Abstract
In virtue of what do things persist through time? Are there criteria of their identities through time? Anti-criterialists say no. One prominent challenge to anti-criterialism comes in two steps. The first step is to show that anti-criterialists are committed specifically to the claim that there are no informative metaphysically sufficient conditions for identity through time. The second step is to show that this commitment yields absurd results. Each step of this challenge is open to objection. However, in what follows, I will refortify this challenge to anti-criterialism by offering new reasons to take each step.
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Notes
It’s worth emphasizing that I am not using ‘criteria’ in an epistemic sense. That is, I am not talking about conditions under which we could know that a person has persisted through time. Rather, I am talking about conditions under which a person persists through time, regardless of whether we can know it or not.
Butler and Reid put their claim in terms of their being no definition or analysis of personal identity. This is a common way for those in Butler and Reid’s tradition to express the claim that there is no criterion of personal persistence (see, e.g., Swinburne 1985, p. 20; Gasser and Stefan 2012; Kanzian 2012; Langsam 2001, p. 251). And yet, this talk of analysis is not entirely without controversy (see, e.g., Merricks 1998). So in what follows I will stick with the claim that there is no criterion of personal persistence.
It is natural to think of informativeness as epistemic in nature. However, given that criteria of personal persistence are themselves metaphysical, not epistemic—that is, they are conditions under which people persist through time, whether or not we know it (see fn. 1)—I think it’s more plausible to say that whether an alleged criterion is informative in the present sense isn’t really a matter of whether it gives us any knowledge about a person’s persistence; rather, it is a metaphysical (or perhaps logical) matter having to do with whether personal persistence is given as a condition for its own obtaining. That said, none of my arguments turn on this point (just keep in mind that the criteria for personal persistence themselves are metaphysical, not epistemic).
For example, Shoemaker (2002) writes, “So the non-reductionist [i.e., anti-criterialist] believes that even when we have gathered all the facts together regarding the body, brain, and experiences of the person in question, we still do not have the key further fact necessary to determine questions of identity” (p. 146). See also Lowe (2009, p. 139), Parfit (1984, p. 309), Chisholm (1976, p. 111), and Eklund (2004). These philosophers say things that suggest, but do not entail, that anti-criterialists’ view is that there are no informative sufficient conditions for personal persistence.
This is true regardless of whether that condition is something like biological continuity, or something more like biological continuity plus the holding of a contingent law. Either way, there is a necessary connection between two contingent states of affairs—namely, P at t’s being identical with P* at t*, and P at t’s satisfying the sufficient condition C with P* at t* (cf. Merricks 1998, p. 116).
Again, this is true regardless of whether that condition is something like biological continuity, or something more like biological continuity plus the holding of a contingent law. For if fission (in biology, say) is possible, then surely it is possible in worlds which there is a contingent law governing personal persistence. One might suggest that this law comes with a no-branching rule (How convenient! Cf. Langford 2017, p. 3). But that sort of move is equally available to criterialists in response to fission cases (see, e.g., Shoemaker 1985). So invoking it wouldn’t help anti-criterialists regain their advantage over criterialists when it comes to fission.
One other motivation for anti-criterialism, which I haven’t discussed here mostly because it hasn’t seemed to catch on among anti-criterialists, is Lowe’s (2012) argument from fundamentality. This motivation would also be undermined if one were to accept that there are informative sufficient conditions for personal persistence. The argument goes as follows. Lowe claims that persons are fundamental ontological entities (I won’t go into his argument for this claim, since it’s not important for my purposes.). Then he says that “if persons really are fundamental in our ontological scheme … we should probably conclude that personal identity is primitive and ‘simple,’ in the sense that nothing more informative can be said about identity of persons than that in some cases it just obtains and in others not” (p. 152). That’s the argument. But if one accepts that there are informative sufficient conditions for personal persistence, then, contra Lowe, one accepts that something more informative can, in fact, be said about the identity of persons than that in some cases it just obtains and in others not. So then one has to either deny that persons are fundamental, or deny Lowe’s inference from fundamentality to primitiveness (primitiveness being what Lowe takes to entail anti-criterialism). Either way, Lowe’s argument from fundamentality is undermined.
Lowe (2009) also gives an argument from the claim that persons are fundamental to the claim that all alleged psychological criteria of personal persistence are uninformative (or circular). Since this argument also depends on the claim that persons are fundamental, it would also be undermined (in the same way as above) if one were to accept that there are informative sufficient conditions for personal persistence. Perhaps another version of this argument could be developed without the claim that persons are fundamental—as I’ve said, the purported failure of various alleged criteria of personal persistence to be informative is a motivation for anti-criterialists. However, two further points need to be kept in mind. First, the claim that this or that alleged criterion of personal persistence is uninformative is not enough, on its own, to establish the wholly general anti-criterialist claim that there are absolutely no (informative) criteria of personal persistence. Further motivation is needed. And, as I’ve argued, that further motivation is seriously diminished, if not completely undermined, if one denies (1). Second, even if one were to argue that all reasonable contenders for criteria of personal persistence are bound to be uninformative, thus supporting the general anti-criterialist claim, that conclusion would be in tension with the claim that some sufficient conditions for personal persistence are in fact informative. So, again, denying (1) thoroughly undermines the motivation for anti-criterialism.
