity and Survival." Journal of Philosophy 85 (1988): 319-28, has challenged this conclusion.
25. See, e.g., McMahan, ibid., p. 68.
26. The concept 'permanent' is not easy to define. We can avoid some confusion, though, if we distinguish between a metaphysical and an epistemic understanding of this term. Metaphysically, permanent organismic discontinuity for an organism occurs when in fact the organism is no longer able to coordinate its life processes. Epistemically, though, we can of course be wrong about when this point has occurred for an organism. For a further discussion of this concept, see Becker, L. "Human Being: The Boundaries of the Concept," Philosophy and Public Affairs 4:4 (Summer, 1975); 334-59;
27. Cole, D., "The Reversibility of Death," Journal of Medical Ethics 18 (1992); 26-30;
28. and Hershenov, D., "The Problematic Role of 'Irreversibility' in the Definition of Death," Bioethics 17:1 (2003): 89-100.
29. One might argue that this is only a contingent truth, since, for example, in some other possible worlds, it is conceivable that the second head could just be an odd growth, or someone could genetically engineer an entity with two heads. I shall consider the genetic-engineering case shortly. Regarding the odd-growth scenario, this would not immediately show that there is only one organism. Pregnancy, for example, also involves the growth of a second organism. Perhaps this is another way by which a second organism could be grown in a human being.
30. van Inwagen, Material Beings, sec. 15.
31. There are many cases in which pregnant brain-dead women were able to function sufficiently well to support the growth of the fetus, thereby enabling it to be delivered by caesarian section. See, e.g., McCullagh, P., Brain Dead, Brain Absent, Brain Donors: Human Subjects of Human Objects? (Chichester: John Wiley and Sons, 1993), pp. 35-39.
32. Flora Rheta Schreiber, Sibyl (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974). Sibyl, for example, had sixteen personalities, and some of Sibyl's personalities knew nothing of one another, and Sibyl was amnesiac between episodes in one personality and episodes in another.
33. See also Bayne, T., "Moral Status and the Treatment of Dissociative Identity Disorder," Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 27, 1 (2002): 87-105.
34. Zeretzke, S., and S. Berkin. "Pattern Regulation Properties of a Hydra Strain Which produces Additional Heads Along the Body Axis," International Journal of Developmental Biology 45 (2001): 431-39.
35. See, e.g., DeGrazia, D., 2005. Human Identity and Bioethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
36. Indeed, van Inwagen says that a cerebrum supported by an external life-support system would not constitute an organism, and hence that one could not survive as a detached cerebrum (Material Beings, pp. 169 and 291-92).
37. I thank David Hershenov for prompting me to consider this possibility.
38. Hershenov, D., 2004. "Countering the Appeal of the Psychological Approach to Personal Identity," Philosophy 79 447-74, p. 464. In personal communication, Hershenov says that he now believes that there are two persons in the dicephalus case.
39. Hershenov, "Countering the Appeal of the Psychological Approach to Personal Identity," pp. 463-64.