Parfit II

These notes are especially rough.  It is unlikely that I will have time to improve them very much.

Oh, I did find out that Nixon resigned in 74 instead of 72.  Had I really been the same person back then, I might have been able to remember what year it was ;-)

Two Basic Theories about PID

I.  On what we might call the quasi-Cartesian view, there is a soul that persists throughout all of the changes that you undergo over time.

A.  It is because you have the same soul over time that you are the same person over time, despite how much changing you might do.

B.  Now the there are at least two main problems with the quasi-Cartesian view of PID:

1.  First, there’s no good reason to believe in souls.

2.  Second, even if there are souls, the same problem about their identity over time can probably be raised. If they change over time, then the question arises. But if they don’t change over time, then it is not clear why we care about them, since they could not carry our memories or develop as we develop. We would "outgrow" them if they do not change along with us.

II.  Hume's view.  

A.  Hume thought that there was no unchanging soul, no "transcendent self" that links all of the stages together over time.  

B.  Instead, he thought that all there really is is just unconnected temporal stages with nothing to really "tie" them together over time.

C.  This view is very hard to put into words, but it is something like this.  

1.  Consider a movie film.  It is made up of a series of frames.  

2.  Now when we show the movie, we THINK that what we see are continuous objects moving through time.  

3.  But according to Hume, this is an illusion. The only thing that really exists are the frames.  

4.  Each frame is its own separate entity, a nd there is no real thing that ties them all together.  It is just an illusion that there is a single thing persisting through time.

5.  Thus according to Hume, there is no "self" or "I" that persists through time.  The "me" of 1974, watching Nixon resign, is as different from the "me" now as two frames in a movie.  

 

I.  These are Parfit’s terms, and probably not the best choices for terminology.

II.  The simple view is the quasi-Cartesian view

A.  According to this view, there is SOMETHING that ties all the temporal stages of a person’s life together and makes me in 74 the same person as me in 2000.

B.  This thing–whatever it is–is what Parfit calls a "further fact" about identity. In other words, in addition to the series of stages, the simple view thinks that there is a "further fact" about the person that ties all the stages together.

III.  The Complex view is just that there is no "further fact" of this sort.  It is essentially the Humean view.

IV.  The Logic versus the nature of a concept

A.  When philosophers talk about the logic of a concept, they are often talking about the grammatical rules or dictionary definition that govern how the word is normally used.

B.  The point is a little bit like the observation that by its "logic" or grammar, "scissors" is plural, but by its nature, a pair of scissors is one thing. Although we normally talk about a PAIR of scissors, we are REALLY talking about one single thing. The word "pants" is similar. Here we have a word which by its "logic" is plural, but by its nature is singular.

C.  Grammatically certain concepts may not normally admit of degrees.

D.  But here again, in some cases grammar is a poor guide.

E.  For example The word "relative" (or "kin") by its logic is an all or nothing concept. But by its nature, it admits of degrees. So while the word "relative" does not grammatically take degree markers like "more" or "less", it is still something which, of its nature, is something that admits of degrees. Thus we speak of closer or more distant relatives, and in so doing we mark degrees of relatedness, even thought he concept of "relative" does not by its "logic" admit of degrees.

F.  Although we do not normally talk about degrees of personhood, we can. And it makes sense to do so for certain purposes.

G.  Most of this is not necessary for understanding the argument. What is necessary is to understand the following:

According to the complex view (and this is I think what makes it complex), identity is a concept which does admit of degrees, even though grammatically we do not normally talk about degrees of identity.

V.  An example: The Norman Conquest:

A.  Did England survive it? Is pre-conquest England THE SAME COUNTRY AS, IDENTICAL TO England after the conquest?

B.  If we take the SIMPLE VIEW about countries, then this is a difficult question.

C.  However, if we take the COMPLEX VIEW about countries, then all there is to know is what England was like both before and after. THERE IS NOTHING MORE TO KNOW, NO FURTHER FACT ABOUT WHETHER THE COUNTRY WAS THE SAME. This is because the only thing there is to know is how similar the two are.

D.  As Parfit puts it (139b): "the survival of a nation just involves these continuities. Once we know how the continuities were weakened, we need not ask, "did a nation cease to exist?" There is nothing left to know."

E.  PARFIT’S THESIS: National identity over time:  Identity of a nation over time consists of continuities. Continuity is a matter of degree. So, despite its "logic" the concept of identity for nations also admits of degrees.

