This is a postscript to some previous discussions on death, human identity and 'the phantom self'.
These issues are quite maddening because one feels they should be simple. But (certainly as philosophers like Derek Parfit present them) they don't seem so.
I have given my (provisional) views on all this, and one of my conclusions is that Parfit's suggestion that day-to-day survival is not what it seems, being virtually equivalent to dying and having an exact copy live on, is just wrong.
Sure, the notions of the self and identity are problematic, but our struggle for (bodily) survival is at the heart of things, surely. We know what it is to go into an unconscious state and subsequently wake up. And we can imagine – not waking up! (Foresee our own actual death, in other words.)
However, having had various private discussions on this matter, I recognize that some people see it differently from me and would be happy enough to have their bodies destroyed so long as an exact copy survived.
"But look at it from your point of view," I would say. "You go into the (transporter) machine, get scanned, lose consciousness, and that would be that. You wouldn't 'wake up' as the copy (or one of the copies if there were several). You wouldn't wake up at all. Ever. Whereas, of course, for other people 'you' would still be there. Your wife would not have lost her husband, etc.. But you would have lost your wife – and everything else."
"But this you you talk about, what is it? You speak as if it's a soul or an essence..."
Which I of course deny. But I see that my interlocutor just doesn't get what I am saying, and I begin to wonder if I am making sense.
People see these matters very differently, and I suspect that one of my interlocutors may have given an explanation of sorts when he said, "Some people just have a stronger sense of self than others."
Those with a stronger sense of self, then, would be less likely to identify that self with any copy, however exact.
You could also plausibly see a strong sense of self as being associated with a strong survival instinct (and/or egoism), and a weaker sense of self with a less-strong survival instinct. But the crucial question is: how does this translate into truth claims?
It could be that a weaker sense of self tends to obscure – or blur – the simple (and tragic) truth about death. Then again, perhaps a strong sense of self and survival instinct leads one to underestimate the equivocal and tenuous nature of the self.
The human self is a complex – and indeed tenuous – phenomenon, based as it is on cultural and social as well as biological factors. But tying its fate to the fate of the body does not entail identifying it exclusively with the body in any simple way. For the self depends on the body, even if it also depends on other things. And when the body fails, it fails.
A couple of final comments of a more general nature.
It seems clear that a straightforward scientific approach doesn't seem to work on these problems of death and identity just as it fails to work on other typical philosophical problems – like free will. Could this have something to do with self-reference?
The major paradoxes of logic are self-referential, and the problems being discussed here (and the free will problem also) have a self-referential element.
And though self-reference in logic doesn't relate to a human self but just to concepts turning back on themselves (like a set being a member of itself), there does seem to be a parallel that may help to explain the intractability of these sorts of questions.
The problems (or limitations) may, in other words, be logical as well as psychological (and so deeper).
Science aspires to an objective, third-person point of view or 'view from nowhere'. It is not undermined (though perhaps dogged at a fundamental level) by those self-referential logical paradoxes. And it can readily explain (albeit from a general, objective point of view) how first-person perspectives arise in nature – and much about them.
The first-person point of view is fine, in fact – until it starts to reflect on its own nature and make (science-like) claims about itself.
Showing posts with label personal identity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label personal identity. Show all posts
Sunday, February 23, 2014
Monday, December 23, 2013
The phantom self
Set out below is the core section of Gordon Cornwall's analysis of the 'phantom self' (taken from the post to which I provided a link in my previous post on this site).
But first, my brief critique.
I do go along with Cornwall (and with Derek Parfit) to the extent that they deny the existence of any substantive self. What exists are bodies which are, at a basic level, conscious of their existence as (mortal) bodies and, at a more complex (and problematic) level, subject to the illusion of a (potentially independent) immaterial self.
Planning and thinking about the future need not involve these problematic beliefs in any essential way, it seems to me. And imagining possible threats to one's well-being (and the well-being of loved ones) – which of course lies at the basis of intelligent behavior and planning – needn't lead to neurosis or anything like it.
It is true, however, that our awareness of our own mortality does, at a fundamental level, cast a long shadow and put a dampener on joy and real constraints on human happiness.
Parfit's statement (cited by Cornwall) that "ordinary survival is about as bad as being destroyed and having a replica" may be playful. But it seems to me only to make sense if you deny the existence not only of a substantive self but also of the sense of a specific self which a body generates as it 'survives' from minute to minute and from day to day.
This specific-body-generated first-person point of view is what we are, and we would prefer (under most circumstances) that it continue. I don't see how having a surviving 'copy' would allow that to happen.
Finally, Cornwall seems to misunderstand the distinction between the public, objective stance of science and the first-person perspective – which encompasses all of what he calls 'practice' as well as our subjective understanding (even when the latter is informed by science).
