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Persons and Personal Identity

Terms in this set (36)

persons
Many religions teach that we will survive our own bodily deaths.
This is a thesis about ________________.
why survival is not puzzling
The box of Kleenex.
Mine is destroyed.
Afterwards, couldn't you have an identical box of Kleenex?
So, couldn't there be someone identical with you, even though your body has rotted away?
why survival is puzzling
Your box of Kleenex is not identical with mine.
It is exactly similar to mine, but there are two boxes of Kleenex.
If there were someone exactly to you in the Hereafter, that wouldn't be enough for you to survive.
identity
Similarity is not ________________.
live human body
How can I survive?

One reply: If I am just a____________________ , then I can't survive my bodily death.
Descartes view
But I am more than that. I am a soul or a mind.
My soul can survive my bodily death.
Descartes
According to _______________ , my mind is an immaterial,
conscious soul , associated on earth with a certain body; and I am the same as my mind
The Cartesian Ego view
Persons are immaterial souls. Identity of persons consists in identity of immaterial souls . Souls can exist without bodies (or at least without the bodies with which they are originally associated).
objection to the Cartesian View
If the Cartesian view is true, then everyday judgments of personal identity are really judgments about the identity of immaterial souls.
If these everyday judgments were about the identity of souls , then they would be groundless and silly.
Such judgments aren't groundless or silly.
Therefore,
Personal identity does not consist in identity of soul.
identity of souls
Identity of persons does not consist in the _______________.

If this is correct, then, no satisfactory explanation has been given yet of how I could survive my bodily death, how the person who exists afterwards could be me.
no
Is personal identity just bodily identity?
if I have the same body
I know who I am when I wake in the morning without checking to see
a different body
I can imagine waking and finding that I have _____________ from the one I had before.
The psychological bundle view
At any given time, a person is made up of a collection of thoughts and feelings; and the same person exists now as earlier so long as the thoughts, feelings occurring now are appropriately connected to the thoughts, feelings, etc. occurring earlier.
memory
What exactly is the connection that ties earlier thoughts and feelings to later ones?
the problem with the connection by memory theory
There is a difference between seeming to remember and really remembering. If there is a person in the future who seems to remember having various thoughts and feelings I now have, that person could be deluded.
seems to remember
A person in the future who _____________ my thoughts and feelings but who doesn't really remember any of them is not me.
hypnotist case
What is needed is for the later apparent memories to be caused in the right way by the earlier thoughts and experiences.

• In the___________, this condition is not met.
hypnotist case
a person is hypnotized to "remember" thoughts and words that were actually thought and said by a whole different person.
suitable causal chain
What ties earlier thoughts and experiences to later ones in a given bundle is the existence of a ________________, one that necessitates that later apparent memories occur because of earlier psychological states.
reply to "God and the teletransporter"
So long as God only creates one copy of my brain and my body, there will be one continuing psychological bundle and that bundle will be me, even after my earthly body has been destroyed
trouble with God and the teletransporter
The person who survives my bodily death will be identical with me so long as just a single copy of my brain is made.
• So, if I were convinced that God were going to make single copy of my brain in Heaven, then I should be delighted; for then I survive.
• But if I find out that He is going to make a second copy I should despair again; for now I don't survive at all.
• This is seriously weird.
• What if God creates one person first and the other later?
• Does the first then cease to be me?
conclusions
Persons are not immaterial souls.
• Personal identity does not consist in identity of soul.
• Persons are not psychological bundles.
a new objection: brain transplants
Suppose my brain is put inside your body and connected to your body and likewise for your brain and my body.

Afterward, where am I?
I am where my brain is.
difference in body
If you want to survive, which person do you want to stay alive?
And who has your original body after the brain transplant or who died with the other body?

In this case, there is sameness of person but _____________________ .
So, personal identity does not consist in sameness of live human body.
Persons are not just live bodies .
Reply to brain transplant objection
Maybe, the person who has your original body after the operation mistakenly thinks that he is you and has a host of inaccurate memories.
In reality, there is no switch in persons.
This doesn't seem at all plausible.
Is what we say in these cases just a matter of how we choose to use language?
No
Who the survivor is, if one of the bodies is destroyed, is not a matter of convention.

Either I am correct in anticipating that I will survive or I am not.

My identity with the survivor, my survival, is a question of fact, not of convention.
body transplant case
Persons are live human brains. This handles the _______________________
impossible
We are live human brains. Survival of brain destruction is now _______________.
With the destruction of my brain, I cease to exist.
multiple personality disorder
The problem of ____________________.

Here, there are two or more persons, but only one brain.
a problem with live brain theory
Suppose that after I die, my brain is kept intact and preserved in a jar. If I am identical with my brain, I am in the Jar
reply to a problem with live brain theory
I am the same as my live brain
trouble with the reply to live brain theory
My live brain is one and the same thing as my dead brain.
It's just alive at one time and dead at another
conclusion
persons cannot just be live brains (any more than they can just be live bodies)
another materialist reply
Persons are biological organisms
according to the materialist
you will not survive bodily death. The person similar to you in the desert is just a copy of you and is not actually you. Wherever your brain goes, you go.
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