A logical argument for the unity of personhood

[PyramidHead]

Personhood is just whatever relation you think holds between you right now and you a minute ago that makes you the same person both times.

Do you think you are the same person as the one who made the dumb joke about being a hubcap a minute ago?

Are you the same person that went to sleep yesterday?
If you are cloned by a teleportation device that didnt destroy the original. What happens then with personhood?

Isnt "personhood" just an abstract property we use to relate to other people?

That's my point; if you are the same person who went to sleep last night on your pillow, you have no reason to maintain that you are a different person from me or any other conscious being. Your relationship to past versions of what you call yourself is no more special than your relationship to what you call other people.

 

[untermensche]

That's fine. For me they represent the end of the line of reasonable thought, especially the rejoining of severed tissues.

And right there is why you don't know shit, and will never know shit.

That's quite OK - If you are happy with your ignorance, then simply live in ignorance.

But PLEASE will you stop spamming threads here with your insistence that everyone else must remain as ignorant as you desire to be?

We get it. You think we shouldn't think about these things because you are incapable of understanding them. Please take it as read that we have anticipated and understood your objection, and are going to continue to ignore it.

You have presented a sound and reasonable argument for why you should not participate in this thread. You have NOT presented a sound or reasonable argument for the rest of us not to participate in this thread - no matter how much you want the two to be synonymous.

You are a piece of feces stuck to my shoe that I can't get rid of.

I laugh at your childish ignorance of the world.

Go ahead think about the consequences of things that most likely will never occur. Meaningless mental masturbation is your only talent.

 

[PyramidHead]

Are you unaware that organ transplants and limb reattachments are regular events in modern medicine? Or do you just not like thought experiments in general?

Neural tissue has problems other tissues don't.

They have been trying to get neural tissues to rejoin in a functional manner in spinal cord injuries for a while.

The work is not going anywhere.

Not that I doubt your expertise in medicine, but the thought experiment is just a hypothetical. Imagine, in other words, that the work DID go somewhere and they figured out how to solve the problem of neural tissues. What's preventing you from forming that counterfactual scenario in your mind, and seeing where it would lead?

 

[untermensche]

Neural tissue has problems other tissues don't.

They have been trying to get neural tissues to rejoin in a functional manner in spinal cord injuries for a while.

The work is not going anywhere.

Not that I doubt your expertise in medicine, but the thought experiment is just a hypothetical. Imagine, in other words, that the work DID go somewhere and they figured out how to solve the problem of neural tissues. What's preventing you from forming that counterfactual scenario in your mind, and seeing where it would lead?

It's not that I don't want to imagine the possibility.

It's that I can't just imagine the result.

I can't pretend I would know what happened if two halves were somehow rejoined. It may not be what we expect.

 

[PyramidHead]

Go ahead think about the consequences of things that most likely will never occur.

I will interject here only to say that you seem to be mistaken about the function of a thought experiment. We don't use thought experiments in philosophy in order to prepare ourselves for when they actually happen. Nobody believes that there will ever be anything like Mary's room, or a bunch of people tied to trolley tracks next to an obese man, or the Ship of Theseus being replaced piece by piece. These are just fictional examples that are crafted to include only the relevant factors under discussion.

 

[untermensche]

Go ahead think about the consequences of things that most likely will never occur.

I will interject here only to say that you seem to be mistaken about the function of a thought experiment. We don't use thought experiments in philosophy in order to prepare ourselves for when they actually happen. Nobody believes that there will ever be anything like Mary's room, or a bunch of people tied to trolley tracks next to an obese man, or the Ship of Theseus being replaced piece by piece. These are just fictional examples that are crafted to include only the relevant factors under discussion.

Simply coming up with a crazy scenario is not a thought experiment.

The Ship of Theseus experiment, or the others did not involve any unknowns.

Thought experiments cannot proceed past unknowns. Like what might happen if you could somehow rejoin two halves of a brain. We can't just assume we know the answer.