I just don't see any serious problems with a straightforward physicalism, at least as it pertains to the scientific understanding of the relationship between the body and the sense of self.
Cornwall writes:
"Belief in the special, separate unity of the self comes naturally to humans. It is the result of a trick of natural selection. Having a self-model is an adaptive feature of complex animals that are capable of moving around. The self-models of such animals are tightly coupled to their motivational systems, which include their emotional systems. The appearance of an immediate threat to self triggers a strong emotional response in most animals, activating the amygdala and launching a flood of psychosomatic and behavioural responses which tend to help them survive the crisis.
Humans are unlike most other animals in that, with our highly developed prefrontal cortices, we are capable of imagining and making detailed plans for the future. As part of imagining the future, we imagine ourselves in the future. Visualizing a threat to oneself in the future triggers an emotional, motivational response similar to that which would occur if the threat were actually happening on the present scene. The response is enabled by strong projections from the prefrontal cortex to the amygdala and associated limbic regions of the brain. The ability to label an imagined entity as ‘self,’ and have it trigger this kind of emotional response, is an adaptation that, perhaps more than any other, propelled our species into our present position of earthly dominance. Unfortunately, this adaptation [...] came at a considerable cost in unnecessary suffering. It is an effective design, but not a very good one. It is far from optimal, and certainly not elegant.
One way to view this idea is as another outgrowth of the scientific physicalism that has illuminated so much else. Looking at what we have learned in the past few hundred years, it is hard not to be impressed by scientific physicalism as the source of our most far-reaching and productive changes in outlook. Out of it came the demise of geocentrism. When the direction 'down' was displaced as a fundamental orientation of the universe, so our parochial planet was displaced as its centre. Ceding centre stage is always salutary; it resulted in a widening of horizons, a deeper engagement with extraterrestrial reality.
Scientific physicalism was also Darwin’s mindset. We no longer see ourselves as the pinnacle of creation, but as blood relatives of all other species on this planet, an extended family of creative solutions to the problem of life. They reflect us in countless ways, and we will learn from them for a long time to come. Understanding natural selection, we come to know that we are not the product of a perfect design process. We are beginning to see opportunities to improve on our own nature.
The productivity of scientific physicalism stems from its ontological parsimony. Science does not assume the existence of entities that are not needed to explain observations. Physicalists saw the opportunity to dispense with a fixed framework of space-time in which all objects had a position and velocity. There is no such framework; hence the insights of relativity. Physicalists do not need to assume the existence of God, either. What most people don’t quite realize yet is that the selves they imagine themselves to be can also be dropped from the scientific ontology, with a resulting gain, not loss, in its explanatory power. If you simply look at what is, then Parfit’s famous statement that "[o]rdinary survival is about as bad as being destroyed and having a replica" gains the presumption of truth, for there is no evidence for the existence of anything so mysterious as its negation implies. I should point out that Parfit’s characterization of ordinary survival as ‘bad’ is playful; this insight into what survival amounts to is all to the good. To embrace it is to escape the glass tunnel and engage with life on a broader scale and a longer time dimension, one that extends long after one’s biological death.
One more thing. My approach to this subject has been, and remains, one of intellectual discovery. I’ve always been more interested in learning the truth than in changing myself. Advocates of ‘spiritual practice’ sometimes tell me I’m doomed to failure; the truth cannot be grasped intellectually. Respectfully, I think the jury is out on that. Western philosophers in the analytical tradition have justly been criticized for mistaking their own failures of imagination for metaphysical necessity. So, too, past failures to intellectually grasp religious insights into ‘no-self’ should not be taken as proof that all such attempts in future will also fail. Scientific progress has achieved much, and will achieve much more. I don’t know of any convincing argument that science cannot leap this hurdle."
But first, my brief critique.
I do go along with Cornwall (and with Derek Parfit) to the extent that they deny the existence of any substantive self. What exists are bodies which are, at a basic level, conscious of their existence as (mortal) bodies and, at a more complex (and problematic) level, subject to the illusion of a (potentially independent) immaterial self.
Planning and thinking about the future need not involve these problematic beliefs in any essential way, it seems to me. And imagining possible threats to one's well-being (and the well-being of loved ones) – which of course lies at the basis of intelligent behavior and planning – needn't lead to neurosis or anything like it.
It is true, however, that our awareness of our own mortality does, at a fundamental level, cast a long shadow and put a dampener on joy and real constraints on human happiness.
Parfit's statement (cited by Cornwall) that "ordinary survival is about as bad as being destroyed and having a replica" may be playful. But it seems to me only to make sense if you deny the existence not only of a substantive self but also of the sense of a specific self which a body generates as it 'survives' from minute to minute and from day to day.
