Reply to Mamabeek
Wow! I haven't even thought about this blog in ages, and it's nice to see that it actually meant something to some people enough to actually leave me a few comments. I cannot help but be flattered, even if I do not agree with some of what has been said.
Mamabeek left me an interesting comment to my Introduction post. I will not here repeat it, since you can visit the links if you're curious. I am familiar with the argument adumbrated by Mamabeek in her comment. I do not, of course, agree with it, but it does deserve some sort of reply. I can think of no better reply than the one of which I thought years ago now, when I read some of the article on Personal Identity in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
In this article, Eric T. Olsen draws a distinction between qualitative and numerical identity. Think of a person as consisting of various person-stages existing over time. Numerical identity occurs when those person-stages belong to one and the same person. Qualitative identity occurs when those person-stages are exactly similar.
For example, suppose that I claim to be the same person now as I was yesterday. There was a person-stage yesterday that thought that it was me. There is also a person-stage today that still thinks that it is me. If I now claim that these person-stages both belong to the same person, what exactly do I mean by this? To use Olsen's distinction, I could mean one of two things by this. I could mean that the two person-stages have qualitative identity, or that they have numerical identity.
Suppose that personal identity is simply qualitative identity. This seems to be the view favoured by cyberpunk authors, and which I regard as absolutely false. If it were true, it should be clear enough that no two of your person-stages could ever belong to the same person. Each of your person-stages is qualitatively different from the ones that preceded and followed it. You are qualitatively a very different person from what you were when you were a child. So if qualitative identity made personal identity, you could never speak of ever having been a child. The child would be a different person from you just because it was qualitatively different. That seems an absurd enough suggestion to me.
Now suppose that personal identity is numerical identity. This would imply that many qualitatively different person-stages could indeed belong to one and the same person. It would also imply that no copy of a person could ever be the same person as the original. Just because it had qualitative identity would not be enough to make it the same person. It would be a different person just because it was a second person, in addition to the first.
This is the same view taken by Olsen in his paper. He clearly states that the idea of what makes a person the same person over time is a question of numerical rather than qualitative identity. If it were about qualitative identity, a person would never be the same person over time.
I actually found this passage to be so cogent that it put me off writing my paper altogether. It seemed to me to cover almost anything a cyberpunk author might come up with. If a person persists over time at all, then a person cannot be copied. So the idea of making backup copies or transferrals of oneself into other bodies cannot have metaphysical validity. One is transferring copies of oneself only, not one's own original self.
I am actually familiar with possible replies to this reply as well. (I am thinking of one in particular from The Metaphysics of Star Trek.) But I will tackle those in a separate entry, if anyone is actually interested out there in reading it!
Mamabeek left me an interesting comment to my Introduction post. I will not here repeat it, since you can visit the links if you're curious. I am familiar with the argument adumbrated by Mamabeek in her comment. I do not, of course, agree with it, but it does deserve some sort of reply. I can think of no better reply than the one of which I thought years ago now, when I read some of the article on Personal Identity in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
In this article, Eric T. Olsen draws a distinction between qualitative and numerical identity. Think of a person as consisting of various person-stages existing over time. Numerical identity occurs when those person-stages belong to one and the same person. Qualitative identity occurs when those person-stages are exactly similar.
For example, suppose that I claim to be the same person now as I was yesterday. There was a person-stage yesterday that thought that it was me. There is also a person-stage today that still thinks that it is me. If I now claim that these person-stages both belong to the same person, what exactly do I mean by this? To use Olsen's distinction, I could mean one of two things by this. I could mean that the two person-stages have qualitative identity, or that they have numerical identity.
Suppose that personal identity is simply qualitative identity. This seems to be the view favoured by cyberpunk authors, and which I regard as absolutely false. If it were true, it should be clear enough that no two of your person-stages could ever belong to the same person. Each of your person-stages is qualitatively different from the ones that preceded and followed it. You are qualitatively a very different person from what you were when you were a child. So if qualitative identity made personal identity, you could never speak of ever having been a child. The child would be a different person from you just because it was qualitatively different. That seems an absurd enough suggestion to me.
Now suppose that personal identity is numerical identity. This would imply that many qualitatively different person-stages could indeed belong to one and the same person. It would also imply that no copy of a person could ever be the same person as the original. Just because it had qualitative identity would not be enough to make it the same person. It would be a different person just because it was a second person, in addition to the first.
This is the same view taken by Olsen in his paper. He clearly states that the idea of what makes a person the same person over time is a question of numerical rather than qualitative identity. If it were about qualitative identity, a person would never be the same person over time.
I actually found this passage to be so cogent that it put me off writing my paper altogether. It seemed to me to cover almost anything a cyberpunk author might come up with. If a person persists over time at all, then a person cannot be copied. So the idea of making backup copies or transferrals of oneself into other bodies cannot have metaphysical validity. One is transferring copies of oneself only, not one's own original self.
I am actually familiar with possible replies to this reply as well. (I am thinking of one in particular from The Metaphysics of Star Trek.) But I will tackle those in a separate entry, if anyone is actually interested out there in reading it!
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