This can even include non-physical qualitative connections if you are so inclined. That is, if you are inclined toward some form of dualism—even substance dualism—then also suppose that all of the qualitative non-physical connections present in a normal persisting person connect Sam and Sam*. Some philosophers seem to assume that there is no such thing as qualitative continuity in a non-physical substance—that, in principle, nothing informative can be said about the persistence of a non-physical substance such as a soul. But, as I’ve argue (see Duncan 2017), there’s actually no good reason to accept this assumption, and, indeed, there are good reasons to reject it.
In fact, we can go even further. We might just suppose that all of the qualitative facts that have anything to do with Sam remain fixed from t to t* so that Sam and Sam* are qualitatively indistinguishable. We might even suppose that the entire universe remains qualitatively fixed from t to t*. In this scenario, it is even more absurd to think that Sam could possibly fail to persist from t to t*.
Keep in mind that I’m not saying every implication of anti-criterialism is absurd, or that the absurdity of anti-criterialism is revealed in every kind of case. There are some cases other than Sam’s case in which anti-criterialism may not seem absurd. My claim here is just that the possibility of Sam failing to persist in the above case is absurd. Which is all it takes to establish (2).
Langford (2017) responds to this objection by saying that simplicity and other theoretical considerations justify the belief that a contingent law governs actual persistence facts, and this, in turn, justifies our generalizations about our persistence. But if one is motivated by simplicity considerations (or other theoretical considerations), then one should just ditch this contingent law (the positing of which I’ve already criticized in Sect. 2) and say that our generalizations about our persistence are justified by our perception of the qualitative features that appear to ground our persistence. Which means one should accept criterialism.
Elsewhere I have appealed to certain elements of the argument to follow to argue against various theories of personal identity (see Duncan 2015). But these elements have never been used, by me or anyone else, to argue against anti-criterialism.
See, for example, Shoemaker (1968), O’Brien (2007), Evans (2001), Howell (2006), and Gertler (2011, pp. 215–217). I take the claim that we are immune from the sort of errors mentioned above to be uncontroversial. It is controversial which cases are to count. But the case that I have described should be safe by anyone’s standards. And even if it is not—if, for example, you think that ‘cows moo’ is too long of a thought to be immune from error through misidentification—then feel free to just pick a different, shorter thought. Maybe just think about cows for as quickly as you can—for a few milliseconds, perhaps. It’s doubtful that any thought of which we are aware, or that’s ever been used as an example to illustrate immunity from error, is instantaneous (see Duncan 2015). So some such thought will do.
But doesn’t this first-personal evidence presuppose personal identity in that it presupposes whose persistence it is evidence of? And doesn’t that support anti-criterialism? No. First of all, remember that the anti-criterialist charge is that various alleged criteria of personal persistence are uninformative due to presupposing personal identity. But, again, I’m not giving a criterion of personal persistence here—I’m not saying first-personal evidence is what anyone’s persistence consists in. It’s just evidence for persistence, which anti-criterialists themselves are careful to distinguish from criteria of persistence (see Swinburne 1985; Merricks 1998; also see fn. 1 and 4). So the anti-criterialist charge that various alleged criteria are uninformative isn’t relevant here.
Furthermore, there’s no obvious reason why this first-personal evidence couldn’t be construed without presupposing anyone’s identity. Consider an analogy: A picture of you dated to 1990 is good evidence that you existed in 1990 (though of course it’s not itself what your persistence consists in). And, although I did just describe it as a picture of you, if, for whatever reason, I just wanted to focus on this picture as mere evidence of your persistence, and didn’t want to beg the question against someone who claimed that it’s not actually a picture of you, I could construe the evidence without presupposing that it is of you by referring only to the purely qualitative features (e.g., hair color, face shape, etc.) that make it appear like a picture of you. Likewise, the first-personal evidence that I am talking about can be construed purely in terms of qualitative features of the experiences that constitute it. It’s just that, unlike pictures, it is indubitable evidence of your persistence and it is available in any possible situation qualitatively just like the one described above. So this evidence, while again not a criterion of personal persistence itself, gives us reason to believe that you persist in any possible case qualitatively just like the one described above. Which, given (1), is inconsistent with anti-criterialism.
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Acknowledgements
Thanks to Nina Emery, Harold Langsam, Trenton Merricks, Jack Spencer, and two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on this paper.
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Duncan, M. A Renewed Challenge to Anti-criterialism. Erkenn 85, 165–182 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-018-0023-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-018-0023-7