This specific-body-generated first-person point of view is what we are, and we would prefer (under most circumstances) that it continue. I don't see how having a surviving 'copy' would allow that to happen.
Finally, Cornwall seems to misunderstand the distinction between the public, objective stance of science and the first-person perspective – which encompasses all of what he calls 'practice' as well as our subjective understanding (even when the latter is informed by science).
I just don't see any serious problems with a straightforward physicalism, at least as it pertains to the scientific understanding of the relationship between the body and the sense of self.
Cornwall writes:
"Belief in the special, separate unity of the self comes naturally to humans. It is the result of a trick of natural selection. Having a self-model is an adaptive feature of complex animals that are capable of moving around. The self-models of such animals are tightly coupled to their motivational systems, which include their emotional systems. The appearance of an immediate threat to self triggers a strong emotional response in most animals, activating the amygdala and launching a flood of psychosomatic and behavioural responses which tend to help them survive the crisis.
Humans are unlike most other animals in that, with our highly developed prefrontal cortices, we are capable of imagining and making detailed plans for the future. As part of imagining the future, we imagine ourselves in the future. Visualizing a threat to oneself in the future triggers an emotional, motivational response similar to that which would occur if the threat were actually happening on the present scene. The response is enabled by strong projections from the prefrontal cortex to the amygdala and associated limbic regions of the brain. The ability to label an imagined entity as ‘self,’ and have it trigger this kind of emotional response, is an adaptation that, perhaps more than any other, propelled our species into our present position of earthly dominance. Unfortunately, this adaptation [...] came at a considerable cost in unnecessary suffering. It is an effective design, but not a very good one. It is far from optimal, and certainly not elegant.
One way to view this idea is as another outgrowth of the scientific physicalism that has illuminated so much else. Looking at what we have learned in the past few hundred years, it is hard not to be impressed by scientific physicalism as the source of our most far-reaching and productive changes in outlook. Out of it came the demise of geocentrism. When the direction 'down' was displaced as a fundamental orientation of the universe, so our parochial planet was displaced as its centre. Ceding centre stage is always salutary; it resulted in a widening of horizons, a deeper engagement with extraterrestrial reality.
Scientific physicalism was also Darwin’s mindset. We no longer see ourselves as the pinnacle of creation, but as blood relatives of all other species on this planet, an extended family of creative solutions to the problem of life. They reflect us in countless ways, and we will learn from them for a long time to come. Understanding natural selection, we come to know that we are not the product of a perfect design process. We are beginning to see opportunities to improve on our own nature.
The productivity of scientific physicalism stems from its ontological parsimony. Science does not assume the existence of entities that are not needed to explain observations. Physicalists saw the opportunity to dispense with a fixed framework of space-time in which all objects had a position and velocity. There is no such framework; hence the insights of relativity. Physicalists do not need to assume the existence of God, either. What most people don’t quite realize yet is that the selves they imagine themselves to be can also be dropped from the scientific ontology, with a resulting gain, not loss, in its explanatory power. If you simply look at what is, then Parfit’s famous statement that "[o]rdinary survival is about as bad as being destroyed and having a replica" gains the presumption of truth, for there is no evidence for the existence of anything so mysterious as its negation implies. I should point out that Parfit’s characterization of ordinary survival as ‘bad’ is playful; this insight into what survival amounts to is all to the good. To embrace it is to escape the glass tunnel and engage with life on a broader scale and a longer time dimension, one that extends long after one’s biological death.
One more thing. My approach to this subject has been, and remains, one of intellectual discovery. I’ve always been more interested in learning the truth than in changing myself. Advocates of ‘spiritual practice’ sometimes tell me I’m doomed to failure; the truth cannot be grasped intellectually. Respectfully, I think the jury is out on that. Western philosophers in the analytical tradition have justly been criticized for mistaking their own failures of imagination for metaphysical necessity. So, too, past failures to intellectually grasp religious insights into ‘no-self’ should not be taken as proof that all such attempts in future will also fail. Scientific progress has achieved much, and will achieve much more. I don’t know of any convincing argument that science cannot leap this hurdle."
Thursday, December 12, 2013
The glass tunnel
Adrian McKinty is to blame. He started a discussion on Derek Parfit's perennially frustrating ideas on personal identity and death. You will see that I reiterated my previously-stated views* (which are similar to Adrian's own) in the course of an exchange on the comment thread.
And now I have stumbled across Gordon Cornwall's sophisticated analysis which defends Parfit's view and so implicitly challenges mine.
My intention, then, is to revisit the very important questions that lie behind these discussions, initially by reading and thinking about what Gordon Cornwall has to say. I can't reject it just because it has a mystical or religious feel which I don't like and which makes me suspicious (just as Parfit's approach does).
But first let me make a few general comments on my attitude to Derek Parfit as well as trying to set out the emotional context of my thinking on these matters.