 

[PyramidHead]

I will interject here only to say that you seem to be mistaken about the function of a thought experiment. We don't use thought experiments in philosophy in order to prepare ourselves for when they actually happen. Nobody believes that there will ever be anything like Mary's room, or a bunch of people tied to trolley tracks next to an obese man, or the Ship of Theseus being replaced piece by piece. These are just fictional examples that are crafted to include only the relevant factors under discussion.

Simply coming up with a crazy scenario is not a thought experiment.

The Ship of Theseus experiment, or the others did not involve any unknowns.

Thought experiments cannot proceed past unknowns. Like what might happen if you could somehow rejoin two halves of a brain. We can't just assume we know the answer.

Probably not, but again... hypothetically, if it turned out that rejoining two halves of a brain that were previously in two separate bodies resulted in the owner of the rejoined brain behaving as if she remembered the experiences of both individual halves, what would be the implications of this observation? Would you be inclined to regard her as the same person as the person who previously only had the right half, as the person with only the left half, as both, or as neither?

 

[untermensche]

Just because a person has memories I see no need for special implications.

The idea of "personhood" is an interesting concept.

We all know the story of the prince turned into a frog.

We mentally maintain the "personhood" of the prince even when it is in the frog.

This is something we do.

So one person split into two, rejoined to one, is just one person with extra memories.

 

[PyramidHead]

Just because a person has memories I see no need for special implications.

The idea of "personhood" is an interesting concept.

We all know the story of the prince turned into a frog.

We mentally maintain the "personhood" of the prince even when it is in the frog.

This is something we do.

So one person split into two, rejoined to one, is just one person with extra memories.

I agree. But identity is transitive, no?

That means: if a =b and a = c, then b = c. If in the end, a (the owner of the rejoined brain) is the same person as b (the previous owner of his right half-brain) and c (the previous owner of his left half-brain), b and c must also be the same person.

Still with me?

 

[untermensche]

Just because a person has memories I see no need for special implications.

The idea of "personhood" is an interesting concept.

We all know the story of the prince turned into a frog.

We mentally maintain the "personhood" of the prince even when it is in the frog.

This is something we do.

So one person split into two, rejoined to one, is just one person with extra memories.

I agree. But identity is transitive, no?

That means: if a =b and a = c, then b = c. If in the end, a (the owner of the rejoined brain) is the same person as b (the previous owner of his right half-brain) and c (the previous owner of his left half-brain), b and c must also be the same person.

Still with me?

I don't agree with any of that.

We may start with person A. With a split we may have persons B & C. Then with a rejoining we may have person D. Person A, B & C gone forever.

We cannot say what and how memory may be effected by any of this. Memory is not some perfect recording. It is tied to "personhood".

 

[Rayschism]

Hmmm... memory?

Memories of the mammory?

 

[PyramidHead]

I agree. But identity is transitive, no?

That means: if a =b and a = c, then b = c. If in the end, a (the owner of the rejoined brain) is the same person as b (the previous owner of his right half-brain) and c (the previous owner of his left half-brain), b and c must also be the same person.

Still with me?

I don't agree with any of that.

We may start with person A. With a split we may have persons B & C. Then with a rejoining we may have person D. Person A, B & C gone forever.

We cannot say what and how memory may be effected by any of this. Memory is not some perfect recording. It is tied to "personhood".

Yes, that's one way to look at it. Under that interpretation, however, it seems odd that a person exists (D) who has just as much access to the physical and psychological "history" of A, B, and C as you have to the last hour of your life up until now, but she is not the same person as A, B, or C.

It would mean that your brain can remain alive, functional, and capable of generating the conscious experience of being you, but you could somehow be gone forever. I'm not saying you're definitely wrong, just that it goes against some of my intuitions about self-preservation and continuity.

Of course, the conclusion of my argument goes against other intuitions. In the end, one has to decide which intuitions are worth keeping.

I would maintain that there is no reason to suspect that someone with the same brain I had yesterday and adequate memories of the intervening experience is somehow a mysterious, new consciousness embodied in what used to be my brain, even if the intervening experience included splitting and rejoining my brain. As long as it wasn't destroyed or deprived of too much oxygen, it should still be the same brain I always had.

