Well, listen, Zo--I'm not sure I like any of the wedges. Earlier I asked you why put in any wedges at all? --And then you begain explaining Lewis' ideas -- but that turns out to have had a wedge hidden in it. Right. It has a hidden wedge when we look at the “stage” level: it is the wedge between the I-relation and copersonality. Lewis' theory is very nice, but it was misleading for him to claim he was defending common sense. That is what I just never could see until you pointed it out. But he also said two people shared stages? Right. And what we just did was sketch yet another alternative similar to Lewis' where you don't have stage sharing --but you do have to reject symmetry on personal identity, on that view, because if you don't have stage sharing then your referring terms like `Kirk' that are fixed by reference to stages would not necessarily be ambiguous as they are in Lewis. Zoe, why do you have to reject either symmetry or transitivity? You don't have to. Parfit never rejected either of them. For personal identity? Right. He didn't depart from the connection between personal identity and identity simpliciter. And although I don't think he ever talked about “copersonality” as such, he would have treated it as both symmetric and transitive as well. But he rejects symmetry for R. Yes. For him R isn't symmetric. It has a direction. But you get personal identity holding only in cases in which R holds but does not branch. The details about what “non-branching R” means precisely are sort of messy; I tried to work them out in my thesis. Zoe, why not keep both symmetry and transitivity on both R and personal identity? But you can't say that, because then the two guys after a fission turn out identical. Well, why not say that? I mean, just say all the stages in the fission story are R-related to each other, and all the stages in the story are copersonal, and the two guys after the double beaming each is Kirk, and each is identical with the other as well. So two persons are one person? That'd be crazy. No, Zo! It just looks like there are two. There's just one person all along, Kirk, but he has two bodies afterwards. -- one on planet Z and one on planet Y. He just went to pieces, like Mark says! --But without falling apart! --Why the puzzled look? That's just the title of Mark's book. I don't think its relevant here. Anyway, one person having two bodies and a divided mind would be quite weird. Parfit discusses this, although only briefly. What does he say? He says it would require a great distortion of our concept of a person. For instance, after some years, the two people might meet again and end up playing tennis together, and having aged, maybe a face lift or two, not even know that the other woman she's playing tennis with just is herself!
Talk about the pot calling the kettle black!! -- oh. Ok, sorry -- [pause] --ok. its like a sunflower calling piss yellow! Oh, lovely.-- What is? Parfit's saying surviving fission would be a distortion of our concepts! What I'm trying to say is this: you already told me Parfit talks about how his theory is radically contrary to common sense and that he even celebrates this point! Since when does he get to criticize opinions for distorting our concept of a person? TouchÈ. Besides in time travel you could have one person with two bodies playing tennis with herself! So the idea at least makes sense. Or like in Back to the Future when Michael J. Fox's character goes back in time and watches his earlier self in the parking lot. Right. Marty McFly. You could even imagine somebody making love with himself. Hmph… --Right. Let's just stay with the McFly in the parking lot. Ok.
