parts – We Love Philosophy

Arguing Over Nothing: A regular feature on the blog where we argue over something of little consequence, as if it were of major consequence. Arguing is philosophy’s raison d’être, and the beauty of an argument is often as much in its form as its content.

Today, we argue about the rough points of personal identity in Star Trek style teleportation cases. Given that the debate is essentially one about personal identity, the argument isn’t really over nothing; but the fact that teleportation is impossible makes the debate one that skirts around the edges of nothing.

Each philosopher is granted up to a 500-750 words to state his/her case as well as up to 250-500 words for rebuttal. The winner will be decided by a poll of the readers (or whoever happens to have admin privileges at the appropriate time).

Alec: I Am On Venus

So the standard teleportation scene in sci-fi goes something like this: You step into the teleportation chamber here on Earth, the technician presses a few buttons, a beam sweeps over you, and moments later you materialize in a teleportation chamber on Venus (a lovely vacation destination; bring your sunscreen).

Of course, sci-fi is not science, so it can gloss over the finer points of how this might work. Philosophers (bless them) parading as scientists have given us a couple of options regarding these finer points. (Scientists have stayed away from the issue because of it being “impossible” or some-such. Such negative nancys.)

Option 1: Each particle of you is converted to energy and actually beamed through space to be reconstituted into matter on Venus.

Option 2: Each particle of you is scanned, and the teleportation chamber on Venus pulls particles from a pile of carbon and constitutes them one by one to match the original you on Earth.

The first option is “cleaner”, in that the you on Venus is pretty incontrovertibly you. It’s all of the same particles, in the exact same configuration, after all. The messy part is in the details of how exactly you could survive being ripped apart into atoms and rebuilt. Imagine your brain being deconstructed, particle by particle. At some point your identity will be in question, as your brain will be half gone.

The second option is more interesting, and seems (to this non-scientist) to be the more likely scenario. Your physical structure is essentially computed (analyzed in the minutest detail), and rebuilt as a perfect replica. Once the replica is created, it will be atom-for-atom identical with you, and so how could it fail to have the exact same memories and thoughts as you? How could it, in other words, fail to be you?

The problem, of course, with this scenario, is that there are now two of you. In the standard case, the original you is supposed to be anesthetized and killed after the scanning/reconstructing process. The new you (with all of your memories, and the exact molecular structure of you), wakes up on Venus, with no concern about the dead original on Earth. What happens (so asks the thought experiment) if the Earth-side anesthetization goes wrong, and the original you wakes up on Earth before being killed? The technician sheepishly says: “Um, sorry, but you have been successfully replicated on Venus, and you weren’t supposed to wake up here on Earth. I’m gonna get fired if I don’t kill you right now.” Would you be okay with this? Clearly not. And this intuition fuels some philosophers to say that the original you is you, and the replicant you is not you.

But what’s good for the goose is good for the gander. What happens if the technician on Earth has an untimely heart attack, and dies before anesthetizing and killing the original you. Now the technician on Venus says to the replicant you: “Um, sorry, but the original you on Earth hasn’t been successfully killed. There can only be one you, and since you’ve only existed for a few seconds, we figure you should be killed now.” Would the replicant you be okay with this? Of course not. The replicant you has the same memories, feelings, and thoughts as you do, and would not want to be killed by a technician, no matter what the circumstances. So the same intuition that causes some philosophers to say that the original you has sacrosanct rights and is thus clearly the one you, lets us argue that the replicant you also has sacrosanct rights and is also clearly you.

What are we to say about this? Well, I think we have to bite the unpleasant bullet that there are actually two yous in this scenario, each with complete human rights and responsibilities. They almost immediately will diverge, and so the “problem” of personal identity of having two of the “same” person is not really a problem after the initial reconstitution on Venus. In fact, as soon as the replicant you has any new experience, he is effectively a different person. Which one is the real you? It’s an unanswerable (and therefore bogus) question, I think.

Jim’s Reply

Well, first of all, congrats to Alec for presupposing a big objection and then biting that bullet clean in two. I still disagree with him, but such is the nature of a friendship based on unquenchable hate.

Because Alec was kind enough to break his argument into two options, I will respond in kind. Option One is just as I would have described it, and though Alec takes the you-ness of the arrivee as incontrovertible, I controvert it just the same.

What are we to mean when we talk about a person and her identity, when questions of preservation or sameness arise? I tried to address the difficulties of this question over the past few weeks, and hopefully no one solution was seen as much better than any other (I strive for objectivity as much as possible). Let’s see what is going on here.

If you are just your parts, then option one results in you arriving at the destination, and Alec is right. Your parts are deconstituted at pod 1, shot through space in some sort of stream (the mechanics here do not matter), and are reconstituted at pod 2. However, I doubt that anybody else, Alec included, thinks of a person as just the collection of her parts. Should a serial killer dismember an individual and place all those body pieces in a bag, is that person in the bag? Surely not — who among us would say that was the person we once knew instead of saying that is what is left of that person? Were we to sharpen a pencil until all that was left was a pile of wood shavings, graphite, and an eraser, no one would point to that collection and label it as a pencil. Instead, we would all correctly say, that once was part of a pencil. I mention both a person and pencil to show that I am not going to argue for some sort of ineffable soul as the missing piece.