But the broader conclusion of this argument is that brains don't matter, because the same splitting and fusing could be imagined with entire brains, not parts of a single brain.

- - - Updated - - -

Hmmm... memory?

Memories of the mammory?

How old are you?

 

[Rayschism]

I don't agree with any of that.

We may start with person A. With a split we may have persons B & C. Then with a rejoining we may have person D. Person A, B & C gone forever.

We cannot say what and how memory may be effected by any of this. Memory is not some perfect recording. It is tied to "personhood".

Yes, that's one way to look at it. Under that interpretation, however, it seems odd that a person exists (D) who has just as much access to the physical and psychological "history" of A, B, and C as you have to the last hour of your life up until now, but she is not the same person as A, B, or C.

It would mean that your brain can remain alive, functional, and capable of generating the conscious experience of being you, but you could somehow be gone forever. I'm not saying you're definitely wrong, just that it goes against some of my intuitions about self-preservation and continuity.

Of course, the conclusion of my argument goes against other intuitions. In the end, one has to decide which intuitions are worth keeping.

I would maintain that there is no reason to suspect that someone with the same brain I had yesterday and adequate memories of the intervening experience is somehow a mysterious, new consciousness embodied in what used to be my brain, even if the intervening experience included splitting and rejoining my brain. As long as it wasn't destroyed or deprived of too much oxygen, it should still be the same brain I always had.

But the broader conclusion of this argument is that brains don't matter, because the same splitting and fusing could be imagined with entire brains, not parts of a single brain.

- - - Updated - - -

Hmmm... memory?

Memories of the mammory?

How old are you?

I am a sextillion years old.

 

[Speakpigeon]

On the method, you're making so many assumptions (premises), it's really very, very unlikely you'll ever get your conclusions right.

P1. If my brain were split in two and the halves were successfully implanted into two new bodies, each body would have its own independent stream of consciousness simultaneously, with no access to that of the other.

Seems reasonable to me.

P2. If the two halves were subsequently recombined into a whole and successfully implanted in a single body, this body would have a single stream of consciousness with full access to the memories of what both previous bodies experienced.

That's a very weak premise. It may well be that the person will have a split personality with lost access to the memories of the other half.

P3. Although each original half could only experience its own stream of consciousness while divided, the resulting unified brain would remember both streams of consciousness as if they were events from its own past.

That's really in doubt.

P4. Unlike the ordinary process of recalling past events, the experiences of each original half could not be ordered in time with respect to each other by the resulting unified brain; there is no answer to the question of which half was experienced "first" by the single stream of consciousness generated by the unified brain.

That's usually already true. We can sometimes tell the time of the memory because of its content. If I remember myself in a particular house or neighbourhood, it will have to be when I was aged less than nine. If I remember myself at university it will be when I was older, etc.

P5. Since the now-unified brain has unbroken psychological connections to the experiences of both halves during the split as well as its own experiences before the split, it is the same person as each half during the split and itself before the split.

We don't experience being the same person. We just experience the present moment and then we tend to believe our memories are our own, i.e. memories of the same person as we are now. If I remember when I was a kid, there are no clues as to whether it was the same person. I just assume it was. I just don't have any certainty and I don't think anybody does.

P6. During the split, each half of the brain was the same person as the other half, the same person as the brain prior to the split, and the same person as the recombined brain in the future, even if the recombination had not yet taken place or would never take place. (Transitive property of identity.)

You are overlooking the fact that personhood has a dual nature, like so many things. There's a subjective perspective on your own personhood and there's an objective perspective on the personhood of other people. The scenario of the split makes it possible for the same subjective-perspective person to have memories from two different objective-perspective persons. Confusing the two makes for bad logic.

You can choose the premises you like but so can other people. Yours are so seriously unrealistic as to make any conclusion uninteresting.

C1. It is possible to be the same person as someone who exists simultaneously and has different brain matter.

