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In class 4/26 – final review
1. Someone might object to the brain identity theory by arguing that brain states are not private in the same kind of way mental states are. What responses to this objection were discussed in lecture? ● Before people had MRIs and FMRIs, there wasn’t any way to tell directly whether someone’s Cfibers were firing. Now we do, but people don’t carry these things around with them, so whether or not you are in pain is still private in any practical sense.
● Even if people did carry around such devices, they wouldn’t know about your pain in the same way. ● If mental states are brain states, that is no longer true; someone could supposedly scan your brain and tell that you’re in pain; essentially, mental states are private and brain states are not, so they are not the same thing. Even if someone else can detect it, you still have your own way of knowing what mental state you’re in and that is different from what others might see (not the same thing as feeling your pain only you can do that).
2. What is the distinction between tokens and types. Give an example to illustrate the difference. ● A token is a particular thing. A type is a kind of thing.
● How many letters are there in the following word: Mississippi
○ There are two correct answers:
○ 11 (11 letters of any kind)
○ 4 (4 types of letter: “M”, “I”, “S”, “P”)
3. What is token physicalism. Why is this thesis weak (in the sense that it is not very committal)? ● Token Physicalism: Every particular mental event is identical to some physical event or other ● It is a weak thesis because for all it says, pain in one case could be Cfibers firing, but later on, pain could be Dfibers or some other neural event
4. What is type physicalism?
● Type Physicalism: Every mental event type is identical to a physical event type
● This is a much stronger claim. To show that brain identity theory is false all we need are possible cases in which you have a pain but you lack Cfibers We also discuss several other topics like Define ad hominem fallacies?
5. Which type of physicalism is brain identity theory an example of?
● Type physicalism
6. What does it mean to say that a mental state is multiply realizable? What sorts of examples indicate that mental states like pain have this feature? Be able to explain how each of these examples bear on the issues: octopi, aliens, and noncarbonbased life. We also discuss several other topics like What is biparental inheritance?
● Multiple Realizability: Mental states can be realized by many different physical/brain structures ● Brain identity theory implies that unless an organism has Cfibers, it cannot have pain. An octopus has a more decentralized nervous system than our own. They can feel pain, but it is unlikely that they have any Cfibers in their radically different nervous systems. According to brain identity theory, if two creatures share a mental state type such as fear or pain, their brains must be identical in that regard. But we have no reason to suspect that this is true. Pain in one organism could be a different brain state in another organism. This is a version of type physicalism. We also discuss several other topics like What will happen when the minimum wage is above equilibrium?
● The brain identity theory is committed to the implausible claim that every single creature that we ever find that feels pain will also have Cfibers
● Cfibers are (partially) composed of carbon. Therefore, any silicon based lifeform will not have Cfibers 7. Why is the claim that mental states are multiply realizable inconsistent with brain identity theory?
In class 4/26 – final review
● If pain is identical with a physical state, it must be identical with some particular physical state, but there is no single neural correlate or substrate of pain. There are indefinitely many physical states that can “realize” pain in all sorts of paincapable organisms and systems.
● Pain, as a type of mental state, cannot be identified with a neural state type or with any other physical state type. The multiple realizability of mental states entails that no type physicalist theory of the mental can be correct. If you want to learn more check out What is behind healthcare denial?
8. How does the hypothesis that the mind is a computer deal with the problem of multiple realizability? Is such a theory an example of token or type physicalism?
● In short computers, and computer programs are multiply realizable. You can run the same program on machines that have very different physical structures.
● You can’t get at the nature of a computer program just by looking at the particular physical structure that realizes it. The actual physical constitution of the computer is (in some sense) irrelevant. What matters is the output.
● Token physicalism
9. State the problem of personal identity. What sort of plausible changes can a person persist through? What are some of the more difficult questions that a philosophical account of personal identity would try to answer? ● The problem of personal identity is the problem of what it takes for one person to persist over time and through change. In other words, what sorts of changes can you survive undergoing?
● You can survive MANY different things: growing up, changing clothes, trimming hair or nails, personality changes, mood changes, everyday intuitive changes, etc.
● Is my death something that I can survive? Could I survive permanently losing all of my memories? Could I survive having my brain replaced neuron by neuron with silicon? Could I survive my brain being transplanted into someone else’s body? Could I survive getting a new brain? If you want to learn more check out What is the level of customer interaction?
