1 24.00: Personal Identity Week 2 November 5, 2010 Daniel Greco Questions About Personal Identity 1. What is the bundle theory of personal “identity”? Why is “identity” in scare quotes in the previous sentence? What is the ego theory of personal identity? Which (if either) do you find more attractive? How do the the two views relate to the views we discussed in last week’s section (which were also debated in the Perry dialogue) of memorial continuity vs. bodily continuity as criteria of personal identity? 2. Consider the following case of “splitting”: Riker steps into a teletransporter on Venus. There’s a malfunction, and two copies of Riker are created—one steps out of a teletransporter on Earth, and the other steps out of a teletransporter on Mars. Call the original Riker “Riker,” call the copy on earth “Earth-Riker,” and call the copy on Mars “Mars-Riker.” (a) Did Riker survive? Is Riker the same person as Earth-Riker? Isl Riker the same person as Mars-Riker? Is Earth-Riker the same Person as Mars Riker? Consider how different versions of the memory and body views we discussed last week might give different answers to these questions. (b) How should our answers to these questions depend on whether we accept the bundle theory or the ego theory? 3. Consider the following example of Mark Johnston’s (2010): Imagine, for example, a tribe of human animals, the Hibernators, who have an atypical brain chemistry that keeps them continuously awake for nine months of the year, during which they are enormously productive. Each of the Hibernators falls into a deep sleep for the winter months; upon awaking it takes a week or two for the fog of long sleep to fully dissipate. Each November, the Hibernators leave enormously detailed instructions concerning what is to be done after the next great awakening: construction projects to be taken up again, the beginning of the storage of food to be consumed at the very next awakening, and so an and so forth. When we look at these records we discover something remarkable. In their written instructions, the Hibernators of any given year address those who will wake up from the coming winter sleep as if they were numerically different persons, who nonetheless could be relied upon to have very similar memories and inclinations. As we would put it, the Hibernators do not realize that sleep, even three months of sleep, is an event that each one of them survives. They are really taken with the analogy between dreamless sleep and death; so taken, in fact, that they regard the analogy as pointing to a valid equation of the two states. © Princeton University Press. All rights reserved. This content is excluded from our CreativeCommons license. For more information, see http://ocw.mit.edu/fairuse.We might flesh out the story so that the Hibernators don’t have any special self-interested concern for the later versions of “themselves.” In planning for the future, a Hibernator might regard the creature that will wake up after three months of sleep as something like a third 1cousin once removed; they might try to ensure that things don’t go terribly for their post-awakening “selves,” but might care much less about what happens to those creatures than we care about what will happen to us in three months. (a) Are the Hibernators getting something wrong? Is there some fact that they are failing to appreciate? If so, what sort of fact is it that they’re missing—does your answer depend on whether you’re sympathetic to the ego or bundle theory? (b) If the Hibernators aren’t getting anything wrong, what does that tell us about personal identity? 2MIT OpenCourseWarehttp://ocw.mit.edu 24.00 Problems in Philosophy Fall 2010 For information about citing these materials or our Terms of Use, visit: