Parsons as Material Beings

One may consider such cases and think that even if one has an inclination to think that Brownson is Brown this is nothing but a vague intuition. It will in some respects be convenient and pragmatic to consider Brownson to be Brown, but it seems to be a matter of making a decision about how to apply the concept of personal identity beyond the circumstances it is suited for. Just as we may come to doubt whether to call a stone or a watch or some other physical entity the same after some procedure and merely take a pragmatic view, we may find that there is no definite answer as to who Brownson is, even if we know exactly what has happened.

But thinking about the Brownson scenario we may change the perspective from the third-person point of view to the first-person perspective. From the third-person perspective we may regard the question of Brownson’s identity with Brown with some indifference, but it will certainly not seem satisfactory to Brownson to take the pragmatic option. For Brownson the question is not just about linguistic usage but about him. Has he just come into existence or is he Brown or Robinson? He is claiming that he is Brown, and even when told about what has happened there seems to be no reason why he should think otherwise. It is not as if Brownson thinks that he is Brown because he hears himself utter those words and manifests the character traits of Brown which others take to be evidence that he might be him. He thinks he is Brown because e.g. he seems to remember being him. He seems to remembers Brown’s past, not someone else’s. And, importantly, the reason for this is not that he has gone nuts or is under some kind of illusion. There is a well described causal route from Brown’s past experiences and mental life to that of Brownson.

It is, I think, important not to underestimate the perspective of Brownson in this case. The claim that we don’t really know whether to think he is Brown or not is for him similar to what you would experience if someone came and told you one that you are not the person you think you are and that this is due to changes in the material world the observation of which is not what we seem to base our claims about our own identity on. Undoubtedly you’d be rather surprised to find that you have, so to speak, changed bodies, but from the first-person perspective that is, I contend, what you’d think has happened. And so should we. 

A Philosophically Adequate Conception of Ourselves

Another central reason for accepting the Psychological Approach to persons is that it seems to be in accordance with what Peter Unger has called ‘a philosophically adequate conception of ourselves.’ An inquiry into our persistence conditions must ‘appreciate what is involved in a philosophically adequate conception of ourselves. (…) such an adequate concept must be well suited for engagement with our central prudential thoughts and concerns (…). And it must be well suited for our engagement with morality.’

Agreeing with Unger many advocates of the Psychological Approach have appealed to what he calls “Avoidance of Future Great Pain Tests” (or considerations similar to it).

Avoidance of Future Great Pain Test (AFGTP)

Before undergoing some procedure you are asked to consider whether from a strictly egoistic concern you will choose to have yourself suffer considerable pain before the procedure if your not suffering this will result in the infliction of far greater pain on the being resulting from the procedure. On the basis of our answer to this kind of scenario it will presumably be possible to reveal some of our deepest beliefs about our persistence conditions.

In case the procedure is eating tomato soup or having a heart transplant I take it that everyone from a strictly egoistic concern would take the considerable pain before the transplant so as to prevent the person receiving a new heart from suffering far greater pain. Similarly, if you were Brown and you were told about the events to come in the brain transplant scenario or Williams’s brain-state transfer the claim is that you’d be concerned about Brownson from a strictly egoistic point of view.

So much by way of motivating the Psychological Approach. The two central reasons for claiming that psychology is necessary for personal identity are firstly the Transplant Intuition revealing that we believe we go were our mental life goes, and secondly considerations about the patterns of our supposedly identity-based practical concerns.

4. The Combination Problem

The project that I undertake in this paper is to gauge the prospect of combining a psychological approach with the claim that persons are material beings where the term ‘material being’ is intended to cover any favourite candidate you might have: animal, body, brain etc. Since the view I shall discuss take persons to be human animals I shall henceforth use the terms ‘material being’ and ‘human animal’ equivalently.  If we accept that non-branching psychological continuity constitutes personal identity even in abnormal causal circumstances such as brain-state transfers or teletransportation, then the following scenario can’t be ruled out:

(1) At t1 you are human animal x which is at place P

(2) At t1 there exists another human animal y which is at another place P*

(3) At t2 you are identical to human animal y

(4) y was at P* at t1

(5) You were not at P* at t1

This scenario could occur if there was a brain-state transfer from x to y before t2 where x’s brain is either left blank or realises a psychological life discontinuous with yours.

But if (3) is true, then the formal character of numerical identity allows that we can substitute (4) with (4*): you were at P* at t1. But (4*) contradicts (5).