That's a meaningless statement. Subjectively, it seems obviously untrue because the two bodies won't be sharing the same subjective experience. Objectively, it also seems wrong. Objective personhood is the person as seen by other people and for other people, each body is a different person. If one commits a crime, only this one should be jailed.

C2. If all human brains were successfully merged together, the resulting unified brain would have access to all the memories of each connected brain in the same way that the unified single brain had access to the memories of each half during the split.

And the conclusion is just as unlikely as the premise is. Brains are living things. They grow. You can't expect to cut up a brain in two, then put the two halves together again and be able to retrieve the same brain. You may succeed in having an apparently functional brain but it won't be the same brain and it won't likely be a normal brain.

C3. This unified brain would have no way of sorting the individual stories from the connected brains relative to each other, as they occurred simultaneously before the brains were merged.

I can't remember al my memories all at once. I have to go through them one by one and I won't even go through more than a few of them. As Trump coud have said, the notion of personhood is very overrated. It's at the same time an operational tool for the individual organism to survive and a delusional construct about the real world, just like all our perceptions are. The sort sacralisation of personhood you are attempting here fundamentally misguided and deemed to failure. It can make good science-fiction stories and we need it to some extent to organise our social and emotional lives but we should not take it too seriously, and definitely not literally.

C4. Since the unified brain would have unbroken psychological access to each connected brain, it is really the same person as each of those brains.

The premise on which your conclusion is based it is very dubious so the conclusion is very dubious and uninteresting. It's pie in the sky.

C5. If the individual brains are all the same person as the unified brain, they are all the same person as each other, and would be the same person even if they had not been merged.

Very dubious and uninteresting.

C6. We are all actually the same person.

We can conceive of this idea but that doesn't make it less unlikely.

I anticipate objections between P5 and P6. It is unproblematic to say that a single brain with one stream of consciousness, remembering everything that happened to its brain, is a single person. This is what we say about ourselves and others all the time. We also accept that numerical identity is transitive and indivisible. That is, if a and b are identical to c, a is numerically identical to b (i.e. they are all just one actual thing). Further, if a, b, and c are all numerically identical at time t, they are numerically identical at times t-1 and t+1. In order to deny P6, one must assert one of the following things:

1) The person who exists after the brain is split and recombined is not the same person as the original halves of the brain, but it is the same person as the original brain before the split.
2) The person who exists after the brain is split and recombined is not even the same person as the original brain before the split.

Option 1 is harder to defend than 2, because it implies that numerically the same thing existed at time t (before the split) and time t+2 (after the recombination), but not at time t+1 (during the split). This is an exception to how we normally think about identity that needs its own justification. Option 2 commits one to the view that despite having direct psychological connection/access to all of your memories and experiences, you are not the same person as any time-slice of your brain during its existence. This conclusion is tantamount to denying that persons exist at all, and is not far from saying we are all the same person. In either case, the number of persons is not greater than 1, and it is false to say you are a different person from anyone else. However, taking option 2 necessitates abandoning the powerful intuition that you are a person, period. To reconcile option 2 with the conclusion of my argument, I will say this: to the extent that you are the same person as the person who started reading this sentence from where you are sitting, you are the same person as me and any other being with consciousness.

That's really just wishful thinking.
EB

 

[PyramidHead]

You are entirely correct about the lack of convincingness of my argument, but there is still some merit to its conclusion on other grounds, which you can investigate if you are interested. In other threads, I seem to remember that you have expressed receptivity to the idea that the 'subject of experience' behind all first-person sensation is identical in all subjects--that is, just a slate of subjectivity with no defining features, a backdrop upon which mental phenomena occur. Even if our sense of inwardness is illusory, there is still the illusory sense itself, and it is shared by all conscious beings to some extent. The thesis I was trying to defend claims that instead of every conscious organism having its own instantiation of this phenomenon, it's just one phenomenon. This conclusion follows from looking at how personhood is conventionally defined, and how persons are conventionally delineated, and seeing that the ordinary view rests on many shaky assumptions. It is basically a continuation of Derek Parfit's work, but while his end result was the elimination of personhood, this view preserves it.