I think it has to be the parts and how those parts are put together, how they function, that makes the person or the object what it is. What does this say for the ‘stream’ of parts as they travel from one place to the other? You are, then you are not, then you are again. But what are we to say of you when you are not? Are you dead, only to return at a later time and different place? Are you merely gone? But to where? And how did you get there?

I am going to guess that Alec is against such a conception, once he thinks about it. Perhaps he will just bite the bullet and say that the stream is you, recognizable or not. Okay. What if we put a reflector dish in front of the receiver at pod 2 so that instead of being put together, you are bounced off into deep space, never to be caught in another receiver? Are you still existing? Do you cease to exist only when the potential for reincorporation ceases to exist? That then puts personal identity into terms of potentiality, of what ifs, of what you would be in the right circumstances. I am what I am because of what I am likely to be? But what an odd conception that seems.

As for the second option, I wholeheartedly agree with Alec. The person at the other end, the one who steps from the transporter, is not you, though it looks as much like you as you ever have and has the same thoughts and desires as you ever have had. It is not you though. You are who you are because of what you do (function) and why you do it (mental states) and what makes that possible (physical states). Those three together, in just the way they are, is what gives rise to you. The movie clone that steps out of the destination pod can only be identical in two of those three requirements (function and, possibly, mental states). Now I just have to hope that Alec does not press me on what proportions of the three above ingredients are necessary for identity to be preserved.

Alec’s Rebuttal

That’s a great way to think of the first scenario: “You are, then you are not, then you are again. But what are we to say of you when you are not? Are you dead, only to return at a later time and different place? Are you merely gone?” That observation definitely makes dubious my belief that the you on Venus is the you from Earth. I should’ve picked up on this from my own quote: “The messy part is in the details of how exactly you could survive being ripped apart into atoms and rebuilt. Imagine your brain being deconstructed, particle by particle. At some point your identity will be in question, as your brain will be half gone.” At some intermediate point, indeed your identity will in fact be null and void.

So now the question is whether or not a discontinuity in your identity is enough to call that identity into question. Well, if we take consciousness as central to the question of one’s identity, then, no, a discontinuity is not enough to call that identity into question. A dreamless sleep; an period of unconscious drunkenness; going under general anesthesia for an operation;… all of these put a big discontinuity in our conscious lives, and we still think we’re the same people after such events. But if you take bodily intactness and continuity as the key element in personal identity, then the discontinuity that your body goes through in the first scenario is indeed a big problem. The atoms all scrambled and shooting through space obviously don’t keep your physico-functional form — we can’t say that your particles flying through space are a person, any more than we can say that our pile of pencil parts is a pencil.

Jim wrote: “I think it has to be the parts and how those parts are put together, how they function, that makes the person or the object what it is.” Yes, indeed. The pile of pencil parts is not a pencil, because being a pencil is more than just the sum of its parts — it’s also the functional configuration of those parts. But if you took the pencil parts and were able to thwart the laws of thermodynamics and put all of those parts back together in the exact same configuration as when it was a pencil, then don’t you have the same pencil again? Well, then if you put those human atoms all back together again on Venus, in the exact configuration they were in before, then don’t you have the same person again, on Venus?

In fact, that’s really what this debate boils down to, metaphysically speaking. If you have a thing, and duplicate every last atom of that thing, in terms of function and construction, then don’t you have two of that exact thing? Jim thinks not; I think so. We’ll debate this more closely in a future post on the possibility of making diamonds out of Cheetos. (Seriously.)

When last we left this perplexing topic, many of you were trying to get me arrested for a crime another I committed. (I say “many of you” even though only my mom and my lawyer were trying to do that, but my circle of friends has scant points about it, so ‘many’ it was.) When we are looking at memories as the signpost of identity-pointing, there are detours aplenty. Today, we are going to move on to the third of the potential candidates for identity fixing: the physical body.

Are You Your Body?

The pros and cons of the body as a candidate for personal identity here are pretty intuitive, and much of them we have seen earlier (with memories), if in slightly different form. The body is easily recognizable, and, in fact, is how we identify others. Slight changes, such as haircuts or tanning, seem to do little to distort or erase the recognizable features. However, which features matter the most? How many of them are necessary to maintain if one’s identity is to remain constant? Suppose you gain or lose three hundred pounds, you may well feel and be unrecognizable to both yourself and others. Are you a different person?Many soldiers are returning from Iraq and Afghanistan with missing limbs; are they different people? Both examples will result in the individual’s feeling different, but is that enough for identity to change as well? Think of the liquor store example from my previous post. How would that apply here?

Suppose that I rob the liquor store, but instead of getting hit by a car I instead cut off one of my arms.

Losing an arm

Is the the one-armed man the guilty person (I know Harrison Ford’s answer)?

What if I gain a lot of weight during the six weeks the police look for the robbing murderer?

