Sydney Shoemaker has argued that, because we can imagine a

people who take themselves to survive a 'brain-state-transfer' procedure,

cerebrum transplant, or the like, we ought to conclude that we could survive

such a thing. I claim that the argument faces two objections, and can be

defended only by depriving it any real interest

Olson, E.T.

English

White Rose Research Online

This is a repository copy of Personal identity and the radiation argument .White Rose Research Online URL for this paper:http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/1219/Article:Olson, E.T. (2001) Personal identity and the radiation argument. Analysis, 61 (269). pp. 38-44. ISSN 1467-8284 https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8284.00267eprints@whiterose.ac.ukhttps://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/Reuse Unless indicated otherwise, fulltext items are protected by copyright with all rights reserved. The copyright exception in section 29 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 allows the making of a single copy solely for the purpose of non-commercial research or private study within the limits of fair dealing. The publisher or other rights-holder may allow further reproduction and re-use of this version - refer to the White Rose Research Online record for this item. Where records identify the publisher as the copyright holder, users can verify any specific terms of use on the publisher’s website. Takedown If you consider content in White Rose Research Online to be in breach of UK law, please notify us by emailing eprints@whiterose.ac.uk including the URL of the record and the reason for the withdrawal request.      White Rose Consortium ePrints Repository http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/  This is an author produced version of a paper published in Analysis.    White Rose Repository URL for this paper: http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/archive/00001219/    Citation for the published paper Olson, E.T. (2001) Personal identity and the radiation argument. Analysis, 61 (269). pp. 38-44. White Rose Consortium ePrints Repository eprints@whiterose.ac.uk  Sydney Shoemaker has argued that, because we can imagine apeople who take themselves to survive a 'brain-state-transfer' procedure,cerebrum transplant, or the like, we ought to conclude that we could survivesuch a thing.  I claim that the argument faces two objections, and can bedefended only by depriving it any real interest.Imagine a society of beings like ourselves but more technologicallyadvanced.  They have a machine that records the entire state of a humanbrain and imposes it onto another brain (destroying the first brain in theprocess), creating a person psychologically indistinguishable from theoriginal.  These beings--call them the Progressives--often have this donebecause high levels of radiation in their environment would otherwise ruintheir health.  They use another machine to make duplicates of themselveswith blank brains, which they keep in lead vaults for this purpose.The Progressives take themselves to survive the 'brain-state-transfer'procedure, and act accordingly.  They speak of what they themselves will doafter their next 'body-change', and of what they did before the previous one.They hold people responsible for the actions of the person from whom theyinherited their brain state.  Their laws and customs reflect this:  the brain-state recipient is entitled to the brain-state donor's property, is legallymarried to the donor's spouse, is considered the parent of his or herchildren, and so on.  Imagine further that the actual laws of nature operate,and that there are no immaterial souls or the like.  The Progressives knowthis, and know all the relevant physical facts about how the transferprocedure works.According to Sydney Shoemaker, this story suggests that we couldliterally move from one human being to another by having our brain state'transferred'.  He writes,There is no clear sense in which [the Progressives] can be said to bemistaken about a matter of fact in regarding the procedure as person-preserving.  If we confronted such a society, there would, I think, be avery strong case for saying that what they mean by "person" is such thatthe BST-procedure is person-preserving (using "person" in theirsense)....But there would also be a strong reason for saying that whatthey mean by 'person' is what we mean by it; they call the same thingspersons, offer the same characterizations of what sorts of things personsare, and attach the same kinds of social consequences to judgments ofpersonal identity--i.e., personal identity has with them the sameconnections with moral responsibility, ownership of property, etc. as itdoes with us.  