When I first encountered Parfit's 1984 book, Reasons and Persons, I remember concluding that his view seemed inconsistent with planning and caring about one's future, with prudence basically. But Parfit himself seems to have made it into his eighth decade without any trouble – and (if his claims are to be believed) with less stress than would have been encountered had he retained his earlier, more conventional view of human identity.
My main concern, however, is not to decide which view is more conducive to longevity or quality of life, but rather to figure out which view gives the truer picture of our individual selves.
Parfit experienced his change of viewpoint on personal identity from a conventional view to one which did not privilege the future over the past – and which downplayed the centrality and perhaps even the reality of his very existence as a self – as liberating.
Previously, he had, as he put it,
"... seemed imprisoned in myself. My life seemed like a glass tunnel, through which I was moving faster every year, and at the end of which there was darkness. When I changed my view, the walls of the glass tunnel disappeared. I now live in the open air. There is still a difference between my life and the lives of other people. But the difference is less. Other people are closer. I am less concerned about the rest of my own life, and more concerned about the lives of others." [Reasons and Persons, p. 281]
This talk about caring for others (especially from a son of medical missionaries) makes me wary. Is Parfit merely adopting (the broad outlines of) an essentially religious outlook and rationalizing it in philosophical terms?
But before turning (in a subsequent post) to examine alternative views more closely, let me set out briefly the broad outlines and emotional drivers of my current position.
My view could be seen to be based on a narrower view than Parfit's, and aspires to an almost animal-like simplicity. ('Almost' because animals don't worry about the future – or foresee their own inevitable deaths.)
Though I doubt that my self has any substantive reality (and to this extent I may have more in common with Parfit than I am assuming here), I know that whatever reality it has is entirely dependent on the continuing existence and proper functioning of this body. Oversimplifying: I am my body.
The tragedy is, of course, that this body, like all bodies, will fail in the end. This is just how things are. Life is tragic (and comic and pathetic), and not at all bathed in sweetness and light as some religiously-inclined people are inclined to see it. From my perspective, at any rate, it seems more honorable – and more honest – to interpret life in pessimistic and uncompromising terms.
This need not entail an entirely non-religious outlook (think of Miguel de Unamuno, for example), though my approach is non-religious.
An anecdote might help explain some of my values and attitudes. Some years ago my mother had very bad pneumonia and spent a number of truly terrible weeks in an intensive care unit: close to death, hooked up to a daunting array of machines and unable to speak (because of a tracheotomy). The family was called in for a meeting with the senior doctors and nurses: they were clearly expecting her to die.
In the ICU, there was a 1:1 ratio of nurses to patients, each nurse on duty assigned to one patient only, and we visiting family members got to know some of the nurses quite well. I don't remember much of what was talked about, but I clearly remember one of them commenting that she preferred dealing with (and liked) patients who fought against death. And my mother decidedly was (and still is) such a fighter.
On more than one occasion when I came to sit by her bed when she was at her lowest ebb and hooked up to all those tubes and machines she turned and appeared to attempt to climb over the bed rails towards me. When I first witnessed this, it took a few moments to realize what she was trying to do. It was at once grotesque and sublime – and extremely moving.
I don't want to make too much of this and suggest that those who "rage against the dying of the light" are right and those who opt for more dignified options are wrong. And I fully realize that of course a nurse – especially one specializing in critical care – is going to prefer patients who don't die on her.
But speaking personally, though I admire those who decide to end their own lives when the signs are that those lives have reached a certain level of completeness, I am rather less keen on going (when the time approaches) with dignity and rather more keen on hanging around for as long as possible.
Now, having aired my general thoughts and feelings on the matter, I will try to put them out of my mind and examine what Gordon Cornwall has to say (see link above) with an open mind.
* See, for example, this post.
And now I have stumbled across Gordon Cornwall's sophisticated analysis which defends Parfit's view and so implicitly challenges mine.
My intention, then, is to revisit the very important questions that lie behind these discussions, initially by reading and thinking about what Gordon Cornwall has to say. I can't reject it just because it has a mystical or religious feel which I don't like and which makes me suspicious (just as Parfit's approach does).
But first let me make a few general comments on my attitude to Derek Parfit as well as trying to set out the emotional context of my thinking on these matters.
When I first encountered Parfit's 1984 book, Reasons and Persons, I remember concluding that his view seemed inconsistent with planning and caring about one's future, with prudence basically. But Parfit himself seems to have made it into his eighth decade without any trouble – and (if his claims are to be believed) with less stress than would have been encountered had he retained his earlier, more conventional view of human identity.
My main concern, however, is not to decide which view is more conducive to longevity or quality of life, but rather to figure out which view gives the truer picture of our individual selves.
Parfit experienced his change of viewpoint on personal identity from a conventional view to one which did not privilege the future over the past – and which downplayed the centrality and perhaps even the reality of his very existence as a self – as liberating.
Previously, he had, as he put it,
"... seemed imprisoned in myself. My life seemed like a glass tunnel, through which I was moving faster every year, and at the end of which there was darkness. When I changed my view, the walls of the glass tunnel disappeared. I now live in the open air. There is still a difference between my life and the lives of other people. But the difference is less. Other people are closer. I am less concerned about the rest of my own life, and more concerned about the lives of others." [Reasons and Persons, p. 281]
This talk about caring for others (especially from a son of medical missionaries) makes me wary. Is Parfit merely adopting (the broad outlines of) an essentially religious outlook and rationalizing it in philosophical terms?
But before turning (in a subsequent post) to examine alternative views more closely, let me set out briefly the broad outlines and emotional drivers of my current position.
My view could be seen to be based on a narrower view than Parfit's, and aspires to an almost animal-like simplicity. ('Almost' because animals don't worry about the future – or foresee their own inevitable deaths.)
Though I doubt that my self has any substantive reality (and to this extent I may have more in common with Parfit than I am assuming here), I know that whatever reality it has is entirely dependent on the continuing existence and proper functioning of this body. Oversimplifying: I am my body.
The tragedy is, of course, that this body, like all bodies, will fail in the end. This is just how things are. Life is tragic (and comic and pathetic), and not at all bathed in sweetness and light as some religiously-inclined people are inclined to see it. From my perspective, at any rate, it seems more honorable – and more honest – to interpret life in pessimistic and uncompromising terms.
This need not entail an entirely non-religious outlook (think of Miguel de Unamuno, for example), though my approach is non-religious.
An anecdote might help explain some of my values and attitudes. Some years ago my mother had very bad pneumonia and spent a number of truly terrible weeks in an intensive care unit: close to death, hooked up to a daunting array of machines and unable to speak (because of a tracheotomy). The family was called in for a meeting with the senior doctors and nurses: they were clearly expecting her to die.
In the ICU, there was a 1:1 ratio of nurses to patients, each nurse on duty assigned to one patient only, and we visiting family members got to know some of the nurses quite well. I don't remember much of what was talked about, but I clearly remember one of them commenting that she preferred dealing with (and liked) patients who fought against death. And my mother decidedly was (and still is) such a fighter.
On more than one occasion when I came to sit by her bed when she was at her lowest ebb and hooked up to all those tubes and machines she turned and appeared to attempt to climb over the bed rails towards me. When I first witnessed this, it took a few moments to realize what she was trying to do. It was at once grotesque and sublime – and extremely moving.
I don't want to make too much of this and suggest that those who "rage against the dying of the light" are right and those who opt for more dignified options are wrong. And I fully realize that of course a nurse – especially one specializing in critical care – is going to prefer patients who don't die on her.
But speaking personally, though I admire those who decide to end their own lives when the signs are that those lives have reached a certain level of completeness, I am rather less keen on going (when the time approaches) with dignity and rather more keen on hanging around for as long as possible.
Now, having aired my general thoughts and feelings on the matter, I will try to put them out of my mind and examine what Gordon Cornwall has to say (see link above) with an open mind.
* See, for example, this post.
Wednesday, December 12, 2012
Kirk dies
Massimo Pigliucci has recently referred to the classic puzzle I alluded to in my previous post on this site about whether the destruction of one's body entails annihilation if a reconstructed version of one's body survives.
He was trying out a new online tool for addressing questions to the philosophical community, and one of his questions concerned 'what happens when Captain Kirk steps into a transporter device'.
The answers he got were all over the place. The most common one amongst philosophical academics interested in metaphysics was: 'Kirk dies, a Trekkie cries.'
But, as a commenter put it: 'Presuming 1) that the Kirk who emerges at the end of the transportation process is physically identical to the Kirk that went in, and 2) there's no untransportable and intangible soul-stuff that makes Kirk Kirk, I don't understand how you can meaningfully say that Kirk has died after being transported.'
The response to Pigliucci's query (coupled with the comment thread attached to his post) illustrates a problem with much philosophical discourse.
The topics being addressed may or may not be interesting or important – this one is both, I think – but there is no standard or rigorous method for dealing with them, and so no real evidence of a coherent academic discipline (or profession) in operation. (Bear in mind that Derek Parfit set the ball rolling on this particular discussion three decades ago.)
Often philosophical questions seem to be without satisfactory answers (which suggests that the questions are confused, in the sense of carrying too much implicit metaphysical baggage). If an answer comes, it is, more often than not, a mere trigger for counterarguments, and more questions... The process just doesn't move forward most of the time.