ok, that is correct, Joe. But still in that story all of McFly's stages can be lined up in order--a linear ordering. Call it is his “personal” time. But in the fission story-- the branching story --neither ZKirk nor YKirk at any given time would be earlier or later than the other. They are on totally separate streams. Right. But that just means that if your branching story came true things would be unusual. My reason for mentioning time travel was just to show the coherence of playing tennis with oneself. But still--after the fission there are two distinct centers of consciousness and action. Putting the emphasis on that doesn't strike me as in the spirit of the R-theories. What? What did you say? If you say there are two distinct centers of consciousness as the basis for why there are two people, aren't you bringing in assumptions different from an R-based theory? Well, good point. What unifies a person at a time (“synchronically”) are simply relations between various events co-occurring at that time. There is no substantial, determinate “center”. Derek treats “awareness” as a fundamental unifier at a time--simple events of awareness. But there is no substantial “center” of awareness; instead there are states or events of awareness that do the synchronic unifying. Derek? Parfit. You know him? He helped me with my thesis. Wow. Cool. The time travel examples show that he would have to abandon that idea, doesn't it? What idea? That some state of awareness unifies a person at a time. Why? After a time travel, there might be only one person on the tennis court at a certain time, yet a match is being played. There are two unified sets of mental and physical events. Let's say some awareness events are doing the unifying in some way on each side of the net. Still that's not the bottom line basis for unification of the person, since there are two distinct awareness unifying events but only one person. I'm not sure that came out right. Joe, that came out fine! I see your point now. Really? Yes. What the time travel example shows is that the unification across times (“diachronic” unity) can take priority over whatever unifies a person synchronically. Uh. Diachronic is across time, synchronic at a time. In deciding what to say about fission we can give priority to synchronic unifiers, that is, what unifies everything happening for you at any moment-- indeed Derek has to assume synochronic priority when he denies survival of fission. But we don't have to do that. We can give priority to the diachronic unifiers, namely, the R-relation. And Joe, what you are showing is that is what we have to do in time travel. And if we do that, if we say diachronic unity takes priority when we make sense of the possibility of a time travel case, then I guess we could do something similar in thinking about fission. Awareness unifies each of the two stages, but it is R that unifies the person. Maybe R should be defined so that the two stages turn out copersonal. Even though there is some synchronic disunity for Kirk after the fission --there is no single unity of all the events that constitute him at various times after the fission --nonetheless he would survive. And so you could say XKirk = YKirk = Kirk. Good. Let's say that. Yes. I would have to say you have a good point, Joe. I hadn't seen that before. One who argues against survival of fision is assuming that unity at a time is more important than R, and without a simple, indivisible substance in the picture it is not clear why one should assume that. I'm not sure I got all that. But if there's nothing else wrong with my interpretation, I'd prefer just saying they're both Kirk afterwards. Both ZKirk and YKirk just are Kirk. Well, you might be on to something here. You're pretty good at this, man. Actually we do this sort of thing in the first grade.
Huh?--ok. Wait, Joe. I just thought of a problem. There are some forms of R-theories where the synchronic unity is determined by the diachronic unifiers. Derek unifies the person stage by means of events of awareness. But Sydney Shoemaker does it by virtue of the functional integration of the person through time. Actually he has a sort of holistic view in which memories and intentions and so forth exist only by virtue of their functional roles in the person. And of course a normal form of functional integration would include the connection between one's deliberation and decision-making with what happens, with what one does, and so forth--a functional integration that would be lost after the two Kirk streams diverge--for the deliberation by ZKirk would not play its normal causal role in what YKirk does. This is the deeper point underlying the importance of the linear ordering. In the time travel case, that's not really a problem for Shoemaker: he can have two distinct stages coexisting, but since one is later than the other in personal time (even though they are simultaneous in external time), he can maintain all the normal functional relationships between plans and actions, and so on. So the planning in one of the stages might actually be having effects simultaneously in the other stage. Zoe, something's got to give. You can't just keep all your usual concepts when you consider these types of cases, as you yourself have already been telling me twenty times. So I agree Shoefucker's munctional integration or whatever has to go-- Shoemaker's functional integration-- The idea is that mental states have “functions”, --they play certain causal roles --and that these functional roles determine their natures; and then when they are working together in a causally coordinated way over a period of time --well that is just the sort of functional integration that makes for personal identity through time. Normally. Right. Normally. Right. But in fission it has to be abandoned to some degree. Ok, good-bye. Something's got to give. But the functional integration is important. These aren't just wild thought experiments, you know. Actually on Shoefucker's theory-- Shoemaker's-- --you probably would not turn out to be the same person you were as a girl. What? Why not? There are actual branching cases just like the Kirk case, so far as branching of your R-relation is concerned. There isn't the functional integration yet the person survives, so functional integration can't be as important as you have been claiming. What? I know this guy Paul Aulisio who told me about a friend who