Hence, if we allow for body-change, i.e. that the psychological continuity constituting personal identity can come apart from physical continuity (where this cover whatever continuity fits our favoured kind of material being, e.g. brain/body/biological continuity), and we assume that you are a material being, then we allow for the possibility of truly believing that at time t1 you were in place P* and not in place P.

As a matter of fact, the problem is that identifying you with a material being and accepting the psychological approach will lead to a conflict with the transitivity of identity. At t1: you = x. At t2: you = y. At t2 y ≠ x, but then you are not you which is absurd.

5. A Case for Coincidence?

A tempting way of getting around the Combination Problem may be to adopt the view that two material beings of distinct kinds can share all their matter in common, i.e. that they can coincide completely for a period of time whilst being of kinds associated with distinct persistence conditions. Hence, it may be suggested that we should distinguish between animal and personal identity and claim that where you are sitting there are really two numerically distinct material beings, a person and e.g. a particular animal. The person has at least partly psychological persistence conditions, the animal has, say, biological and nonpsychological persistence conditions.

Whatever the credentials of the claim that material beings of distinct kinds may coincide is with respect to material objects in general such as statues and lumps of clay, there is what I take to be a conclusive objection to the view when it comes to persons. This is the Problem of the Thinking Animal. For the sake of argument I shall henceforth adopt the view that the best candidate for the kind of material being that you are is a human animal. Hence the two material beings to be distinguished are you, the person, and the coinciding human animal.

6. The Problem of The Thinking Animal

On the standard Lockean conception of a person it is a necessary condition for a being to be a person that it can entertain rational, self-conscious thought. This conception is the one accepted by personal identity theorists in general.

Assume that we take the person and the animal sitting in your chair to be distinct material beings due to their different persistence conditions and hence claim that they coincide, having all their matter in common.

If we also assume that mental states supervene on physical states such that for beings x and y to differ in their mental states they must differ in their physical states, then we can generate the thinking animal problem.

(i) It is a necessary and sufficient condition for a being to be a person that it is rational and self-conscious. Hence, if something thinks ‘I am a person’ it must be a person.

(ii) You think that you are a person

(iii) Your thoughts supervene on your physical properties, e.g. brain-states

(iv) There is an animal which has the exact same intrinsic physical properties as you have

(v) Hence, the animal coinciding with you also thinks ‘I am a person’

(vi) Hence, either (a) there are two distinct beings of the same kind where you are sitting, or (b) there is a thinking animal falsely thinking it is a person, or (c) there are beings which satisfy the Lockean conception of personhood but aren’t persons.

We don’t want to accept any of these conclusions. With respect to (a) it is not attractive to accept a multiplicity of the same kind of things sharing the same matter. Why think there are two or more entities of the same kind coinciding when there is nothing which distinguishes one from the other.

We can’t accept (b) if we find the concept of a person to be the standard Lockean conception. And if we accept (c) we deflate the practical significance of the Lockean conception in that (c) will entail that there are beings just like persons, which aren’t persons just because they have nonpsychological persistence conditions and hence don’t enjoy the same moral status as proper persons. But why should my persistence conditions make a difference for whether I fall within the moral domain or not? The idea that the notion of a person has practical significance becomes unfounded.

Eric Olson takes the Thinking Animal Problem to provide a positive argument in favour of identifying persons like you with the human animal sitting where you are sitting and denying that persons have psychological persistence conditions. On his biological approach you are fundamentally an animal, i.e. you are an animal at all times at which you exist since you are an animal now, and being a person is like being a teenager or a professor in the sense that they are properties one may have for part of one’s career. In opposition to many adherents of the psychological approach Olson denies the view that once you’re a person you’re always a person.

7. Doubts about Animalism

I find Olson’s view that you are a human animal with nonpsychological persistence conditions unsatisfactory for various reasons which I will briefly mention to justify moving on to consider some other views.

First it has been pointed out that there seems to be a Thinking Brain Problem or Thinking Body Problem facing Olson’s own view. He claims that there is one thinker sitting where you’re sitting thinking your thoughts. That being is you and is a human animal. However, it can’t be ruled out that removing the brain from your skull, or just one hemisphere, and place it in thought conducive circumstances, e.g. another body or a vat etc., will result in the continued existence of something that thinks. But then there seem to have been at least two thinkers, the animal and the brain or hemisphere or what have you. Also, one might claim that the animal dies with the cessation of organic life whereas the human body, a lump of flesh and bone not essentially internally organised the way an organism is, continues to exist. But why assume that that being didn’t think it was, say, a human animal falsely?