If you want to learn more check out What is the most appropriate name for north america's first peoples?
10. What is the Ship of Theseus case? Why is it plausible that replacing one plank does not result in a whole new ship?
● Theseus was a Greek hero who solved the Labyrinth and defeated the Minotaur to saved Athenian youths from being devoured by it. According to various histories the Athenians preserved the ship that Theseus sailed on for many generations and used it for ceremonial sea journeys. The ship was wood, and so parts decayed. But as each part rotted, they carved an exact duplicate and replaced it. Eventually after many such alterations, the ship had none of its original wooden parts.
● Replacing one plank on the ship does not make it a brand new ship. Therefore, when plank 1 is replaced after a year, it is the same ship. When plank 2 is replaced a year later, it is still the same ship. When plank 3 is replaced a year later it is still the same ship.….When plank n (the final plank) is replaced n years later, it is still the same ship. So at the end of the process, it is the same ship.
11. What is the argument concerning the Ship of Theseus that concludes that the ship at the end is the same as the ship at the beginning despite having no wood pieces in common?
● Things like ships can undergo small changes without becoming totally different objects. If a sailor drops a knife and scratches the ship, it is still the same ship. If they repaint the ship or add a coat of varnish, it is the same ship. If they replace a mast after a storm, it is the same ship.
12. What general lesson about identity over time did I draw from this case?
In class 4/26 – final review
● Numerical identity is compatible with change over time. Physical objects can survive gradual changes in matter over time.
13. What is the variation on the case concerning the ship in the warehouse?
● What if they take the boards out before they rot so as to preserve the ships pristine condition. But instead of throwing the boards away, they move them all to a warehouse for storage. After many generations and all the boards on the ship have been replaced someone sneaks into the warehouse and builds an identical ship out of all the original wood?
● Which ship is the ship of Theseus? Is it the ship in the harbor? Or the ship in the warehouse?
14. What is the Lumpl and Goliath case? Why might someone think that they are the same thing? ● Suppose a sculptor shapes a statue out of clay and names the statue “Goliath.” For our purposes let’s call all the clay out of which the statue is composed “Lumpl.” Is Goliath identical to Lumpl?
● They are the same color, shape, mass, weight, and so on. They are composed of exactly the same atoms. They occupy the same space. It may seem obvious that only one object can exist at a particular location at a particular time.
15. Why is it likely that Lumpl and Goliath are not the same thing? Why is this result initially somewhat surprising?
● Reason #1: If you smash the statue back into a ball, then you have destroyed Goliath, but not Lumpl! ● Reason #2: If you break of a little bit of Goliath’s finger and incinerate it, Lumpl no longer exists (it is just a particular collection of clay) but Goliath still does!
● This case serves to illustrate that whether or not X is numerically identical with Y can be a complicated question.
● It’s surprising because there are ways to destroy one but not the other.
○ If you reform the clay, Lumpl still exists but Goliath does not.
○ If you break off an arm, Goliath still exists but since there is less matter (clay) present, Lumpl no longer exists.
16. What general lesson about identity can we draw from the Lumpl and Goliath case? ● It seems to depend in part on what kind of thing we are talking about. What it takes for a lump of clay to persist over time is different from what it takes for a ship or a statue to persist.
17. Define persistence condition.
● Persistence Condition for X: A condition that must be met for the kind of thing that X is to persist over time (that is maintain numerical identity).
18. How are the persistence conditions for a lump of matter different from those of a tree? Why can’t a tree have the same persistence conditions as a lump of matter? Why can’t a statue have the same persistence conditions as either?
● What it takes for a lump of matter (e.g. Lumpl) to persist is different than for other sorts of things. Persistence conditions for a lump of matter: all the atoms composing it remain in existence. This bit of matter could continue to exist even if it were broken up and spread around!
● The persistence conditions of a statue (e.g. Goliath) are quite different. The statue can lose parts, be chipped, cracked, and still persist. Some of the atoms composing a statue could be vaporized and the statue could persist. Persistence conditions of a statue: The majority of the original statue remains in one piece, it is composed (mostly) of its original matter, it’s form is largely unchanged and still recognizable as depicting what it was intended to depict.