got knocked unconscious playing basketball, and afterwards he was ok except he had totally lost all memories from the 2 years preceding the game. Never got them back, like those 2 years never happened. His girlfriend was confused for awhile--he didn't even remember her afterwards-- but he fell in love with her again-- Well that's a relief. They got everything worked out, and have two kids now. So what you're saying is there's a branch point in his psychology going back 2 years earlier. Yes. Still, the body didn't branch so putting the emphasis on ordinary bodily continuity we can make sense of his surviving. Ok, yes. But the mind did branch, and I would say that the psychology is more important for R, for people. A lot of philosophers would agree with you -- actually anybody would agree who thinks star-trek beaming permits survival even if the body stuff isn't transmitted. Many people would agree with that. For Aulisio's friend, all the mental events are lined up temporally in space/time; but they are not lined up for the person. So I would say this is one of Parfit's R-branches. Its just like the Kirk story except there are no overlaps in external time. Do Shoemaker and Parfit want to say these people do not survive such events? I'm pretty sure they'd not want to say that. But remember they permit some branching as long as it isn't too long. Two years? That's pretty long. So they'd say Aulisio's friend died? It looks like it would be a significant branch. But I doubt they'd want to say that. Maybe they'd just say this is another case that shows that it is not identity that matters to us, insofar as we want to survive--Aulisio's friend actually died two years before the basketball game, but nonetheless he still had “what matters” insofar as later on he had two R-related streams. Zoe, I don't think so. You don't want to say Aulisio's friend died 2 years before the basketball game. That'd be pretty odd since nothing particularly unusual happened back then. Saying he died 2 years before due to the fact that there was going to be a branch back to that point some 2 years later --that would be very weird-- we're not talking about science fiction here. This is an actual case. Hmm.. It's something like when older people get Alzheimer's and cannot remember recent events but can remember earlier ones. There'd be lots of little branches branching off which are never remembered again. Yah, but there it isn't so odd to say the self isn't surviving anymore. It seems pretty odd to me. The self continues to exist but it keeps streaming off into little dead end branches. Well, then if you want to say it, again you can appeal to bodily continuity. Maybe you side with those who put the emphasis on bodily continuity. No! I still agree it is one's psychology that counts! It just seems to me that this type of branching of memory shouldn't mean the person's gone. It even happens just in ordinary daydreams. Sometimes I'm sitting around and things happen that later I can't remember at all. Or dreams when I'm asleep. That's why I said you're not the same as when you were a girl if we can't survive branching. Well, then. Put in a wedge of some sort between survival and identity. Anyway, a daydream probably is just an insignificant branch. So that's not a problem for Derek. Zoe, look. First, I don't like any of your wedges. Secondly, if he grants that some little branches off the mainline R are compatible with surviving, but not the two year branch for Aulisio's friend, or the branch in the fission case --ok, that is fine with me. He can think that way. But what I'm not liking here is the idea that he thinks he has a reason why this interpretation is wrong. I think Aulisio's friend survives the two year branch and Kirk survives fission. It is just as coherent as his view, especially if as you say he does let some branching in. My interpretation is just as good as his. Joe you're right! I'd forgotten about it. This is exactly the sort of case that worried Grice!! Grice? God!! How could I be so blind?! I actually wrote about this in my thesis just when I was trying to get Derek to forget about fission in his arguments, and I never even saw this! I just couldn't figure out what to say! Grice? H. P. Grice. Philosopher from Oxford and Berkeley. Amazing man. I saw him at a conference year or two before he died. Monstrously overweight, long flowing white hair, he was talking about how the clackety-clack of computers had displaced people discussing things with each other. I'm not sure he realized how much the machines were going to facilitate communication-- what did he say about branching? Grice way back in 1941 had a theory much like Derek's and Lewis's--one of the R-based theories, let us say --for him the relevant stages included only mental events and he focussed only on the memory connection as in Locke. It was a purely memory-based theory. Actually he combines Locke's memory vivew with Hume's bundle theory and introduces an idea much like "person stage" that we talked about before. Even though Hume himself didn't buy Locke's memory theory, the two ideas go together well. Ok. He expanded on Locke. But Grice was worried that some experiences couldn't be regarded as mine because at no later point were they retrievable by memory in any way. There wasn't the person glue? Exactly. They might be R-linked to earlier experiences but suppose they're not R-linked to any later ones. Yes, that's what I'm talking about --that's like the Aulisio and Alzheimer's and daydream cases. It's just an R-branch like in any of the fission cases. To solve this, Grice makes his R-relation symmetric. And when John Perry reformulated Grice's theory he made it turn out that branching of R is not even possible! Why not? Because his R already was transitive in order to handle cases where earlier experiences are completely forgotten and can't be retrieved by memory, but still the later stages are connected by an R chain back to the earlier stages. Just like in Parfit's chains? Exactly. Probably Parfit was influenced by Grice there. And since his R is both transitive and symmetric, Grice has an equivalence relation. And this means that ZKirk and YKirk would be R-related according to that theory. And so would all the stages of Aulisio's friend, including those in the two year period that later were not remembered. The equivalence relation R just is the copersonality relation for Perry's Grice.
