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Psychological Reductionism About Persons

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Psychological Reductionism About Persons Psychological Reductionism About Persons A Critical Development Julian Guiseppe Baggini Thesis submitted for PhD Examination 1996 University College London 1 C o n t e n t s Abstract 1 Introduction: Philosophy and Persons 2 Part One Chapter One: The Kierkegaardian Requirement 8 1. Why Kierkegaard? 9 2. Kierkegaard’s Stages 11 3. Two Elements to be Resolved: Some Familiar Analogues 21 4. Kierkegaard’s Solution 24 5. Creating a Self 30 6. Conclusion 33 Chapter Two: The Relevance Requirement 35 1.The Issue 37 2. Identity Over Time 44 3. Fission and the Impotence of Identity 51 4. Teletransportation and the Limits of Identity 56 5. Conclusion 59 Chapter Three: Persons and Thought Experiments 62 1. The Thought Experiments 63 2. Two Types of Objection to Thought Experiments 67 3. The Method of Cases 78 4. Persons, Animals and Humans 91 Part Two Introduction 102 Chapter Four: Parfit and “I” 104 1. What is Reductionism? 105 2. Kant: No Thoughts Without a Subject 111 3. Cassam: No I-thoughts Without a Subject 118 4. Parfit and Cassam 120 i 5. Parfit and Kant 124 6. Conclusion 126 Chapter Five: Parfit’s Relation R 128 1. Psychological Reductionism and Diachronic Unity 128 2. Problems With Relation R 141 Chapter Six: The Parfitian Conception Revised 152 1. Direct Phenomenological Connectedness 155 2. Functional Indexicality 160 3. The Internal Narrative 163 4. The I* Relation v. Relation R 167 5. “What Matters in Survival” 172 6. Conclusion 177 Part Three Chapter Seven: Appraisal 178 1. What is a Person? 180 2. Why Is the First Person Point of View Important? 184 3. The Self and Society 189 4. The Relevance Requirement 199 5. The Kierkegaardian Requirement 201 6. Conclusion 206 Bibliography 208 Acknowledgements 214 ii Abstract There is a need to distinguish two questions in the philosophy of persons. One of these is the factual question of identity. This is the question of the conditions of personal identity over time. The other is the first person question of survival. This can be expressed as, “Under which circumstances should I consider a person at another time to be my survivor, who I have reason to care about just as much if he were me?” This second question does not presuppose that the survivor is numerically identical with her predecessor and is the question considered in this thesis. Answering this question requires us to resolve the tension in our concept of a person between, on the one hand, the view of persons as purely physical beings, no more than the sum of their particular parts, bound to the here and now, and on the other hand, as somehow transcendent, beings who exist beyond the here and now. The conception built upon is that offered by Derek Parfit in Reasons and Persons. Two errors in Parfit’s account are explained and amendments suggested. The first is Parfit’s explanation of the unity of a mental life over time in terms of connectedness and continuity between individual, independent thoughts, and secondly his account of connectedness and continuity itself. I suggest that psychological connectedness and continuity must be between persons-at-a-time, not individual thoughts, and that a unified mental life over time is not just a product of enough connections, as Parfit argues, but is determined by the kind of connectedness there is. 1 Introduction Philosophy and Persons It seems odd that although we would all of us agree that we are all persons, it is notoriously difficult to say just what a person is. Currently, there are two general types of accounts of what persons are which attract significant support among philosophers. One is that a person is simply a human being. On this view something qualifies as a person on the grounds of its biological genus, i.e. what specie it is. The other is that a person is any rational, self conscious being. On this view, something qualifies as a person on the grounds of certain attributes and capacities it has. These two views have very different implications for what constitutes personal identity over time. If a person is simply a human being, then the conditions for the identity over time of a person are the same as the conditions for identity over time of the particular homo sapiens that person is. If a person is conceived as a being with certain mental attributes and capacities, then there are grounds for believing that psychological, not physical, continuity is the basis of personal identity over time. If these were the only disagreement concerning the term ‘person’ we would have arguments enough. But the waters of this debate have been further clouded in recent years by Derek Parfit’s Reasons and Persons. In this book, Parfit claims that the debate concerning what persons are and what their conditions for survival over time are, is not only a debate concerning facts, but also about “what matters”. This phrase, “what matters” is far from unambiguous. But it at least suggests that philosophical questions concerning persons are questions as much of value as of fact. If in her treatment of the subject of persons the philosopher has to pay due regard to questions of 2 fact and value, which also requires identifying just what that ‘value’ is, her task is yet more difficult. Considering these questions myself, I became increasingly convinced that the centre of gravity for the debate had become obscured by the rapid developments in the subject. The emphasis on the concept of mattering by Parfit had left a real confusion as to just what was at issue in the area of what I call philosophical anthropology – the philosophy of persons. What I felt was needed was a re- examination of just what questions this subject is trying to answer. Without such an examination, the suspicion would remain that philosophers who were ostensibly asking the same questions in fact understood these questions in quite different ways. I believe that there are in fact two main, distinct questions in philosophical anthropology. One of these is what I call the factual question of identity. This is the question of the conditions of personal identity over time, traditionally expressed in the form, “What are the necessary and sufficient conditions for a person at one time and a person at another time being the same person?” However, I believe there is another, distinct question which is equally pertinent, namely the first person question of survival. This can be expressed as, “Under which circumstances should I consider a person at another time to be my survivor, who I have reason to care about just as much if he were me?” This question does not presuppose that the survivor is numerically identical with her predecessor. “Survival” here has a special meaning which does not entail identity. In chapter two I argue that the factual question of identity and the first person question of survival can be distinguished and that the latter question is not only a pertinent one, but one which is at least as central to the philosophy of persons as the question of identity. It is also the central question of this thesis. 3 One challenge for the philosophy of the persons is therefore to answer the first person question of survival as a question distinct from the factual question of identity. In chapter one I set out a further challenge. There is a tension in our concept of a person between, on the one hand, the view of persons as purely physical beings, no more than the sum of their particular parts, bound to the here and now, and on the other hand, as somehow transcendent, beings who exist beyond the here and now. In the work of Søren Kierkegaard, we can see how important this tension is and how difficult it is to resolve. Kierkegaard not only formulates this tension very well, but he also shows why it is necessary to resolve the tension, if our understanding of persons is to be complete. In chapter one, I explain in more detail what this tension is, and why the challenge to resolve it is one we cannot ignore. I believe that the philosophical approach to persons best equipped to meet the challenges set out in the first two chapters is psychological reductionism, and in particular, the version set out by Derek Parfit in Reasons and Persons. In order to even get off the ground with Parfit’s position, we have to consider two foundations upon which his arguments rest. The first is the use of thought experiments in argument. Parfit’s discussions of teletransportation and fission have helped make his work one of the most engaging, colourful and fascinating works of contemporary philosophy. But it has also lead to the suspicion that somehow these thought experiments have made the philosophy of persons too speculative, or that they have lead us to rely too much on our untrustworthy intuitions. In chapter three I consider the main objections against thought experiments in the philosophy of persons and defend their use in the debate. Also in Chapter three, I consider objections against the use of the term “person” at all. Some see this as a concept so ill-defined and vague that it is not a suitable object of study. Many argue that “human being” would be a much more 4 favourable substitute. I resist these claims and argue that we must talk of persons if we are to answer the first person question of survival. Part one establishes the challenges of philosophical anthropology and defends a certain approach to the subject.
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