In class 4/26 – final review
● A living thing like a tree is different still. The tree (like our bodies) gains and loses and gains matter all the time. It also changes a great deal in all its physical properties over the course of its life. Unlike a statue, then, its persistence is not tied to the endurance of any particular form or appearance.
● If you destroy one part of matter, the whole is essentially destroyed. The tree is different because it is alive and one branch falling of does not cease the whole tree’s existence. The nonliving statue is different because you can destroy the statue while the matter still remains.
19. What is Locke’s persistence condition for plants and animals?
● Locke’s Persistence conditions for a plant: “It continues to be the same plant as long as it partakes of the same life, though that life be communicated to new particles of matter vitally united to the living plant.” In other words: the tree persists so long as its singular life continues.
● Locke gives roughly the same persistence conditions for animals.
20. Locke distinguishes between two questions of identity: (1) what does it take for a human to persist? And (2) what does it take for a person to persist? Why does he make this distinction? What is his answer to the first question?
● What sorts of changes can a person undergo and remain numerically the same person as before? ● A human is just a kind of animal. So the persistence conditions of human will be the same as those of an animal or a tree. Persistence conditions of a human: the same life continues. Rationality, thought, and so on do not play any crucial role in the concept “human” because something can be human and lack all of these (e.g. someone in a permanent coma).
● When we consider the issue of the identity of persons however, things change radically. What it is to be a person does involve certain intellectual capacities.
21. For Locke what sorts of properties are required in order for something to be a person? Why are these properties central to this concept?
● For Locke, a person: Is a thinking intelligent being, has reason and reflection, can think about itself in different times and places, can reflect on its own thoughts, beliefs, desires, and perceptions, can remember past thoughts and sensation, can consider itself as both extended backwards and forwards in time.
● The concept “person” is central in assigning praise and blame for actions; “Person…is a forensic term, appropriating actions adn their merit; and so belongs only to intelligent agents, capable of law, and happiness and misery.”
22. Given Locke’s definition of a person, why does it follow that not all humans are persons and not all persons are humans? Be able to give examples.
● Rationality, thought, and so on do not play any crucial role in the concept “human” because something can be human and lack all of these (e.g. someone in a permanent coma).
● Because what is important about personhood involves mental features Locke concludes that states of the body will not be relevant for determining identity.
23. What is the body switching case (i.e. the prince and the cobbler)? What does Locke take it to show? ● Body Switching: “For should the soul of a prince carrying with it the consciousness of the prince’s past life, enter and inform the body of a cobbler, as soon as deserted by his own soul, everyone sees he would be the same person with the prince.”
● In such bodyswapping cases, we take the person to follow their mind. The physical body is less important (in this sense) for survival then the mind.
In class 4/26 – final review
24. Why doesn’t Locke think that personal identity can consist in the persistence of an immaterial soul? ● The persistence of one immaterial soul is not enough for personal identity, so long as memories of one’s past do not go along with it. Locke thinks that reincarnation without memory is empty. What is important in life after death is that my memories, thoughts, and desires persist, not that some immaterial substance does. Locke thinks it is consciousness, a continuous awareness that links my past self with my present one. I have to remember it.
25. What is Locke’s criterion of personal identity?
● Person A is numerically identical with Person B just in case Person B remembers being person A (or vice versa).
26. What is Reid’s Brave Officer case? How does it show that Locke’s criterion of personal identity entails a contradiction?
● You take a person at three different stages of life: a young boy who is flogged for stealing, a young man who becomes a soldier, and an older man who becomes a general. At the soldier stage, he can recall being a child getting flogged, but when he grows older (and becomes a general) he cannot remember being flogged as a boy.
● Locke claims that the child is the same person as the soldier because the soldier can remember being the child (X=Y) and the general is the same person as the soldier because he can remember being the soldier (Y=Z), but the general is not the same person as the child because he cannot remember getting flogged for stealing (Z≠X). Since X=Y and Y=Z, in reality X should equal Z, but Locke’s view says that they cannot be the same. It is inconsistent and, therefore, false.
27. What is the memory chain proposal for personal identity? How does it deal with Reid’s Brave Officer objection? A similar problem arises for this proposal with regards to being drunk. What is it and how does it show that the new proposal is still inconsistent?
● The memory chain proposal for personal identity says that a person in each stage of life does not have to remember every stage that came before, just the stage that came immediately before (chain of persons, links self indirectly).