Scientific knowledge is relevant to making sense of thought experiments like this, however. For example, if the processes involved violate known science then the whole discussion is just a fantasy and a waste of time. (Bad science fiction, if you like.)
One important scientific issue raised in the discussion relates to whether atoms can be distinguished from one another as macro-objects can. It seems not. Apparently, it just doesn't make sense to ask whether the atoms constituting the reconstructed body are the same ones which constituted the original body or different ones. The very notion of a 'copy' is called into doubt.
Inanimate objects (specifically the Mona Lisa) are discussed in the light of this fact. I think Ian Pollock goes too far in suggesting that if there was a perfect (atom for atom) copy of the Mona Lisa, then the notion of the real, original Mona Lisa would no longer have a clear, objective meaning. It would, surely. It is the one Leonardo actually painted. As Massimo Pigliucci points out, Pollock is not taking history seriously.
And, if the real Mona Lisa is the one actually painted by Leonardo (defined by its history as well as physics), so my real body (on which my subjective consciousness depends) is also defined in part by its history.
The heart of the question of personal identity relates to first-person experience, to my consciousness of being me and being alive. Would Kirk be right to have misgivings about entering the transporter?
Clearly, subjective experience is entirely dependent on a particular physical body. It is the body that is conscious. So, in the end, 'I' am my body in the sense that 'my' fate is inextricably bound up with the fate of this body. If it goes, 'I' go.
I put the pronouns in quotes to indicate that I personally doubt that there is any substantial thing, any entity, which is me. 'I' am a kind of composite of experiences: very basic sentience in the here and now (the sort of thing any living creature – even the most basic – might have) plus memory. When a certain level of neuronal complexity is reached, you have a sense of a continuing self.
The real mystery lies, in my view, with basic sentience rather than with identity. Sentience is a real, robust phenomenon whereas personal identity is arguably an illusion as there is no 'self', just a (sentient, etc.) body with a complex brain.
At my death nothing of substance will die, apart from the body.
Regarding the transporter, I would have to agree with Massimo Pigliucci that it kills Kirk. The copy may have Kirk's memories, but subjectively Kirk goes into the transporter, is scanned – and never wakes up.
To finish, here is a little thought experiment of my own, a little meditation on the nature of death.
We willingly go to sleep at night. We willingly get anaesthetized for an operation. We might also be happy to go into 'cold storage' for a long space journey or to survive a devastating catastrophe on earth (a 'nuclear winter', for example).
But, what if, though we could be certain the hibernation device would not fail to keep our body alive and in a resusitatable state, we just did not know whether or not it would ever get around to waking us up?
Going into such a device becomes exactly equivalent to a game of Russian roulette. Death (as in the death of the body) is functionally equivalent to not waking up, ever. All the death of the body does is make it impossible ever to wake up. It takes away hope.
But, from the point of view of the unconscious person, hope – or any kind of expectation – is irrelevant. So the experience of death is equivalent to the experience of going into a state of unconsciousness – nothing more.
[Update, July 11, 2014: I have realized that there is a flaw in this argument. As soon as I have time I will write a new post explaining what I see the flaw to be.]
He was trying out a new online tool for addressing questions to the philosophical community, and one of his questions concerned 'what happens when Captain Kirk steps into a transporter device'.
The answers he got were all over the place. The most common one amongst philosophical academics interested in metaphysics was: 'Kirk dies, a Trekkie cries.'
But, as a commenter put it: 'Presuming 1) that the Kirk who emerges at the end of the transportation process is physically identical to the Kirk that went in, and 2) there's no untransportable and intangible soul-stuff that makes Kirk Kirk, I don't understand how you can meaningfully say that Kirk has died after being transported.'
The response to Pigliucci's query (coupled with the comment thread attached to his post) illustrates a problem with much philosophical discourse.
The topics being addressed may or may not be interesting or important – this one is both, I think – but there is no standard or rigorous method for dealing with them, and so no real evidence of a coherent academic discipline (or profession) in operation. (Bear in mind that Derek Parfit set the ball rolling on this particular discussion three decades ago.)
Often philosophical questions seem to be without satisfactory answers (which suggests that the questions are confused, in the sense of carrying too much implicit metaphysical baggage). If an answer comes, it is, more often than not, a mere trigger for counterarguments, and more questions... The process just doesn't move forward most of the time.
Scientific knowledge is relevant to making sense of thought experiments like this, however. For example, if the processes involved violate known science then the whole discussion is just a fantasy and a waste of time. (Bad science fiction, if you like.)
One important scientific issue raised in the discussion relates to whether atoms can be distinguished from one another as macro-objects can. It seems not. Apparently, it just doesn't make sense to ask whether the atoms constituting the reconstructed body are the same ones which constituted the original body or different ones. The very notion of a 'copy' is called into doubt.