But if they are right in thinking that the BST-procedure isperson-preserving, and if they mean the same by 'person' as we do, thenit seems that we ought to regard the BST-procedure as person-preserving.1I will call this the Radiation Argument.  Naturally radiation, or for thatmatter brain-state transfer, is only an accidental feature of it.  Shoemakertakes much the same argument to show that a person would go along withhis transplanted cerebrum (1999, 292-294).  Other variants are easilyimagined.The argument has two main premises.  First, the Progressives are correctin believing that they survive brain-state transfer.  More precisely, what theymean by 'person' is such that 'persons' in that sense survive it.  I take thisto mean that the things they use their personal pronouns and proper namesto denote really do survive brain-state transfer.  Second, they mean thesame by 'person' as we do.  A Progressive who says, 'I am fifty years old,'means the same as you and I mean when we say it.  I take this to imply thatthe referents of their personal pronouns are the same beings, or at any ratethe same kind of beings, as the referents of our own pronouns.  Now if whatthe Progressives mean by 'person' is such that persons in that sense reallydo survive brain-state transfer, and they mean by 'person' what we mean byit, so that we ourselves are persons in that sense, then it follows that we toocan survive brain-state transfer.  Hence, a liberal sort of psychologicalcontinuity would be sufficient for us to persist through time, and physical orspatio-temporal continuity would be unnecessary.  This would be animportant result, ruling out a wide range of alternative views about ouridentity through time.What are we to make of this argument?  Perhaps the most obviousquestion is why the Progressives couldn't be mistaken in believing that theirmachine moves them from one human being to another.  If the argument isto have any force, there must be some reason to suppose their belief to betrue other than the antecedent conviction that we ourselves, or persons ingeneral, could survive this.  Why should anyone unsure about whether wecould survive brain-state transfer agree that the Progressives could surviveit?  What principle lies behind the claim that, because the Progressivesunderstand how the procedure works, their belief that they survive it mustbe true?Presumably Shoemaker doesn't think that their belief is made true by themere fact that they hold it and act as if it were true.  A society can believevirtually anything and act accordingly.  They might believe in a theistic godand live sincerely religious lives.  Clearly that would not make it the casethat there was a theistic god.  Nor can we suppose that the Progressives'believing that they survive brain-state transfer is strong evidence for theirsurviving it.  We are given no reason to think that they are especially acutemetaphysicians.  The view, rather, is that there is somehow nothing for them11984, 109f.; see also 1997, 299f.  For a similar argument, not involving radiation, seeHirsch 1982, 290f.to be mistaken about.  We could understand how they might be mistaken,Shoemaker says, if their belief were based on the false assumption that themachine transferred an immaterial soul.  But they are supposed to be 'underno misconception concerning matters of fact' (1984, 109).This is puzzling.  Isn't it a matter of fact whether someone whose brain isaltered in a certain way survives or perishes?  Either she does or she doesn't(or it is indeterminate).  Whichever it is, anyone who thinks otherwise ismistaken.  How could there be nothing to get wrong?  And if there is nothingto get wrong, how could there be something to get right?We could understand Shoemaker's claim if the Progressives' talk ofpersonal identity were not about numerical identity at all, but about someother relation that uncontroversially holds in the relevant situations.Suppose that what made it true to say that Martha went in for her brain-state transfer yesterday and came out with a new body today was not thatany one being did both those things, but that the one who did the firstrelated in a certain way that did not imply numerical identity to the one whodid the second, and that a social convention made it appropriate to speakand act as if beings related in that way were identical.  (Compare:  whatmakes it true to say that the Prime Minister was a woman ten years ago andis a man now is not that anyone changed sex, but only that a certain womanof ten years ago relates in a way not implying identity--holding the samepolitical office--to a certain man of today.)  Then there would indeed benothing for the Progressives to be mistaken about, unless they are mistakenabout which beings did what when and whether they relate in that way.  Theway the Progressives think and act would suffice to put the relevantconvention in place, and claims made in accordance with it would be true.But Shoemaker says explicitly that we are to take the Progressives'statements to express numerical identity (1999, 393)--as they must if theargument is to show anything about our numerical identity.Or someone might say that there are rational, intelligent, self-consciousbeings that can survive brain-state transfer--'BST-survivors' for short.  Infact there are as many BST-survivors as there are Progressives:  everyProgressive in some sense coincides with a BST-survivor.  In that case, theProgessives' belief that they survive brain-state transfer could be false onlyif their personal pronouns and proper names failed to denote BST-survivors.But the way the Progressives think and act would surely suffice for theirpronouns to pick out BST-survivors if there are any to be picked out.  Hencetheir belief, in the circumstances, would be true.But if this is what Shoemaker is assuming (as it seems to be), he owes usan argument for it.  Many respected philosophers doubt whether there are oreven could be BST-survivors.  If this doubt is intelligible, then we canunderstand perfectly well how the Progressives could be mistaken in thinkingthat they survive brain-state transfer:  there may simply be nothing inheaven or on earth that could survive such a thing.Perhaps the Radiation Argument is simply directed at those who alreadyaccept the existence of BST-survivors.  (They are not rare.)  Everyargument needs premises, and no argument will persuade everyone.But this would deprive the argument of any real interest.  Anyone whobelieves in the existence of BST-survivors will almost certainly alreadybelieve that our identity consists in psychological continuity of the sort thatobtains in the brain-state-transfer case.  No one ever thought that, althoughthere are BST-survivors, we are not those things.  For an argument to haveany persuasive force, it must give those who don't yet accept its conclusiona reason to do so.  But there is unlikely to be anyone who, beforeencountering the Radiation Argument, found its hidden premise moreprobable than its conclusion.  So it looks like no one has any use forShoemaker's argument.Perhaps, somewhere, there are philosophers in need of the RadiationArgument.  Or perhaps the first premise, that the Progressives are notmistaken, can be defended in another way.  In any case, the argument facesa second problem, independent of the first.  If the Progressives' beliefsabout what they can survive must be true, then presumably the same goesfor other imaginary societies who hold beliefs about survival inconsistentwith theirs.  And if what those other societies believe about themselves musthold for us as well, we get a conclusion inconsistent with Shoemaker's.Imagine a second society with the same marvellous technology as thefirst.  They too occasionally have their brain state 'transferred' to anotherhead.  But they do not take themselves to survive this.  They see it as a wayof committing suicide--though a nobler and less selfish way of doing so thanthe usual method, as it typically results in someone willing and able to lookafter the dead person's affairs.  Those who submit to the procedure taketearful leave of their loved ones and expect never to see them again.  Noone speaks of what he will do after his next body-change, or what he didbefore his last one.  The recipient of a person's brain state is never heldresponsible for the donor's actions, does not incur his debts, is notconsidered married to his spouse, is called by another name, and so on.Imagine further that these beings--call them the Conservatives--are subjectto the same laws of nature as we are, and have no false beliefs about howthe device works.If we take the Radiation Argument as our model, it seems we mustconclude that the Conservatives are correct in believing that they don'tsurvive brain-state transfer.  More precisely, what they mean by 'person' issuch that brain-state transfer is not person-preserving.  The things they callpersons and use their personal pronouns to denote do not and could notsurvive such a thing.  You might think that the Conservatives andProgressives don't really disagree, but simply mean different things by'person'.  But this is hard to accept given that the Progressives mean by'person' what we mean.  That, Shoemaker said, was because 'they call thesame things persons, offer the same characterizations of what sorts ofthings persons are, and attach the same kinds of social consequences tojudgments of personal identity--i.e., personal identity has with them thesame connections with moral responsibility, ownership of property, etc. as itdoes with us' (1984, 110).  This holds equally for the Conservatives.  Hence,Shoemaker's reasoning suggests that the Conservatives' personal pronounsrefer to the same beings, or at any rate the same kind of beings, as our own.But now the trouble is only too plain.  If the things the Conservatives callpersons really cannot survive brain-state transfer, and they are precisely thethings we call persons, then it follows that we too cannot survive brain-statetransfer.  So the sort of mental continuity that obtains in brain-statetransfer is not sufficient for us to persist--contrary to the conclusion of theRadiation Argument.  And since either argument would appear to be sound ifthe other is, both must fail.Someone might avoid the conflict by saying that what we mean by'person' is indeterminate as between what the Progressives mean and whatthe Conservatives mean.  Our concept of a person is not precise enough todetermine whether we could survive brain-state transfer.  I suppose thismeans that the way we use our personal pronouns and other expressionsdoes not determine whether they refer to BST-survivors or to rational beingsthat could not survive brain-state transfer (rational human animals, forinstance).  But this would not support the Radiation Argument.  It contradictsthe argument's second premise, that we mean the same by 'person' as theProgressives mean.  Worse, it would make it indeterminate whether 'we'could survive brain-state transfer, whereas the conclusion was meant to bethat we could definitely survive it.To defend the Radiation Argument, we must show that the parallelargument commits some fallacy that the original argument avoids.  Perhapsthe Conservatives could be mistaken about whether they survive brain-statetransfer in a way that the Progressives could not be:  although there isnothing for the Progressives to be mistaken about, there is somehow roomfor the Conservatives to get it wrong.  Or there may be reason to think thatthe Conservatives, despite appearances, don't mean by 'person' what wemean by it, a reason that somehow doesn't apply to the Progressives.  Butthe only ground I can see for either claim is the antecedent conviction that,although there are BST-survivors, there are no rational beings that cannotsurvive brain-state transfer, or, alternatively, that what we mean by 'person'implies that we could survive brain-state transfer.  And to suppose such athing at the outset would be to assume the point at issue.Or someone might think that the second story is impossible orunintelligible in a way that the original is not.  In some ways theConservatives may be harder to imagine than the Progressives.  The beingswho resulted from brain-state transfer in my story would be in the oddposition of apparently remembering all and only the past experiences of whatthey took to be someone else.  They would tend to feel responsible for whatthey thought were someone else's acts.  Their relations with theirpredecessors' friends and relatives might be awkward.  (Imagine trying topersuade a child who resulted from the procedure that she is not the personshe thinks she is.)  And so on.This hardly suggests that the Conservatives are psychologicallyimpossible, especially if we are willing to grant the possibility of brain-statetransfer or cerebrum transplant.  At best one might argue that, because theConservatives are harder to imagine than the Progressives, the Progressivesare right to think that they survive brain-state transfer while theConservatives are mistaken to think that they don't.  But then Shoemaker'sargument would come to little more than this:  In a certain frame of mind(trying to imagine what it would be like), we find it easier to believe that wecould survive brain-state transfer than to believe the contrary; therefore wecould survive it.  This may have some force, though It also faces well-knowndifficulties (in other frames of mind--in listening to an entertaining story, forinstance--we find it easy to accept all sorts of things whose possibility wouldotherwise be doubtful).  Whatever its merits, though, this is hardly thesubstantial new argument Shoemaker appeared to be giving.I conclude that the Radiation Argument provides no new reason tosuppose that we could survive brain-state transfer, cerebrum transplant, oranything else.2Hirsch, Eli.  1982.  The Concept of Identity.  New York: Oxford UniversityPress.Shoemaker, Sydney.  1984.  Personal identity: A materialist's account.  In S.Shoemaker and R. Swinburne, Personal Identity.  Oxford: Blackwell.---.  1997.  Self and substance.  Philosophical Perspectives 11, 283-319.---.  1999.  Self, body, and coincidence.  Aristotelian Society SupplementaryVolume 73, 287-306.2 I thank Sydney Shoemaker for comments on an earlier version.

Personal identity and the radiation argument

https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/1219/1/olsonet11_radiation.pdf

Personal identity and the radiation argument

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

White Rose Research Online