● Reid’s objection relies on the transitivity of identity: If A=B, and B=C, then A=C.
● Officer problem: the chain is general > soldier > child. Since the general can remember the soldier who can remember the child even though the general cannot, they have to be the same person. ● Drunk problem: a person blacks out after too many shots and forgets the events of the night and they cannot connect the hungover person the next morning back to the person they were at the time of the first drink. This chain goes hungover > blacked out > first drink, but since there is no chain linking the memories, Locke would say that they are not the same person. This is a contradiction, so the view is false.
28. Parfit proposes a new account of personal identity that deals with problems like the drunkard and the Brave Officer. What is it? What does he mean by “overlapping memory chains” and “indirect chains”? How do these changes address the preceding objections?
● Parfit proposes a fix for the view. What is required is an overlapping chain of memories. There is no direct chain between the drunk person and the hung over person, but there is an indirect chain that goes backwards through the sober person.
In class 4/26 – final review
29. Define psychological continuity. Be able to say what the PC view says about various questions of personal identity (e.g. total amnesia, surviving after the death of the body, Star Trek teleportation, etc.) ● Psychological Continuity: A and B are psychologically continuous just in case there is a direct, indirect, or overlapping chain of people between them, who each remember being a member of the chain. ● Psychological Continuity Proposal (PC): A and B are the same person just in case they are psychologically continuous.
○ This implies that you cannot survive total amnesia because there has been a complete break in the chain. You can survive Star Trek teleportation, though, because your memories persist.
30. What is the circularity objection to any proposal that makes use of the notion of memory? What case shows that a PC proponent has to distinguish between real and apparent memories? Why does this end up meaning that their account of identity in terms of real memories is circular and uninformative?
● What it is to have a real memory of an event involves that event happening to you and not to some other person. But that means that having a true memory presupposes that you are identical with the past person. Any account of identity that makes use of such a memory condition will be circular and uninformative. Since memory presupposes identity it just amounts to saying: ”A is identical to B just in case A is identical to B.”
● Obama remembers winning the presidential election. Somewhere in a hospital there is an insane person who believes he is Obama, and thinks he remembers the winning the election. He is not the same person as Obama. Obama actually remembers winning the election, while the person in the hospital merely seems to.
● To avoid the circularity we must state the identity criterion in a more neutral way. We can’t just presuppose that the memories are real memories because this presupposes identity.
31. How can we fix the PC account by stating its proposed persistence conditions in a more neutral way? ● Psychological Continuity (Apparent memory formulation): A and B are psychologically continuous if and only if there is an apparent memory chain linking A and B and those apparent memories are caused in the appropriate way.
32. What is the teletransportation case? How does the machine work? What sort of breakdown in the machine presents a problem for the PC view? What must the PC view say about the duplication case that arises? Why is this incoherent?
● Teletransportation: The machine takes a scan of your body down to a molecular level. It also makes a copy of all your memories and mental states The machine sends a signal to Mars with all the data it gathered from the scan. After it sends the signal deconstructs your body down to the atomic level. When the signal arrives at Mars, a matching machine uses the data to construct a human body that is a microcellular duplicate. Your memories and mental states are downloaded into the body on Mars.
● There has been a malfunction, but only in the final stage of the process. You were scanned, and the signal was sent to Mars. In a couple of minutes the machine on Mars will finish the process. The machine broke down just before the earth body was disassembled. Which person is you, the one on Mars or the one on Earth?
● Several options: The transport was a success and you will soon be on Mars. You didn’t go anywhere and the person appearing on Mars is not you. Neither person is identical to you and you are already dead. You are both the person on Mars and the one on Earth.
● The psychological continuity proposal has a problem here. Call the person on Earth, E, and the person on Mars M. E and M are both psychologically continuous with the original person O. So the PC view has to say that O is identical to both E and M, that is take option 4 (you are both the person on Earth and on Mars).
● But option (4) is incoherent. If O=E and O=M, the transitivity of identity entails that E=M. But E and M cannot be the same person. They are in two different places and they seem to be duplicates of one another.
In class 4/26 – final review
33. One way to fix up the PC account is to add a condition that some part of the body of a person persists. Which body part is most important? Why? State the proposal for a criterion of personal identity that results from these considerations.