PARFIT’S THESIS ABOUT PERSONAL IDENTITY OVER TIME

I.  Here’s my intuitive way of explaining it first, and then I will give you Parfit’s official way.

A.  Suppose we took a cerebroscopic snapshot of me 25 years ago and compared it to one right now. There would be so many differences that you would not realize that they were taken of the same person.  (A "cerebroscope" is a fictional device that records a person's entire mental state.  A "cerebroscopic snapshot" is just a picturesque short-hand way of talking about a person's entire mental state at a given time.)

B.  However, suppose you took a cerebrosopic snapshot of a person every 30 seconds. Such a series would reveal that each successive stage was VERY similar to the one before.

C.  Now, one thing that does connect me now to me 25 years ago is the fact that there is a CONTINUOUS CHAIN of successive stages–as captured in the cerebroscopic snapshots–that tie me now to me 25 years ago. Although me now and me 25 years ago have very different cerebroscope pictures, the thing that links them together is a chain of snapshots, such that every two successive snapshots are very similar.

D.  This fact is basically what Parfit thinks underlies PID.

E.  Notice two things: Each pair of successive snapshots can be more or less similar. And the whole chain can be more or less long.

F.  So while it is true that WHETHER there is such a chain is an all or nothing affair, the nature of the chain itself–WHAT WE MIGHT CALL THE "STRENGTH" FO THE CHAIN–admits of degrees.

II.  ACCORDING TO PARFIT’S COMPLEX VIEW OF PERSONAL IDENTITY, THERE IS NOTHING MORE TO PERSONAL IDENTITY OVER TIME BESIDES CHAINS OF PSYCHOLOGICALLY SIMILAR SUCCESSIVE STAGES.   

III.  THERE IS NO FURTHER FACT, NO MAGICAL TEMPORAL THREAD, NO UNCHANGING SOUL OR ESSENCE, THAT CONNECTS US TO OUR PAST AND TO OUR FUTURES.  THE ONLY THING THAT MAKES US THE SAME PERSON OVER TIME IS THAT EACH SUCCESSIVE TIME-STAGE IS PSYCHOLOGICALLY SIMILAR TO THE PREVIOUS ONE.

IV.  PARFIT’S OWN WAY OF SAYING THE SAME THING IS JUST A TAD MORE COMPLICATED:  His way of spelling out the complex view of PID is as follows:

A.  Direct connections between earlier and later stages of a person’s life consist roughly of psychological causes and effects. So the psychological states that I am in right now directly cause the psychological states that I will be in 30 seconds from now. WE CAN ALSO THINK OF THIS IN TERMS OF PSYCHOLOGICAL SIMILARITIES: A FUTURE STAGE IS CONNECTED TO A PAST STAGE BY BEING PSYCHOLOGICALLY SIMILAR.

B.  So connectedness between two stages means that there are direct psychological relations between earlier and later stages of a person’s life. Connectedness admits of degrees because there can be more or fewer connections between a pair of stages of a person’s life.

C.  CONTINUITY consists of there being a CHAIN of connectedness.

D.  Continuity, of course, admits of degrees, since the chain involved can be longer or shorter, and since the connectedness can be more or less.

E.  Finally, Parfit defines PID as continuity. Continuity is made of chains of stages each of which is linked to the next by direct connections.

V.  Again, PID is on this COMPLEX VIEW, a matter of degrees. The chain can be longer or shorter, and each link can be more or less strongly connected to the next. (140)

VI.  Some Illustrations (141):  Parfit gives some literary examples of cases in which people have regarded their future selves as separate persons, and thought of the changes they will go through in the future as destroying their current selves and replacing them with new ones.

VII.  A note from your prof.: For some of what follows, it may help you to note that you can think of long-range planning as a kind of benevolence toward your future self. 

A.  For example, when I put money away for my retirement, I often think of giving it to someone who is not quite me-now. 

B.  That person will care about other things, and in some sense then s/he will be a different person. 

C.  However, that person will probably need some money to do various things (and often they might be things that I may not particularly care about now.) This idea will play a role in our discussions later.

I.  If we take the complex view, we will tend to think of the history of a person as being rather like the history of a nation (142). 

A.  The fact that it is ONE SINGLE NATION over time is not a "DEEP" fact. 

1.  We could just as easily think of, say, antebellum US history as a history of what is, after all, in some ways a very different country. 

2.  Similarly, we could think of our own histories not as the histories of a single person, but as a series of different, though related persons who replace each other over time. 

B.  The point of calling PID a not-deep fact is to say that it doesn’t much matter which way you think of it, since there is nothing more to PID than a series of similar stages.

II.  According to the complex view (and if you have not picked up on this yet, Parfit believes the complex view–he argues for it at great length in Reasons and Persons), PID is a matter of degree, since it is just a chain of similar successive stages. 

A.  The longer the chain, and the less related the links, the weaker the connection we have with our earlier or later selves. 