 

[Speakpigeon]

You are entirely correct about the lack of convincingness of my argument, but there is still some merit to its conclusion on other grounds, which you can investigate if you are interested. In other threads, I seem to remember that you have expressed receptivity to the idea that the 'subject of experience' behind all first-person sensation is identical in all subjects--that is, just a slate of subjectivity with no defining features, a backdrop upon which mental phenomena occur. Even if our sense of inwardness is illusory, there is still the illusory sense itself, and it is shared by all conscious beings to some extent. The thesis I was trying to defend claims that instead of every conscious organism having its own instantiation of this phenomenon, it's just one phenomenon. This conclusion follows from looking at how personhood is conventionally defined, and how persons are conventionally delineated, and seeing that the ordinary view rests on many shaky assumptions. It is basically a continuation of Derek Parfit's work, but while his end result was the elimination of personhood, this view preserves it.

I guess the main problem with trying to keep the notion of personhood is our inability to explain consciousness in physical terms. Objective personhood can be built up as much as you like by just aggregating more entities and connecting them to each other. In a way, very large existing entities possess objective personhood, things like Google, McDonald, the city of London, Hong Kong territories, the FSB, the scientific community, the United States of America, the Catholic Church, etc, etc. etc. However, of subjective personhood, each of us only knows one instance, namely our own little person. You are trying to imagine how it could become larger but you are only able to specify the objective side of personhood, that is how bits of brains could be connected together. From the outside, the objective perspective, it might not be pretty but it could work. What I don't see in your specification here of personhood is how it could work subjectively. We can always speculate that big cities and large organisations somehow also possess unified subjectivity but that would be entirely speculative. For the same reason, I don't see any good reason to assume that the sort of aggregate humanity you are imagining could really possess unified subjectivity.

Seeing consciousness as a sort of featureless and ubiquitous property would not make the scenario you are imagining more plausible. Subjective personhood seems to require the kind of organic connectivity typical of the living brain and that seems of a very different nature from what big organisations can achieve. I may have an anthropomorphic bias but we can easily explain what big organisations do merely from the fact that they are all made of human beings rather than by speculating that they enjoy subjective personhood.
EB

 

[fromderinside]

For those you conflicted by whether unified consciousness ask yourself two related questions:

1. Why are there wars?

2. Why are there crazies?

 

[PyramidHead]

Seeing consciousness as a sort of featureless and ubiquitous property would not make the scenario you are imagining more plausible. Subjective personhood seems to require the kind of organic connectivity typical of the living brain and that seems of a very different nature from what big organisations can achieve. I may have an anthropomorphic bias but we can easily explain what big organisations do merely from the fact that they are all made of human beings rather than by speculating that they enjoy subjective personhood.
EB

The claim being made has nothing whatsoever to do with a large, over-arching unified consciousness that connects all people. That's totally different and, as you say, unsupported by evidence.

What is actually being argued by proponents of open individualism is simply this: to the extent that you remain the same person at different points in time, even though there is nothing unchanging that anchors your personal identity across them all, you are also the same person as everyone else at any given time; just as you can only experience one moment of your own life at a time, you can only experience being one person at a time. This deflates the counterargument that you are not capable of directly experiencing my life right now, because you are also incapable of directly experiencing your own life from five seconds ago. There is nothing metaphysically or ontologically relevant that differentiates the state of not being able to experience someone else's current life right now and not being able to experience your own life at times other than now. Therefore, if you maintain that you are the same person as you were yesterday despite the second inability, in just the same way you can maintain that you are the same person as everyone else despite the first inability.

All that this view requires is that we treat time and space as equivalent dimensions with respect to personal identity, which is probably the correct way to look at them according to physics anyway.

 

[fromderinside]

Wow. Using that reasoning my hamster has a conscious.

 

[Random Person]

You lost me at P1. and P2. A logical argument states premises that can be refuted. That is not the case here.