Embodiment and Personal Identity in Dementia

Theories of personal identity in the tradition of John Locke emphasize the importance of psychological continuity and the abilities to think, to remember and to make rational choices as basic criteria for personhood. As a consequence, persons with severe dementia are threatened to lose the status of persons. Such concepts, however, are situated within a dualistic framework, in which the body is regarded as a mere vehicle of the brain as the organ of mental faculties. The chapter elaborates a different approach to personal identity: according to this, selfhood is primarily constituted by pre-reflective self-awareness and the body memory. Dementia is then characterized as a loss of reflexivity and meta-perspective, which is contrasted with the preservation of individual forms of body memory even in the later stages of the illness. The ethical consequences of such an embodied approach to dementia are outlined.

A note on psychological continuity theories of identity and neurointerventions

An important concern sometimes voiced in the neuroethical literature is that swift and radical changes to the parts of a person’s mental life essential for sustaining his/her numerical identity can result in the person ceasing to exist—in other words, that these changes may disrupt psychological continuity. Taking neurointerventions used for rehabilitative purposes as a point of departure, this short paper argues that the same radical alterations of criminal offenders’ psychological features which under certain conditions would result in a disruption of numerical identity (and, thus, the killing of the offender) can be achieved without these having any effect on numerical identity. Thus, someone interested in making radical alterations to offenders’ psychology can avoid the charge that this would kill the offenders, while still achieving a radical transformation of them. The paper suggests that this possibility makes the question of what kinds of qualitive alterations to offenders’ identity are morally permissible (more?) pressing, but then briefly highlights some challenges for arguments against making radical qualitative identity alterations to offenders.

Generalizing from Fission

In Chapter 4, the second step of the Divergence Argument is assessed. This second step consists in generalizing from fission, and, perhaps, other divergent cases, to the conclusion that identity never matters. Various positive rationales offered in support of this inference are examined. One such rationale involves positing cases of identity both without a certain relevant psychological/physical relation (Parfit’s M relation) and without what matters. But it is suggested that there no uncontroversial basis for positing the possibility of cases fitting this pattern. It is also argued that a rationale that appeals to simplicity does not take us to this general result. In addition, it is demonstrated that a further rationale that depends on the claim that the constitution relation between facts about identity and facts about psychological continuity is sufficient to ground this final inference is based on a principle that is subject to counterexamples. It is concluded that it is not plausible to think that the Divergence Argument for the claim that identity never matters is successful.

Personal Identity and the Hybrid View: A Middle Way

Two of the main contenders in the debate about personal persistence over time are the neo-Lockean psychological continuity view and animalism as defended by Olson and Snowdon. Both are wrong. The position I shall argue for, which I call, following Olson, the hybrid view, takes (non-branching) psychological continuity as a sufficient but, pace the neo-Lockeans, not necessary condition for personal persistence. It sides with the animalist in allowing that mere (non-branching) biological continuity is also sufficient. So I am, in a sense, a psychological continuity theorist. But I am also in a sense, a biological theorist (or as Olson put it, a new animalist).

Corpses, Embryos, Animal

Will I be my corpse someday? This is a controversial philosophical question. If I’m a material being, that question is an important part of the metaphysics of material beings. Animalism claims that I’m a human animal. I have started as a fetus. Eric Olson argued that this is incompatible with the psychological-continuity approach to personal identity. From this it follows that we should accept the biological approach; the persistence condition for me is a Life. William Carter suggested that this approach has the same problem with the corpses as the psychologicalcontinuity approach has with fetuses. I’m going to show that Carter is not right, but we should slightly specify a biological approach: the persistence condition for me is my Life

Olson E. T. Was I Ever a Fetus? / trans. from Engl. V. A. Sermaksheva

The Standard View of personal identity says that someone who exists now can exist at another time only if there is continuity of her mental contents or capacities. But no person is psychologically continuous with a fetus, for a fetus, at least early in its career, has no mental features at all. So the Standard View entails that no person was ever a fetus-contrary to the popular assumption that an unthinking fetus is a potential person. It is also mysterious what does ordinarily happen to a human fetus, if it does not come to be a person. Although an extremely complex variant of the Standard View may allow one to persist without psychological continuity before one becomes a person but not afterwards, a far simpler solution is to accept a radically non-psychological account of our identity

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

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.

Pump, person and Parfit: why the constitutive heart matters

The historical view of the heart as a source and repository of characteristics of individual persons remains prevalent in speech and literature. A more recent scientific view regards the heart as just a replaceable mechanical device, supporting a hydraulic system (the pump-view). To accept the pump-view is to reduce the historical view of the heart, and reference to it, to metaphor. To address whether this conclusion is justified, this paper investigates what constitutes an individual person over time and whether the heart has any role in that constitution. While some physical continuity may be necessary, most philosophers agree that our ‘personal identity’ is conferred through the persistence of ‘psychological’ characteristics predominantly through memory. Memory is constituted through the interplay of external and internal sensory experience—to which the heart is a major contributor. On scientific grounds alone this sensory role for the heart makes the pump-view incomplete. If our persistence as a person reflects the totality of experience codified through memory, and the heart is a central source of the internal component of that experience, then the pump-view is also misleading since the heart plays some constitutive role. More widely, if what fundamentally matters for our survival as persons is just psychological continuity, then the pump-view is irrelevant. While a ‘supportive heart’ may be necessary for continued embodiment, it is on the constitutive role of the heart, as part of a unique internal experience, that our individuation as persons depends.

Indeterminate Identity, Personal Identity, and Fission

I apply my “global” theory of vagueness to the question of vague identity. I consider, in particular, the application of the theory to the case of fission and attempt to show that the theory is able to preserve the connection between identity and what matters and between identity and psychological continuity.