B.  This means that whether I am the same person now as I was in 1974 when I watched Nixon resign is a matter of degree. I am more identical to myself a year ago than I am to that six year old. SO MY CONNECTION TO MY SELF IN A VERY REAL SENSE ERODES THE FURTHER WE GO INTO THE PAST OR THE FUTURE. This is because my connection to myself is just based on a chain of similarity, and the longer the chain (and the weaker its links), the weaker the connection.

III.  MORAL "IMPLICATIONS" OF THE COMPLEX VIEW.

A.  Scope versus effect. Parfit first introduces this distinction back on page 138. The details need not concern us. Roughly, all he is saying is that a moral principle has an "effect" or what we would be more likely to call strength, and it has a scope, which tells us what all it applies to. When Parfit distinguishes these two ways that a moral principle can change, he is splitting more hairs than I want to split in this class. Instead, I shall simply gloss over all of this stuff and speak of a principle being weakened.

B.  So the slightly simplified point will be this: IF WE ADOPT THE COMPLEX VIEW, CERTAIN MORAL PRINCIPLES THAT MANY PEOPLE HOLD WILL BECOME WEAKER.  "Weaker" here might mean less credible or less applicable.  In other words, Parfit is saying if the complex view about PID is right, then certain moral principles might become less credible.  The justification for them might be undermined, so to speak.

C.  the moral principles in question here are all going to be principles that are incompatible with utilitarianism.  So if Parfit can show that these principles are weakened if the complex view is true, then he will have shown, indirectly, that the complex view supports utilitarianism (because it undermines moral principles that oppose utilitarianism).

IV.  Specific moral principles that might be weakened

A.  Desert:  the principle of desert is something like this:  If X did something bad, then X should be punished.  But we do not punish Y for something that X did.  

1.  So if, over time, X evolves into Y, then perhaps the punishment should cease or at least be reduced.

2.  On 143 Parfit suggests that when the connections between convicts and their past criminal selves are less, they deserve less punishment; when they are very weak, perhaps they deserve none.

B.  promises (144):  The promise principle is something like:   If X promises now that at some later time T that s/he, X, will do some particular thing, then at that time, X should do that thing.

1.  However, what if by the time of T, X has evolved into a different person?  We would not normally hold the following principle: If X promises now that at some later time T that SOME OTHER PERSON, Y,  will do some particular thing, then at that time, Y should do that thing.

2.  The reason, of course, is that we do not normally think that I can give a promise for some other separate person.  Or if I do, then that person does not have any particular moral reason to fulfill it.

3.  The Russian Nobleman Case:  Normally if someone makes a promise to me, I can let them out of it if I want.  Well, what if I get someone to promise not to go back on the promise even if at some later time I say that it is OK.

a.  The young noble tells his spouse that if he ever wants her to cancel the promise, then it is a sign that he is no longer the same person to whom she made the promise.  

b.  IF that happens, then the person canceling the promise is not the same person to whom the promise was made.  Normally the only person who can cancel a promise is the SAME person to whom the promise was made.

V.  Summing up (147):  If we think of successive selves rather like our descendents, then certain things seem less plausible.  Just as our children are not responsible for what we do, so to maybe our future selves are not responsible for what we do.  Just as we cannot make binding promises on behalf of our children, maybe we should not consider promises on behalf of our future selves to be binding.  If the Complex view is correct, then these beliefs might become more reasonable.

  147:  An even more radical "implication":  Even if we do not think of the far past or the far future--and even if we do not change enough to become "different" selves, if the Complex view is true, there are still important implications.  For it would mean that there is less to our identity than we thought before.  Or, as Parfit puts it, our identity is "less deep."

148:  If a fact is less deep, then it is reasonable to think that morality should treat it as being less important.  If so, then the complex view may tend to support utilm. How so?

Distributive principles (149)

To see what a distributive principle is, consider a theory that does not have any.  Such a theory is utilm.  Utilm says that WE MUST MAXIMIZE HAPPINESS AND NOT WORRY ABOUT HOW THAT HAPPINESS IS DISTRIBUTED.  That is, we are to care only about how much utility there is, and not about how it is distributed.

Such a theory lacks any principles that say how utility should be distributed.

Now, consider some principles that are anti-utilm.  They are distributive principles.

for example; 

If X must sacrifice, then X should be compensated.

If X does something bad, then less utility should go to him

If X does something good, then X may be entitled to more utility.

You should not harm X in order to create a larger benefit for Y.

So normally most of us anti-utilitarians believe in some distributive principles.  In terms that some of you will by now be familiar with, distributive principles are one kind of limit on actions.

