Derek Parfit -Reasons & Persons: Personal Identity

[J Gimmysum Truth]

books.google.com/books?id=SlgY93k936UC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA197#v=onepage&q=&f=false

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasons_and_Persons

Reasons and Persons is a philosophical work by Derek Parfit, published in 1986. It focuses on ethics, rationality and personal identity.

It is divided into four parts, dedicated to self-defeating theories, rationality and time, personal identity and responsibility toward future generations.

Personal identity

Part 3 argues for a reductive account of personal identity; rather than accepting the claim that our existence is a deep, significant fact about the world, Parfit's account of personal identity is like this:

At time 1, there is a person. At a later time 2, there is a person. These people seem to be the same person. Indeed, these people share memories and personality traits. But there are no further facts in the world that make them the same person.

Parfit continues this logic to establish a new context for morality and social control. He cites that it is morally wrong for one person to harm or interfere with another person and it is incumbent on society to protect individuals from such transgressions. That accepted, it is a short extrapolation to conclude that it is also incumbent on society to protect an individual's "Future Self" from such transgressions; tobacco use could be classified as an abuse of a Future Self's right to a healthy existence. Parfit resolves the logic to reach this conclusion, which appears to justify incursion into personal freedoms, but he does not explicitly endorse such invasive control.

Parfit's argument for this position relies on our intuitions regarding thought experiments such as teleportation, the fission and fusion of persons, gradual replacement of the matter in one's brain, gradual alteration of one's psychology, and so on.

Parfit's conclusion is similar to David Hume's view, and also to the view of the self in Buddhism, though it does not restrict itself to a mere reformulation of them. For besides being reductive, Parfit's view is also deflationary: in the end, "what matters" is not personal identity, but rather mental continuity and connectedness.

[GetSmart]

While I can't guarantee to be able to Giveyasome Truth, I'll try my best to attempt a modest critique of some of the notions present in these quotes.


Regarding rationality and time. Unless there is a paradigmatic shift such as caused by major scientific breakthroughs or shifts in the collective consciousness such as after 9/11, an individual's rationality will have a structural coherence through time, changing usually according to incidental factors composing their reality and influencing their judgement and predispositions. This would make it difficult for a double to duplicate an original unless they had their mind on record and were infused with it in some manner.


Respective to personal identity. The author apparently fails to recognize its very existence, complacently itemizing its components like a bean counter. Unless he lived in a vacuum isolated from human contact or had substandard observation skills, one is forced to assume that it is for an ulterior purpose that he describes human nature as without character or substance. The same person isn't even the same being from one time to another, not withstanding that what matters deeply to us happens to transcend time.


Such a postulate implies that people are not really different from one another, as we happen to only be amalgamations of mental matter assembled at a given time in a given place. If so, one can imagine that it would be relatively easy to replace someone without detection, after all, who is to say it isn't the same mental stuff in the same mental place? Maybe those of us who see double?


Parfit's new context for morality and social control pretty much says it all. And in example he dictates one rule, carefully choosing one which we would not object to a dictator mandating for our own good. This then serves as an excuse to justify controlling us in every way. If you forgive the irony, it is quite the lofty thesis on human identity, one bent only on reducing the threat of others, placing personal safety from wrongdoing under the protection of a higher authority, such as Parfit himself.


To ensure that none may rebel, he advocates extending such protection to our own choices which regard only us. Yet, he suggests, if only our autonomous thoughts and actions were prevented, a future submissive person, the US of tomorrow, would be happily protected from our very own former self. The duty to preserve your future perfection should keep you from taking any initiative or harbor the delusion of ever being a true individual.


Of course he will not explicitly endorse invasive control because it would appear less intellectual, less scientific, less neutral. After all, he is only saying that we shouldn't be able to do anything because somebody else might object, and that we shouldn't even be allowed to do things which affect only ourselves, because Big Brother has a duty to protect us from our own stupidity and provide us with an imposed "healthy existence" masquerading as a human right.


Argumentation on the basis of intuition is valid only for one's own subjective hypothetical deductions, and not to convince an audience of the validity of one's logic. Fission and fusion of personalities does not mean that these identities are not real, even if they have been toyed and tampered with. The are a constituent reality of those who experience them, in themselves or in their entourage.


None of this can support the postulate that we are not genuine individuals, or that we should surrender our destiny to any external rule which we have not validated or chosen. He reveals himself in his conclusion where he rejects any distinctive importance of any person, making the "hive" what really matters.


