The involvement of our identity in experiential memory

Canadian Journal of Philosophy

Volumn 27, Issue 4, 1997, Pages 447-465

  Persson, Ingmar ^a  

^a LUND UNIVERSITY   (Sweden)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 85012516470     PISSN: 00455091     EISSN: 19110820     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/00455091.1997.10717481     Document Type: Article

References (31)

1. Nidditch, P. H., ed. 1975. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding Oxford: Clarendon Press. See, Bk. II, ch. 27.
2. 1984. Reasons and Persons 205Oxford: Clarendon Press.
3. Perry, John, ed. 1975. Personal Identity Berkeley, Los Angeles & London: University of California Press. See his 'Of Personal Identity/reprinted in, e.g.
4. 71 ‘Personhood and Personal Identity,’ The Journal of Philosophy 87 (1990,–92
5. 1989. Personal Identity London & New York: Routledge. ch. 8
6. 1982. The Varieties of Reference Oxford: Clarendon Press. (ch. 7
7. 161 For a classic attempt to do so, see C.B. Martin and Max Deutscher, ‘Remembering,’ The Philosophical Review 75 (1966,–96. I outline my view below, in footnote 15.
8. 269 Cf. Sydney Shoemaker's ‘M-type causal chain’ in ‘Persons and Their Past,’ American Philosophical Quarterly 7 (1970,–85, at 278.
9. Shoemaker. Cf. 271, and Parfit, sec. 80.
10. Shoemaker. 280ff.
11. Rorty, Amelie, ed. 1976. The Identities of Persons Berkeley, Los Angeles & London: University of California Press. An exception is the type of theory defended by David Lewis, ‘Survival and Identity’ in (and by Noonan, chs. 7,9 & 11.
12. Parfit. 220
13. It is an adaptation because Parfit speaks of a ‘copying’ of the memory traces.
14. Wilkes, V., 1988. Real People 39–40. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Cf. Kathleen esp. and 45–6.
15. To give an example of a causal requirement that would fit my argument: our concept of memory encapsulates a notion of an intrinsically unspecified state (whose nature neuro-science will probably specify eventually; hence, the ‘neural neutrality’) that is known (a) by enabling us to have memory-experiences (which, I think, intrinsically are like imaginings), and (b) by being caused by some subject having a corresponding experience (typically, but not necessarily, the two subjects are identical; hence, the possibility of quasi-memory). To remember an experience is to imagine having the experience as an actualization of a state having this origin. If so, it would require an identity of underpinning state (which is hardly fulfilled in tele-transportation cases; so the neural neutrality need not be bought at the price of an extreme laxity).
16. Note that Schechtman's argument falls short of establishing the general claim that experiential memory presupposes identity by her bracketing simple visual memories of the kind exemplified in Parfit's Venetian case (Schechtman, 81). It is also astonishing that she does not discuss the serious threat that fission cases pose to her claims.
17. Thus, remembering having E should not be confused with a piece of factual memory, remembering that E occurred which does not entail that E is remembered as had ‘from the inside.’
18. Parfit. 221–2.
19. For the difference between these ways of identification, see Shoemaker, e.g., 283.
20. 1985. The Primacy of Perception Vol. 2, 285Lund: Gleerup. (London & New York: Routledge 1991), vol. Cf. also Ingmar Persson, ch. 4 sect. 5.
21. Ayers. 285
22. This uniqueness is the reason for an ‘immunity to error through misidentification’ noticed by Evans, consisting in that if, on the basis of this perception one knows that some body instantiates some (physical) predicate, one knows that that body is one's own (ch. 7).
23. Ayers. 285 Contrast Evans's claim: ‘what we are aware of, when we know that we see a tree, is nothing but a tree’ (231). But, surely, when we see a tree, we see it in some spatial relation to ourselves, and are aware of this. In my opinion, this sits much better with what Evans says about our perceptual knowledge of our own location in ch. 7 sect. 3.
24. Avers. Vol. 1,187
25. Noonan. 184
26. 59 Contrast Mark Johnstonwho characterizes experiential memory as ‘something whose internal phenomenology makes it seem like a faculty suited to picking up only mental connections between earlier and later mental states’ (‘Human Beings,’ The journal of Philosophy 84 (1987,–83, at 77). I do not understand what he means by ‘picking up’ here. In remembering (myself) having E at t, I normally do not remember any mental connections between my having E at t and my present experience, though in virtue of me having this memory, there is such a connection.
27. 1984. 103 Note that these judgments are non-inferential; so, saying that in identifying subjects we apply a bodily criterion is not to say that these identifications are inferred from evidence about bodies, but that they are tantamount to judgments about bodily identity. When Shoemaker denies that such identifications are made ‘on the basis of bodily criteria’— see his ‘Personal Identity: A Materialist's Account,’ Sydney Shoemaker and Richard Swinburne, Personal Identity (Oxford: Blackwell— I think he uses criteria in another sense in which it is something that is epistemically prior.
28. To use Evans's expression (245), though he would not assent to the argument of this section.
29. 1990. Identity, Consciousness and Value New York: Oxford University Press. See his ch. 4.
30. For a development of this idea, see my paper ‘Our Identity and the Separability of Persons and Organisms’ (forthcoming).
31. I am most grateful to Raymond Martin and Derek Parfit for valuable comments.