A second doubt I have about Olson’s Animalism is that it relies on the slogan ‘identity isn’t what matters’ in practical concern. With respect to prudential and moral considerations our concern doesn’t always trace the pattern of personal identity. This is the basis for Olson’s argument against arguments for the psychological approach of the (AFGPT) type. However, Olson doesn’t provide an independent argument for the truth of the slogan. However, I find that independent argument is needed. Here’s why: Parfit notoriously claimed that personal identity consists in unique psychological continuity with the right cause. If the relation takes a one-many form we don’t have identity, but we still have the relation that matters practically. However, the claim is not that identity can hold without the relation that matters practically. If there is identity then there must be what matters which is how we located what we take to matter in the first place. Having done so we realise that it may hold in a way that doesn’t constitute identity.

Olson needs to argue that identity can hold without what matters, since his notion of personal identity which takes it to consists in biological continuity, clearly needn’t involve the psychological relations that matter practically. Olson has given no independent support for his radical denial that identity matters in practical concern. Olson should be challenged to argue in support of the much stronger claim that it is never identity that matters. Parfit has presupposed that identity always matters, though what matters is not always identity. Hence I hesitate to accept Olson’s Animalism and find that we should consider further alternative ways of dealing with the Combination Problem.

Finally, Animalism allows that you may have a unique psychological continuer who is not you. This is like telling Brownson that he isn’t Brown, but Robinson thinking he is someone else. I find that to be highly implausible.

8. The Constitution View: One but not the same?

Having ruled out the answer that there are two (or more) material beings sitting where you are sitting, we might try to modify our view of the way in which you are claimed to be a material being such as a human animal. This is Lynne Rudder Baker’s strategy in her book Persons and Bodies: A Constitution View. Baker claims that you are constituted by the human animal sitting where you are sitting, and she makes the following claims about this constitution relation:

- If x constitutes y at t, then x and y are spatially coincident at t, but they’re not identical. Constitution is a contingent relation between individuals.

- If x constitutes y at t, then x and y have different persistence conditions.  

- As long as x constitutes y, x has no independent existence.  If x continues to exist after the demise of y, then x comes into its own, existing independently.  But while x constitutes y, “what the thing really is”—y, constituted by x—is determined by the identity of y.

There are many aspects of the Constitution View which are congenial to me. However, I am puzzled about the central claim that where a human animal comes to develop a first-personal perspective (or the capacity for one) it comes to constitute a person, a new material being, without itself ceasing to exist and without there being two distinct material beings, an animal and a person, occupying the same location. After all, the concept of a human animal is on Baker’s view a substance concept (or a primary kind as she calls it) which is to say that, if x is an animal at one time it is an animal at all times at which it exists. Her claim is that when a person comes into existence it is not just the case that some fundamental kind gets a new property. It makes an ontological difference. ‘The stock of things that exists increases.’ My basic puzzle is how the stock of things can increase in this case without an increase in the number of things that exist? How can there be an increase when the person comes into existence if there is still only one material being? And what becomes of the animal when a person comes into existence as constituted by that animal?

I don’t think Baker wants her claim to be interpreted as the suggestion that ‘though there are two we can count them as one for ordinary purposes.’ She should be taken to make a genuine ontological statement. Thus, she also writes: ‘if x constitutes y, then y has ontological priority in that there is a unified individual whose identity is that of y or determined by y. (…) ‘The identity of the constituting individual is submerged in the identity of what it constitutes.’ 

So what does it mean to say that the identity of a human animal is ‘submerged’ in the identity of the person it constitutes, or that the person has ‘ontological priority’ over the animal?  Let me try to spell out my puzzlement by considering a case like the one presented in connection with the Combination Problem. (In what follows I discuss in terms of different times. I suppose one can present a similar case with respect to different possible worlds).

(C1) At t1 you are constituted by human animal x 

(C2) At t1 there exists another human animal y 

(C3) At t1 we can meaningfully ask: is y identical to you?

(C4)At t2 you are constituted by human animal y

(C5) At t2 we can’t meaningfully ask is y identical to you?

The scenario can be generated by appropriate brain-state transfer from x to y. It seems to me that (C3) and (C5) entails a violation of the following principle:

(P) If there is a time at which we can ask meaningfully whether individual y is identical to individual a, then at any time at which a and y exist it must be meaningful to ask whether y is identical to a.