Now, Parfit's first claim is that when we are only looking at the happiness contained in one single life, we normally think that we should just maximize.  this is why it is rational to get your wisdom teeth pulled when they go bad:  You get some unhappiness now, but that gives you a higher total happiness in the long term.  THE MORAL HERE IS THAT WHEN WE LOOK AT A SINGLE LIFE, WE SEEK ONLY TO MAXIMIZE HAPPINESS WITHOUT WORRYING ABOUT HOW THAT HAPPINESS IS DISTRIBUTED AMONG THE TEMPORAL PARTS OF THE LIFE. 

THAT IS, WITHIN A SINGLE LIFE, WE MAXIMIZE AND DO NOT WORRY ABOUT DISTRIBUTION.

The separateness of persons

I.  Recall that utilitarianism aggregates the interests (desires, good, happiness) of all persons into one big quantity, and then tells us to maximize that quantity.  That is, we are to pretend in a way that everyone's happiness is like our own happiness and maximize TOTAL happiness in much the same way that we normally simply maximize our own happiness.

II.  Now this fact has led some anti-utilitarians to argue that utilitarianism fails to take seriously the separateness of persons:  

A.  Some have charged utilitarianism with assuming that we are one big collective entity rather than individuals. 

B.  One way to put this criticism is to say that utilitarianism treats individuals like the Borg on Star Trek, or like the cells in a body or the bees in a hive.  

1.  The individuals are not important in their own right, but rather as parts of a collective.  It is the welfare of the collective that we must worry about. 

2.  Now the Borg think this way, and bees are programmed to behave this way (I guess), and we certainly think this way about the cells of our own bodies.  

3.  But normally we do not see persons this way, that is, we do not see their importance as being merely that they are part of the collective Humanity, a collective which is the PROPER focus of our concern.

C.  Many people have argued that utilitarianism treats persons this way, that it ignores individuality and instead aggregates everyone's interests into the interest of some sort of collective super-agent.

III.  Parfit reasons that another possibility is that utilitarians hold the complex view 150

IV.  Why does this help?

A.  The distributive principles all assume that one single time line of a person is unified, so that there is a connection between the past and future of the same person that is unlike that between separate persons.

B.  But, if the connection between the future self and the present self is more like the relation between separate selves, then the assumption on which these principles is based breaks down.

C.  That is, the gap between the temporal parts of a single life begins to look a lot more like the gaps between separate lives.  This is because the Complex View holds that there is nothing especially significant about your connection with your future self.  Nothing much more significant, we might say, than your connection with another person.

D.  On page 151 middle, Parfit says:  "If we take the complex view, we may regard the rough subdivisions within lives as, in certain ways, like the divisions between lives.  we may therefore come to treat alike two kinds of distribution: within lives and between lives."

1.  If we do this, then we can either apply distributive principles to both, or to neither.  

2.  We already granted that we do not normally think that distribution matters within a life, and so if we are going to stay with that, then we should also not believe that distribution matters between lives.  (He discusses the alternative, but I'll skip that.)

E.  Conclusion:  Bottom of 153:  "Utilitarians may be treating benefits and burdens not as if they all came from within the same life, but as if it made no moral difference where they came.  this belief may be supported by the view that the unity of each life, and hence the difference between lives, is in its nature less deep."

V.  So the idea here is that utilitarianism can seem more plausible if we take the Complex View that persons over time are not that much different from collections of separate persons.  Since we normally think it makes sense to maximize utility for a person over time, the complex view suggests that it makes just as much sense to maximize utility between separate lives.

VI.  Or, as he puts it on 157, the complex view makes the question of When something happens to be rather like the question of to whom it happens.  This is because the different "when's" of a person's life are in a sense different persons.  To talk of me-when-I-watched-Nixon-resign is in a sense to talk about a separate person.

VII.  From this idea, Parfit concludes (157): "when we choose between social policies, we need only be concerned with how GREAT the [net--rn] benefits will be.  WHERE they come, whether in space or in time, or as between people, has in itself no importance."

VIII.  Nagel's version is similar:  If you can identify with your future self and benefit him/her, then why not identify with present others and benefit them?

IX.  Sidgwick's argument:  Sidgwick gave a much quicker version of the argument. 

A.  Roughly, the argument is a rhetorical question:

B.  If "I" will cease to exist only to be replaced by what is in some sense a new person, then why should I care whether I benefit that OTHER PERSON or some different OTHER PERSON? 

C.  In other words, if my future self is in some sense a stranger, then why give any moral priority to the stranger in my future over the strangers in my present?

D.  Why save up money so that a future me can spend it, if that future me is not really the same person as me?  

E.  If I'm going to be giving my money to some other person anyway, then why not give it to someone who needs it more than the future-me?