Wow! that's good, Zo.-- I'll buy that theory from Perry's Grice. Joe, you're right! I have to admit it. --Not necessarily to buy Grice's theory. But Derek at least should recognize that it's on the shelf available for purchase. It certainly is a coherent view. Good. And--wow!-- Joe, this proves why Derek should just forget about fission! Why? The fission thought experiments are not going to work the way he wants them to. I was trying to figure this out when I was writing my thesis, but just didn't see it. If as on Perry's version of Grice's account branching isn't even possible, which means there is survival in such cases, then these cases cannot be used even to begin arguments for things like the idea that identity does not matter! And this means that they are of no relevance in Derek's arguments about the RAMs of Reductionism. You lost me. The RAMs? Derek wanted to argue that if an R-theory is true, then there will be important consequences for our attitudes about life and morality. --These are the “ramifications” --the RAMs. For instance, he wants to show that survival is not as important as we tend to think. He uses fission with the no-survival interpretation to try to make that point. You don't survive fission, he says, but still you'd have what matters insofar as both people after the fission would be fully R-related to you. Huh. He also thinks there are many normative concepts that would be affected, especially those involving the same person at different times. But now it seems he has had a sort of Fission Fixation in making these arguments. But this defeats his own goals. Given the arbitrariness involved in any R-based theory --the possibility of indeterminacy, and so on --Derek should try to make his arguments so that they don't depend upon just one type of R-based theory such as those that deny survival in fission. He shouldn't presuppose one particular form of reductionist theory? Yes, exactly. In fact he strives to do just that. Even though in his book he seems to favor a psychological account, he says we shouldn't get lost in debates about whether the body or mind is more important for personal identity. He wanted to connect any form of reductionism with the normative ramifications. I think he's going to be pretty surprised to find out he's been excluding H. P. Grice all along--at least the way Perry formulates Grice. Get lost? There have been interesting philosophical disputes between philosophers that basically boil down to whether one could survive with a new body. Body-based R-theorists say No, whereas psychology-based R-theorists say Yes (just so long as the psychology is appropriately related to yours). Could you survive then with a totally new psychology but the same body? Here they reverse answers, with the Body-based theorists saying Yes but the psychology-based folks saying No. Derek encourages R-theorists not to quibble about these details. He has a vision that no matter what type of R-theory you favor, there are significant even radical conclusions to ponder--especially consequences in the way we think about rationality and morality. And these consequences follow no matter what form of R-theory one holds. I think he may be right about that--there are going to be some interesting consequences, although I doubted that they would be as radical as he thought--but so far the arguments haven't been made very well at all. My points might help him? He's not going to think so-- but YES!! This is what I didn't quite see! I sort of saw it but only dimly. They prove he should just forget about fission since those thought experiments can't be used to show identity doesn't matter or anything like that because in Perry-Grice's R-theory there is identity in those cases! Derek makes the assumption that Kirk would not survive fission, and this is essential for the way he uses the thought experiment. But in using it this way Derek arbitrarily excludes some psychological-R-theories --namely those that say Kirk would survive fission. Maybe that's what the chaplain should've said to Wierob. Weirob? The chaplain? Who-- Rev. Miller. In the book you gave me.