Unless we've unknowlingly mutated into bumble bees, I think that humanity would have figured out a long time before the arrival of such a peculiar individual, with such distinctly unusual ideas and inimitable leaps of logic which nobody could hope to duplicate without detection, to consider that we are little more than thought machines aspiring to only pursue collective thoughts of others who will in turn after us perpetuate them forever.


Such a treatise seems a shabbily constructed sham, under the guise of a philosophical exploration serving the ulterior purpose of conditioning our minds to an inevitable surrender of our deeper self to the demands of collective society. In my estimation, this stems from a form of philosophical communism as dubious and dangerous as anything conjured up under Stalin's totalitarian Soviet Union. Thanks, but no thanks.

[beatlies]

So, seven years from now this board will be populated by imposters of the current members, who think they are the current members but are not. The imposters will be exact replicas of us, as our body/brain cells acquire all new atoms, although aged ahead by seven years as well. This is the seven year metabolic cycle that Parfit makes hay with. And he's right about that. No one really lives longer than seven years.


Are human brain cells replaced over time?
I've read somewhere that all human cells are replaced over time. Does this include brain cells?
1 year ago
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Generally speaking each human cell is replaced over a period of about seven years and for a long time it was thought that brain cells are never replaced.

However, research over the last couple of decades has shown that adult human brain cells in many different regions of the brain are in fact replaced over time. The process by which neurons are created is called neurogenesis and the function of adult neurogenesis is not yet well known but there is some evidence that it plays a part in memory and learning.

For more information about adult neurogenesis please see the Wikipedia entry: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurogenesis
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en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurogenesis
1 year ago
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[beatlies]

If every atom in your body is replaced every seven years, as they appear to be, then seven years from now you will no longer be you, you will be annihilated and replaced by a close-resembling (in body and mind) "doll" of you. It's already happened to "you."

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I'm not a medical doctor or a biologist, but I do know that the DNA becomes fragmented over time. What causes the aging process is the deteroriation of the original DNA structure. An atom is lost here or there or a chunk of the strand breaks off or away and it results in mutations that end up showing as aging. Yes, the body totally replaces itself every 7 years. The older you get, the more you realize this is true. I had things happen to me around every ten years, that seemed to indicate, my body chemistry had changed signficantly.

I don't have any proof of the 7 year thing, as in scientific proof, but that is what I have heard. Yes, I believe it is true, alright. As far as memory is concerned, I heard some interesting stuff on PBS one afternoon not long ago, about the memory channels in the grey matter - they were talking about problems with Alzheimer's and CAT SCANS of the brain. I don't remember all the jargon they used, but it seems like the "channels" that lead between the memory centers (groups of neurons that have to do with memory retention) narrow or constrict over time, thus reducing the flow of whatever (electricity, chemicals???) not sure there - and this results in memory loss. Its a good question, why do scars remain if the body is replaced entirely. I don't have an answer for you on that one my friend.
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[GetSmart]

Oct 18, 2009 6:14:38 GMT -5 beatlies said:

If every atom in your body is replaced every seven years, as they appear to be, then seven years from now you will no longer be you, you will be annihilated and replaced by a close-resembling (in body and mind) "doll" of you. It's already happened to "you."

Hi Beatlies,

This is a very interesting topic and I'm glad you are discussing it. What might be the problem with this suggestion, that we are no longer ourselves once all of our cells have been replaced, is that it depends entirely upon our true identity being of a strictly physical nature.

If this were so, then we would have degenerated somewhat during the copying process, having fewer neurones and becoming shadows of ourselves over time. What is striking is that some people in ageing seem to become more themselves than they were before.

Actually, we can consider that the cellular replacement is going on all the time on a small scale. As we don't know if it is done selectively according to set criteria or mechanisms or whether it happens at random, we can only speculate. Yet if you consider it being at least partially related to what we observe in people's intellectual evolution, it may well have a logical function.

Possible those neurones which are best connected and most useful are copied in priority as more indispensable to our survival and topographical orientation in an uncertain world. This helps us build better structured and more evolved holographic representations of reality by using both rational thinking and letting any useless or undesirable neuronal connections be left unreplaced ?

Of course it is just a wild hypothesis, but it might help explain how we learn what's right by also unlearning what's wrong and why we can become more "ourselves" by carrying around less baggage which does not correspond to who we are.

[beatlies]

"Which is me?" Personal Identity Lecture

www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzbJ5nkAVfE&feature=related