Personal Identity and Thought Experiments

2010 ◽  
pp. 74-97
Author(s):  
Tamar Szabó Gendler
Keyword(s):  
Personal Identity ◽  
Thought Experiments

scholarly journals Identity Theft: A Thought Experiment on the Fragility of Identity

Conatus ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 71
Author(s):  
David Menčik
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Personal Identity ◽  
Thought Experiment ◽  
Psychological Impact ◽  
Thought Experiments ◽  
Identity Theft ◽  
Psychological Continuity ◽  
Temporal Proximity ◽  
Shed Light ◽  
The Prestige

This paper intends to discuss some aspects of what we conceive as personal identity: what it consists in, as well as its alleged fragility. First I will try to justify the methodology used in this paper, that is, the use of allegories in ontological debates, especialy in the form of thought experiments and science fiction movies. Then I will introduce an original thought experiment I call “Who am I actually?,” one that was coined with the intent to shed light on several aspects of the issue under examination, that is, the fragility of personal identity. Then I will move on to Christopher Nolan’s film The Prestige, as well as to Derek Parfit’s ‘divided minds’ thought experiment, to further discuss the fragility of personal identity; next to identity theft, the prospect of duplication is also intriguing, especially with regard to the psychological impact this might have on both the prototype and the duplicate. I will conclude with the view that spatial and temporal proximity or coexistence, especially when paired with awareness on behalf of the duplicates, would expectedly result in the infringement of the psychological continuity of one’s identity.

Memories of Venice: Analysis of two thought experiments by Derek Parfit

Human Affairs ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 125-135
Author(s):  
Andrej Rozemberg
Keyword(s):  
Episodic Memory ◽  
Personal Identity ◽  
Memory Trace ◽  
Thought Experiments ◽  
Complex Nature ◽  
Derek Parfit ◽  
Mental Life ◽  
Psychological Continuity ◽  
Past Experiences ◽  
Over Time

Abstract It is commonly believed that our episodic memory teaches us about the reality of personal identity over time. Derek Parfitt’s notion of quasi-memory challenges this belief. According to Parfit, q-memories provide us with knowledge of past experiences in the same way that memory does, without presupposing that the rememberer and the experiencer are the same person. Various aspects of Parfit’s theory have met with criticism from scholars such as D. Wiggins, J. McDowell, M. Schechtman, and others. In this paper, I will focus primarily on the holistic argument that q-memories cannot be squared with the complex nature of mental life. This is a well-known argument and, when understood as criticism of memory-trace copying, is accepted by some q-memory proponents. In this paper, I will try to show why it is impossible to defend quasi-memory, even when wholesale psychological continuity applies, and why post-fission persons are not genuine cases of q-memories.

scholarly journals Personal Identity and Science

2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (39) ◽  
pp. 191-220
Author(s):  
Mariana Córdoba ◽  
María Marta Quintana
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Personal Identity ◽  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Sufficient Conditions ◽  
Thought Experiments ◽  
Necessary And Sufficient Conditions ◽  
Philosophical Problem ◽  
Genetic Approach ◽  
Necessary And Sufficient ◽  
Pluralistic Perspective

The philosophical problem of personal identity –the issue of finding the necessary and sufficient conditions for a past or future being to be a certain present being– has been treated by analytical metaphysics mostly. In this framework, plenty of references to thought experiments can be found, but they exhibit no connection to practical problems and scientific outcomes. Our purpose is to involve philosophy of science in that debate, since a genetic approach regarding identity can be considered supported by contemporary scientific knowledge. In order to do that, we will focus on the Argentinian case of the approximately 500 children who were appropriated during the most recent dictatorship (1976-1983). The appropriations deprived them, precisely, of their identities, but some of them managed to be recovered thanks to Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo (apm) and genetics. Our final purpose is to argue that a pluralistic perspective in philosophy of science, according to which values contribute to the very constitution of ontology science aims to describe and explain, will allow us to defend apm strategy but reject, at the same time, a reductive conception of identity.  

Personal Identity and Thought-Experiments

2002 ◽  
Vol 52 (206) ◽  
pp. 34-54 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tamar Szabo Gendler
Keyword(s):  
Personal Identity ◽  
Thought Experiments

Countering the Appeal of the Psychological Approach to Personal Identity

Philosophy ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 79 (3) ◽  
pp. 447-474 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Hershenov
Keyword(s):  
Personal Identity ◽  
Thought Experiments ◽  
Conjoined Twins ◽  
Psychological Approach ◽  
Living Organisms ◽  
Peter Unger ◽  
What Matters

Brain transplants and the dicephalus (an organism just like us except that it has two cerebrums) are thought to support the position that we are essentially thinking creatures, not living organisms. I try to offset the first of these intuitions by responding to thought experiments Peter Unger devised to show that identity is what matters. I then try to motivate an interpretation of the alleged conjoined twins as really just one person cut off from himself by relying upon what I take will be the reader's disagreement with Locke's conjecture that a dreaming Socrates and an awake Socrates are two distinct people.

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