oh, right. Those dialogues by John Perry. Right --maybe so. That's what Miller should've said. --Anyway, Derek tried to use the fission thought experiment in a number of ways. If we accept an R-theory about ourselves, he said, there will be consequences for our use of concepts like punishment, praise, blame, commitment -- and many other concepts. But his main arguments all depend on your having R-relatedness but not identity in the fission thought experiments. Can you give me an example? Of what? Of an argument that depends upon assuming that you'd have somebody R-related to you but not identical to you. Yah, sure. I happen to have one in my backpack. Give me the flashlight. Do you think we should turn on the flashlight after what happened last night? Well, I don't know. Do you think the Blair Witch would strike twice in the same place? You never know. Ok. Well, anyway.-- This is from Parfit's debate in the journal Ethics with Susan Wolf and several other critics. And this is what he says about why personal identity does not matter given an R-theory--remember, this is what got us talking aboaut fission in the first place. He argues identity doesn't matter--he means literally my continued existence into the future is not what really matters to me insofar as I want to survive. Here's what he said to Wolf:
So, Zoe, what's the point here? The point, Joe, is that his argument totally assumes the no-survival interpretation of fission. Whatever one might say about how well he replies to Susan Wolf, he certainly is mistaken to think that fission can be used to show that it is irrational to regard identity as mattering, since a perfectly good R-theory can countenance survival in those thought experiments-- in which case not only is there everything that matters about survival, there also is survival as well! Parfit's arguments work only if we assume no-survival, which of course is false if one does survive! And if there is survival, none of his arguments based on fission can even get started. Sorry I'm repeating myself. What was supposed to happen to punishment? Parfit argues it isn't justifiable if reductionism is true; that is, if we are R-based beings. I could imagine there would be consequences like that if all that holds me together through time is the R-glue, if there is no simple unchanging me. Well, it is not obviously implausible. I mean, if we really do assume there are souls, and if our practices like punishment it; but if in fact there are not any souls involved in our existence, then it might have impact on our practices. But there are several steps there. There wouldn't be the right connection between me when I stole the Jeep and me if I get put in jail again. Did you steal the Jeep? Well--- Ok, wait-- don't tell me. I didn't exactly-- Shh. I don't want to know about it. That might make me an accomplice. --About punishment, yes, that is behind Derek's argument. Given an R-theory, he wants to say, the idea of punishment can't be made coherent; it never is justifiable, because the relationship between a single person at different times becomes too much like the relationship between two distinct people -- and it would not be fair to punish one person for the crimes of another. But he hasn't seemed to convince anybody. Probably it is because he has relied too much on the fission-based arguments. So no one should ever be put in jail? You'd be surprised how much attention philosophers have given the fission cases, but now it looks like they've been barking up an empty tree. Non-density is where the focus should be. It follows from all the R-theories but it does not require the “Kirk doesn't survive” interpretation of branching much less the claim that identity doesn't matter. Non-density? In my thesis. We think we are dense, where D stands for Determinate, S for substantial, E for independent or something like that. I can't remember the details. The point is that on any R-based theory we are NOT DENSE. Buddhist use terms like emptiness for this idea but I found it useful to make up my own term.
Joe, probably Derek should just drop that claim that identity does not matter. Indeed, perhaps he should spell out the ramifications of R-theories using the normal idea that identity does matter. I believe it may be non-density that is the basis for the practical ramifications. Zoe, doesn't independent begin with I? Yes, as a matter of fact. Since when did you get so picky? I thought that non-density was Liddy's theory. Oh, yah? Is that what he told you? Uh-huh. Did he know what the letters stood for? Actually, no. He had no idea. He stole it from me. But you don't seem to know what the letters stand for either. I wish I could find the floppy I copied it on. You lost it? Yah. Where? Are you trying to be funny? No, Zo. I believe you. I can tell you feel really bad about this. Yes, it bugs me. Joe, would you mind holding me a little bit to help make me feel a little bit better? Yes! Sure! You want to have sex again? Yah! You could begin just by holding my head in your arms for awhile. What? Your head? Yes. That's the best. That's not sex, that's love. Ok, then. Let's make love. Well, what do you want, sex or love?
How about we just lie here for awhile?
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