Inanimate objects (specifically the Mona Lisa) are discussed in the light of this fact. I think Ian Pollock goes too far in suggesting that if there was a perfect (atom for atom) copy of the Mona Lisa, then the notion of the real, original Mona Lisa would no longer have a clear, objective meaning. It would, surely. It is the one Leonardo actually painted. As Massimo Pigliucci points out, Pollock is not taking history seriously.
And, if the real Mona Lisa is the one actually painted by Leonardo (defined by its history as well as physics), so my real body (on which my subjective consciousness depends) is also defined in part by its history.
The heart of the question of personal identity relates to first-person experience, to my consciousness of being me and being alive. Would Kirk be right to have misgivings about entering the transporter?
Clearly, subjective experience is entirely dependent on a particular physical body. It is the body that is conscious. So, in the end, 'I' am my body in the sense that 'my' fate is inextricably bound up with the fate of this body. If it goes, 'I' go.
I put the pronouns in quotes to indicate that I personally doubt that there is any substantial thing, any entity, which is me. 'I' am a kind of composite of experiences: very basic sentience in the here and now (the sort of thing any living creature – even the most basic – might have) plus memory. When a certain level of neuronal complexity is reached, you have a sense of a continuing self.
The real mystery lies, in my view, with basic sentience rather than with identity. Sentience is a real, robust phenomenon whereas personal identity is arguably an illusion as there is no 'self', just a (sentient, etc.) body with a complex brain.
At my death nothing of substance will die, apart from the body.
Regarding the transporter, I would have to agree with Massimo Pigliucci that it kills Kirk. The copy may have Kirk's memories, but subjectively Kirk goes into the transporter, is scanned – and never wakes up.
To finish, here is a little thought experiment of my own, a little meditation on the nature of death.
We willingly go to sleep at night. We willingly get anaesthetized for an operation. We might also be happy to go into 'cold storage' for a long space journey or to survive a devastating catastrophe on earth (a 'nuclear winter', for example).
But, what if, though we could be certain the hibernation device would not fail to keep our body alive and in a resusitatable state, we just did not know whether or not it would ever get around to waking us up?
Going into such a device becomes exactly equivalent to a game of Russian roulette. Death (as in the death of the body) is functionally equivalent to not waking up, ever. All the death of the body does is make it impossible ever to wake up. It takes away hope.
But, from the point of view of the unconscious person, hope – or any kind of expectation – is irrelevant. So the experience of death is equivalent to the experience of going into a state of unconsciousness – nothing more.
[Update, July 11, 2014: I have realized that there is a flaw in this argument. As soon as I have time I will write a new post explaining what I see the flaw to be.]
Saturday, December 1, 2012
Death or immortality?
Be assured that I am not prone to having mystical experiences, but I do – it must be said – seem to spend an inordinate amount of time in that twilight zone between sleep and waking (either going into or coming out of sleep). And in such a state for some hours very early one morning I wrestled with the question of death – and came to a conclusion.
At the end of it all I felt absolutely sure that I (and presumably you too) would never – could never – be totally snuffed out.
There are two basic ways of responding to such an 'insight', as I see it: to take it at face value (as I did at the time), or to take it merely as evidence for how our brains work.
On the second (and more plausible) interpretation, all I did on that sleepless morning was to demonstrate to myself that my conscious self (due to the limitations of my brain and presumably all human brains) was incapable of conceiving of its own future nonexistence.
I know some people claim to be able to conceive of their future nonexistence (and to be quite happy about the prospect), but I would argue (like Matthew Hutson) that such people are still imagining themselves as a faint presence in their own post-death future.
Of course, nothing concerning the reality or non-reality of survival can be inferred from the fact (if it is a fact) that we cannot conceive of our own individual deaths.
Just getting clear what (if anything) personal identity is and making sense of the notion of such an entity surviving the death of the body with which it had been associated is a very difficult task. Sometimes I think it is a futile one.
I may have more to say about these and related questions in the future, but, just to give an indication of the sort of thinking which I think touches on the nub of the problem, I want to mention a classic thought experiment devised by Derek Parfit.
Briefly, it is about a choice of means of transport. It is some time in the future and you need to visit Mars on a regular basis. You have the slow option of a space ship; or the speed-of-light option which involves a Star Trek-like scanner which records your body's exact physical state and sends the information to Mars where you are reconstructed, memories intact. The scanning process is fatal, but it doesn't matter as you will be aware only of having arrived on Mars.
Parfit thinks that people would get over their initial reluctance to use the new system very quickly, and that we wouldn't feel as though the reconstructed people were just copies of defunct originals.