● Brain Swap Case: You are deathly ill. The doctors conduct a procedure in which your brain is transported into a wholly different body with your memories and psychology intact. Where are you after the procedure? ● Psychology and Brain Continuity Proposal: A and B are the same person just in case they are part of a chain of psychologically continuous persons and that psychological continuity is underwritten by a single brain persisting through the entire chain.
34. What is the brainsplitting case? How does it show that all preceding accounts of personal identity are problematic? What account of personal identity does Parfit argue that this case entails? ● Brain Splitting Case: X is quickly dying and so a radical procedure is done. To give a maximal chance of survival her brain is split in half and each half is placed into a body identical to her own before she got sick. The two bodies (Y and Z) with their halfbrains both survive and have all the memories of X. These memories are appropriately caused.
● Which person is X? PC has to say that they are both identical to X (which is incoherent). Notice that this result also holds if you include a bodily criterion linked to the brain.
35. What is the No Branching proposal for personal identity? What sort of odd results are entailed if we endorse this account?
● Psychological Continuity (No Branching): A and B are the same person just in case they belong to a chain of psychologically continuous persons and moreover, there does not exist some distinct chain of psychologically continuous stages that includes A or B.
● After the brainsplitting operation, suppose Y is the first out of surgery. The doctors tell Y that the surgery went fine (at least so far as Y is concerned), but there have been complications in the procedure for Z. Z still might make it and be perfectly fine, but they won't know for an hour. At this point, is Y the same person as before the operation? If Z dies, then Y will be psychologically continuous with X, and have no duplicates, so X will survive. But if Z lives there is a duplicate, and so X did not survive the operation. In other words, Y has to wait an hour to find out who he/she is!
● I can be killed if someone creates a duplicate of me somewhere! How do I know or how am I justified in believing that I am the same person I was a moment ago? How do I know that a duplicate has not been created?
36. Parfit thinks that the splitting cases show that identity is not important to us. Why? What does he think is important to us with regards to our future selves?
● Parfit thinks that despite all this PC with a nobranching clause is the only tenable account of personal identity. He takes these cases to illustrate that identity is not what is important to us. He agrees that they show that identity cannot consist in psychological continuity, but thinks that PC secures us everything we really care about.
● Parfit’s Conclusion: In the splitting cases you do not survive. But this doesn’t matter, because your psychology persists.
37. Bernard Williams presents a kind of variation on the sorts of cases we discussed. What is the key difference? Why does making this change seem to show that (contra Parfit) we do care about which future person is identical to us?
In class 4/26 – final review
● Let’s go back to our brain swap case: Tomorrow you will undergo a brainswap experiment. Your brain (brain A) will be put into B’s body, and brain B, will be put into your (A) body. After the experiment, one body will be tprtured and pne will get $1000. Here is your choice: which body should be tortured, and which gets the $1000? Your answer tells a lot about which “you” you think you are your brain or your body.
● Recall the teletransportation case: E is the body/psychology on Earth and M is the body/psychology on Mars. Either E or M will be tortured, and the other will get $1000. Your decision: which one gets the money and which one gets tortured? According to Parfit’s view, I no longer exist after being duplicated, so either option is equally good/bad.
● Consider the brainsplitting case. Let A be your rightbrained successor, and B be your leftbrained one. Again, either A or B is going to be tortured and the other will get $1000. Which do you choose? Parfit's attitude seems to be more plausible. It is difficult to tell which of these people (if either) will be you, and either option does genuinely seem equally good/bad.
● Parfit's idea that survival is largely unimportant strikes many as just too strange to be correct. Despite Parfit's claims, our persistence over time is something that we genuinely care about. Something like the psychological continuity with a persisting brain condition looks to capture a lot of our intuitions about this persistence.
38. Even taking into account Williams variations on the cases, what case does Parfit’s attitude towards personal identity seem most plausible? Why shouldn’t he use this case to draw his general conclusion? ● Williams’s variations are that when the procedure is coming and you decide who gets tortured and who gets paid, you will choose the one you think you’re not.
● Parfit’s attitude is that you shouldn’t care which one you pick. In the brain splitting case, he claims that neither one is you so the choice does not matter.
● In lots of similar duplication cases, we tend to favor one over the other because we have definite ideas of which ones are us so we do care.