Here’s my claim: There is obviously an answer to whether you are identical to y at t1 and that answer is ‘No.’ We can at t1 truly state that you are numerically nonidentical to y. At a later time, however, y comes to constitute you. This is a contingent relation. However, it entails that for as long as y constitutes you it is related to you in such a way that it is neither numerically identical nor nonidentical to you. But then numerical non-identity is not such that once nonidentical always nonidentical. Neither is it necessary since there may be a world in which the human animal constituting you in this world and with which I am numerically nonidentical constitutes me and thus isn’t numerically nonidentical.

It may be objected that the negative answer to whether you are identical to  y at t1 is misleading. The question whether you are identical to y whenever it is asked doesn’t make sense unless we also answer a ‘derelativizing’ question such as ‘what kind of identity?’, or ‘at what time?’, or ‘in what possible world?’ It can’t be straightforwardly true or false whether you are   y or not. When we ask about identity and non-identity we should always relativize identity to either a kind (relative identity), a time (temporary identity), or a possible world (contingent identity). However these are not options available to someone who, like Baker, takes a standard Leibnizian notion of numerical identity to be compatible with and saved by the notion of constitution. And independently of such considerations it just seems obvious that if there’s a noncognitive living animal lying in a bed in Australia and you’re sitting in Scotland writing a paper, you and that animal are simply nonidentical entities whether or not later in time that animal realises a unique psychological continuer of yours.

Another consideration which I take to lead to the same conclusion:

At t1: Animals x and y exist without standing in any constitution relation and are not identical.

At t2: x constitutes person a and y exists without constituting anything.

At t3: x doesn’t constitute anything and y exists and doesn’t constitute anything.

It seems to me that at t1 and t3 we can sensibly ask whether x is identical to y? The answer is, ‘No.’ However, at t2 it is not clear whether x is identical to y since x doesn’t have independent existence, but has its identity submerged in that of a. What can sensibly be asked at t2 is ‘Is a constituted by x identical to y?’ Here the answer is ‘No.’ But on the constitution view it doesn’t make sense to ask whether x is identical to y. I am puzzled: How can it suddenly be the case that x is neither identical nor nonidentical to y?

One answer might be that x goes from being nonidentical to y at t1 underivatively to being nonidentical to y derivatively, where having a property derivatively is defined as having it due to standing in a constitution relation and having it underivatively is to have it independently of standing in any such relation. As a matter of fact, what I have pointed out is that Baker to give her view plausibility must apply the derivative /nonderivative distinction (or something similar to it) to the class of properties she takes to fall within the class of so-called ‘identity/constitution/existence properties’ (see note 16). However, as Baker is aware, the property of being identical goes badly with the derivative/nonderivative distinction. It doesn’t make much sense to claim that x = x due to x’s constitution relation to x since x = x is also true when x doesn’t stand in any constitution relations. But as far as I can see the only way to explain that x is nonidentical to y at t2 is by saying that x’s nonidentity to y is due to person a being nonidentical to y at that time. Since x at t2 doesn’t exist in its own right it can’t at t2 be nonidentical to y in its own right. However, if x’s having a property derivatively is to have it due to the constitution relation that x stands in, then nonidentity clearly can’t be had derivatively. This can be seen from the fact that at t1 and t3 x is nonidentical with y independently of standing in any constitution relations.

I think that Baker might be tempted to open up for applying an analogue to the derivative/nonderivative distinction to ‘identity/constitution/existence properties.’ After all she does so with respect to so-called hybrid properties (i.e. properties which either entail or are entailed by a conjunction of primary kind properties e.g. the property of being a human person) which also falls outside the scope of the derivative/nonderivative distinction as it is defined. I find the notion of a hybrid property hard to understand and doubt its coherence. However, a discussion of hybrid properties must be left out presently.

Baker’s Constitution View is I think the most elaborate attempt to reconcile materialism with a psychological approach to personal identity within a perdurantist or threedimensionalist framework, but the considerations I have presented I take to justify the conclusion that it is incoherent. I conclude that, contrary to Baker’s claim, if we want to make sense of her notion of constitution we must in some way revise the standard notion of numerical identity.

9. Concluding Remarks

What should we think of all this? It seems the considerations of this paper about the prospect of combining materialism about the nature of persons such as you and I with a psychological approach to our persistence conditions are rather bleak. I think there are two ways one might go from here. Either we can take the Parfit line and be reductionists about persons claiming that persons just are interrelated mental and physical events. This line involves the claim that identity isn’t what fundamentally matters in practical concerns.

Alternatively we can accept a fourdimensional metaphysical framework similar to Lewis or Hudson. On this view the relation which holds between person-stages of the same person must be psychologically continuous. On this view it can be maintained that personal identity fundamentally matters. Whether we should accept one or the other I shall leave open for now.

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