But what if a number of copies were made? And, most importantly, how do I know that if I was scanned etc., I would, from a subjective point of view, 'wake up' on Mars (or anywhere), rather than just die, pure and simple, copy or no copy?*
Now, all this may sound very hypothetical and irrelevant to whether you or I will survive (in some sense) our respective deaths. But new developments in cosmology, notably the theory of eternal inflation, make it very relevant. For it appears likely that exact (and not so exact) copies of us do in fact exist in distant and forever inaccessible reaches of an unimaginably large and expanding complex of universes (variously called the multiverse or the megaverse).
I know it sounds fanciful, but leading physicists have put forward such views; and, though I remain personally skeptical about particular theories, the notion that the cosmos is (infinitely) more than what we can observe or even potentially have access to is very plausible and generally accepted in the physics community.
In the end, the (possible) existence of duplicate and similar worlds probably has no bearing on whether my subjective sense of self will be extinguished at my death. It is, however, a comfort to know that the cosmos may not be as boringly bounded as mid-20th century science suggested.
It may be going too far to say that anything is possible, but the vista of possibilities has certainly expanded.
*Parfit doesn't believe we relate to the future (or the future relates to us) in the way we think we do (or in the way we think it does). As I recall, he even suggests that the future should not concern us any more than the past.
When I first read Parfit's book Reasons and Persons I struggled with this idea for a while, but finally gave it up as being inconsistent with the fact that, as individuals, we plan (or fail to plan) for the future – and enjoy or suffer the consequences. (Parfit's view would be, I presume, that these experiences were not being had by a self-entity that moved from the past to the future – or perhaps by any entity at all.)
At the end of it all I felt absolutely sure that I (and presumably you too) would never – could never – be totally snuffed out.
There are two basic ways of responding to such an 'insight', as I see it: to take it at face value (as I did at the time), or to take it merely as evidence for how our brains work.
On the second (and more plausible) interpretation, all I did on that sleepless morning was to demonstrate to myself that my conscious self (due to the limitations of my brain and presumably all human brains) was incapable of conceiving of its own future nonexistence.
I know some people claim to be able to conceive of their future nonexistence (and to be quite happy about the prospect), but I would argue (like Matthew Hutson) that such people are still imagining themselves as a faint presence in their own post-death future.
Of course, nothing concerning the reality or non-reality of survival can be inferred from the fact (if it is a fact) that we cannot conceive of our own individual deaths.
Just getting clear what (if anything) personal identity is and making sense of the notion of such an entity surviving the death of the body with which it had been associated is a very difficult task. Sometimes I think it is a futile one.
I may have more to say about these and related questions in the future, but, just to give an indication of the sort of thinking which I think touches on the nub of the problem, I want to mention a classic thought experiment devised by Derek Parfit.
Briefly, it is about a choice of means of transport. It is some time in the future and you need to visit Mars on a regular basis. You have the slow option of a space ship; or the speed-of-light option which involves a Star Trek-like scanner which records your body's exact physical state and sends the information to Mars where you are reconstructed, memories intact. The scanning process is fatal, but it doesn't matter as you will be aware only of having arrived on Mars.
Parfit thinks that people would get over their initial reluctance to use the new system very quickly, and that we wouldn't feel as though the reconstructed people were just copies of defunct originals.
But what if a number of copies were made? And, most importantly, how do I know that if I was scanned etc., I would, from a subjective point of view, 'wake up' on Mars (or anywhere), rather than just die, pure and simple, copy or no copy?*
Now, all this may sound very hypothetical and irrelevant to whether you or I will survive (in some sense) our respective deaths. But new developments in cosmology, notably the theory of eternal inflation, make it very relevant. For it appears likely that exact (and not so exact) copies of us do in fact exist in distant and forever inaccessible reaches of an unimaginably large and expanding complex of universes (variously called the multiverse or the megaverse).
I know it sounds fanciful, but leading physicists have put forward such views; and, though I remain personally skeptical about particular theories, the notion that the cosmos is (infinitely) more than what we can observe or even potentially have access to is very plausible and generally accepted in the physics community.
In the end, the (possible) existence of duplicate and similar worlds probably has no bearing on whether my subjective sense of self will be extinguished at my death. It is, however, a comfort to know that the cosmos may not be as boringly bounded as mid-20th century science suggested.
It may be going too far to say that anything is possible, but the vista of possibilities has certainly expanded.
*Parfit doesn't believe we relate to the future (or the future relates to us) in the way we think we do (or in the way we think it does). As I recall, he even suggests that the future should not concern us any more than the past.
When I first read Parfit's book Reasons and Persons I struggled with this idea for a while, but finally gave it up as being inconsistent with the fact that, as individuals, we plan (or fail to plan) for the future – and enjoy or suffer the consequences. (Parfit's view would be, I presume, that these experiences were not being had by a self-entity that moved from the past to the future – or perhaps by any entity at all.)
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