Getting Fat

I doubt there is much controversy to either of these scenarios, and almost every one of you is going to think that identity has remained constant, that the same person is still there or here or whatever, even if that same person is not exactly the same (what’s the difference?, you might wonder, and good for you, you wondering person; the topic of identity when not dealing with people is going to be dealt with soon).

Remember when we talked about the Ship of Theseus, and I suggested that there are some who suggest that every possible change results in new identity. Such an individual, if she is consistent, would have to say that I am not the person who robbed the liquor store because I cut my fingernails or because I removed some hair. Such a person, though, is not really a person in the traditional sense of the word ‘person’, but is more of a collection of experiences that are joined together. Such a person cannot recall her first date, as all her recollections belong to someone else, just as such a person cannot look forward to a happier time in her life, as it will not be she that is enjoying that time, only someone who looks and thinks much as she does.

Few of you think like that, though. But why? If you are not in the memory camp and the physical features have changed beyond recognition, why is a person still the same even after extensive physical changes? What’s that? Sorry, the sound on my computer is muted — what are you saying at your screen as though Skype were on and our conversation was being passively monitored by virtuous government agencies? Ah, I see. Thoughts! The thoughts have not changed. Good! It’s almost as though you knew where I wanted this post to go. Thanks!

Thoughts and Brains

Of course, by ‘thoughts’ what your philosophically ignorant train of thinking was suggesting was the brain. What most members of the physical camp believe to be the defining feature of identity anchoring is the brain. So long as you have the same brain, you are the same person.

Another way to get to the brain is by elimination. Which parts of the body matter? For the body, that is pretty simple: beards, arms, legs, livers, ears, moles, etc., are all pretty superfluous. The part that matters is the brain. How much of the body matters? Really, again, almost all of the body is superfluous except the brain. What if the brain is damaged and the thoughts no more work good? Well, that is not the same brain then, is it? As far as which parts matter and how much of those parts matter, what am I, a brain scientist? (Yes. Yes, I am. Not in the United States, of course; regulations and all that have proven quite the obstacle to my life goals).

The solution to those worries is normally dealt with by a kind of common sense functionalism. Most of us don’t know Broca’s area from the pubic bone, but if you cannot remember anything from last night back, your brain… it don’t work too good. So the parts and amounts that matter for personal identity are the ones, whichever they are (and brain scientists know which those are), that affect the functioning of the brain.

Simple enough then. You are your functioning brain, and wherever it goes, so go you. Right? Right. Right? Well, dammit.

Swapping Brains

Let’s swap brains, then, you and I, and see where we go. Who wakes up in a svelte killing machine of evolutionary perfection and who wakes up in body aimed at child predation? No, no. There are no trick questions on this site. You will wake up, most of you think, in a body not originally yours. If the swap is permanent, maybe your personality will change based on how people around you treat you (either with sexual fearsomeness or with fear of your sexual perversity), but you are still basically the same person. You are your brain.

Note that this is different from those mind swap movies that are made every other week or so. In those instances, it is, or seems to be, the memories that are swapped and not the brains. A brain-based identity theorist watches those movies and laughs (partly at their sheer delightful hilarity) because the only change is that the individuals involved wrongly believe themselves to be someone else. How could they be, though, since their brains are still where they have always been?

There is really no way to confound anyone’s intuitions about the brain as it relates to identity, is there? Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha! Sorry, sorry — whoo, man. You really had there for a minute. Alright, let’s get to the confounding.

Suppose a man, let’s call him Gary, was born with half a brain. This happens, you know. Gary can still function and get about, but he only has half a brain. Maybe he cannot recall as much stuff as you can, maybe his motor skills are shaky in places, but he is a person and his name is Gary. Everyone okay with this?

Now let’s suppose that another person, Harry, has a regular, whole brain. But, egads! Harry is hit by a crazed Canadian driver and the resulting life-saving operation leaves him with half a brain. Now, this is not how it would work, but let’s suppose he still has around half his memories and the like. Is anyone here, aside from the identity-extremists, going to suggest that Harry is no longer Harry? Harry is still Harry even if only half of his brain is there since Harry can still function, to some degree, to some recognizable degree, as Harry used to.

Alright, and if we were to swap Harry’s half brain and Gary’s half brain, I suspect that you are going to think they, the people, go whither their brains do. Fine, fine. And if there was a third person, Terry, who lost his brain altogether, where is Terry? Gone. Right.

Brain swaps

What about this, though (and this is due to philosopher Derek Parfit): let’s take Gary’s half and Harry’s half and put them together into Terry’s head. Who is that? It has half of each person’s brain (well, I guess, it has all of their available brain, so whatever) and, so, we are suggesting here, it has half of each person’s memories, is it both Gary and Harry? If not, why not?

If Harry with a brain in his head was still Harry and not dead, then Harry’s half with Gary’s half should make them both be (please try not to laugh) who they once were. Can the one body be two persons? What if both Harry and Gary had had whole brains that we split, combining one half from each in two separate bodies? Can two bodies then be four persons? Oh, philosophy, what have you done to our so carefully coddled beliefs about all that is personally identical in the world?

Next Time…

Next time: clones! And light sabers! And sex!!! But mostly, and only, just clones.