Abstract
Many philosophers have thought that the problem of personal identity over time is not metaphysically deep. Perhaps the debate between the rival theories is somehow empty or is a ‘merely verbal dispute’. Perhaps questions about personal identity are ‘nonsubstantive’ and fit more for conceptual analysis and close attention to usage than for theorizing in the style of serious metaphysics, theorizing guided by considerations of systematicity, parsimony, explanatory power, and aiming for knowledge about the objective structure of the world. I discuss a thesis about consciousness according to which there are perfectly natural phenomenal properties. Although I do not argue for this thesis, I believe that it is plausible, whether or not physicalism is true. Given the thesis, there are deep, substantive questions about which individuals or pluralities instantiate the relevant phenomenal properties. Equally substantive questions can then be asked about the duration and other spatiotemporal characteristics of those individuals or pluralities, both in actual cases and in hypothetical puzzle cases adapted from the personal identity literature. I suggest that, at least prima facie, these questions interact with our future-directed egoistic concern in much the same way that the personal identity question is often thought to. As a slogan: “you give me substantive, determinate facts about consciousness; I give you substantive, determinate facts about personal identity”.
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Notes
To anticipate, the disjunctive thesis is that either there are no composite material objects or every matter-filled spacetime region is the path of a material object.
Strictly speaking, he never discusses any single argument for this complex conditional. Rather, in Sider (2001a), he endorses an argument for ‘if [disjunctive thesis] then [(ii)]’, and in Sider (2011: 72–73), he briefly sketches (with apparent sympathy) an argument for ‘if plenitudinous four-dimensional is true, then [(i)]’.
In the sense of Lewis (1986).
See Hawthorne (2006: 108–109), who expresses sympathy for roughly this position. See also Simon (2012) for a defense of the view that there are sharp joints in nature corresponding to consciousness. Unlike Hawthorne, Simon does not suggest that this view is compatible with physicalism. In the remainder of this note, I briefly reply to two arguments for the conclusion that if physicalism is true, then there are no perfectly natural phenomenal properties.
First argument (1) If physicalism is true, then all properties supervene on some set of perfectly natural, non-phenomenal properties and relations. (2) The perfectly natural properties and relations form a minimal supervenience base for all properties: all properties supervene on the set of perfectly natural properties and relations, but that set does not have a proper subset on which all properties supervene. So, (3) if physicalism is true, then there are no perfectly natural phenomenal properties. To see that (3) follows from (1) and (2), suppose that physicalism is true but that there is a perfectly natural phenomenal property, call it F-ness. Given (1), it follows that all properties supervene on some set S of perfectly natural non-phenomenal properties. Since F-ness is a phenomenal property, it is not a member of S, but since F-ness is perfectly natural, it is a member of the set S* of perfectly natural properties and relations. Hence S* is not a minimal supervenience base, contrary to (2). There is a proper subset of it on which all properties supervene. Reply. It seems to me that a physicalist can deny (2) without much cost. Eddon (2013) argues that (2) is false on completely independent grounds. For further discussion, see Dorr and Hawthorne (2013).
Second argument (4) If physicalism is true, then all phenomenal facts are fully grounded in non-phenomenal facts. On grounding, see Rosen (2010). (5) If there are perfectly natural phenomenal properties, then at least one such property is instantiated by something. (6) If a perfectly natural property, F-ness, is instantiated by x, then the fact that x is F exists and is not fully grounded by any facts whatever. (7) If a property, F-ness, is phenomenal and the fact that x is F exists, then that fact is a phenomenal fact. So, (8) if physicalism is true, then there are no perfectly natural phenomenal properties. To see that (8) follows from (4) to (7), suppose that physicalism is true and that there is a perfectly natural phenomenal property. Then, given (5), at least one such property, call it F-ness, is instantiated by something, call it a. So, given (6), the fact that a is F exists and is not fully grounded by any facts and, given (7), it is a phenomenal fact. So, contrary to (4), some phenomenal fact is not fully grounded in any non-phenomenal facts. Reply. It seems to me that a physicalist can deny (6) without much cost. For example, one might think that being true is perfectly natural but that the fact that <grass is green> is true is fully grounded by the fact that grass is green. Likewise, one might think that being instantiated by is perfectly natural. But if c = being negatively charged and e is an electron, then one might nevertheless think that the fact that c is instantiated by e is fully grounded by the fact that e is negatively charged. For other reasons to doubt (6), see Schaffer (2004) and Effingham (2015: 851). Related considerations are discussed in Hawthorne (2006: 108–109).
There are similarities between the ideas that I develop here and the views defended in Dainton and Bayne (2005) and Dainton (2008), who endorse a theory of personal identity over time that invokes (i) a reflexive, symmetric phenomenal relation of co-consciousness between experiences and (ii) persisting experiential capacities. In this paper, I try to explain (among other things) how even those philosophers who deny the existence of persisting experiential capacities, who deny the existence of any such relation as co-consciousness, and who deny the existence of experiences and events generally could still agree that certain personal identity-like questions become substantive if there are perfectly natural phenomenal properties, such as being conscious.
The distinction between matter-filled and non-matter-filled regions is invoked merely as a picturesque expository device and does not do any important work in this paper. Everything that I say here is consistent with all of the following views: (i) every region is matter-filled, (ii) the property of being matter-filled is vague and highly unnatural, (iii) being exactly located at a region entails being mereologically coincident with (sharing parts with exactly the same entities as) that region, and (iv) being exactly located at a region entails being numerically identical to that region. See Hawthorne (2006), Schaffer (2009), and Gilmore (2014a, b) for discussion of a range of views in this vicinity.
I assume that exact location is a perfectly natural relation. For a defense of this view, see Effingham (2015: 850). Informally, to say that x is exactly located at r is to say that x has (or has-at-r) the same size and shape as r and stands (or stands-at-r) in the same spatiotemporal relations to other things as does r. For more on this relation, see Gilmore (2006, 2014a).
We can define ‘x fuses yy’ as ‘each of yy is a part of x and each part of x overlaps at least one of yy’. The definition of ‘path’ leaves open the question of whether each material object is exactly located at exactly one region (its path) or at many—e.g., at each ‘instantaneous time-slice’ of its path. See Gilmore (2006) and Gilmore (2008) for discussion of this question, especially in connection with relativity.
The Path Question is very similar to Sider’s question about which ‘assignments’, i.e., which functions from instants to sets of objects existing at those instants, have ‘minimal D-fusions.’ (Sider 2001b: 132–139) I focus on the Path Question mainly because it is a bit easier to state.
To a first approximation, supervaluationism says that a sentence is determinately true iff it is true on all precisifications, determinately false iff it is false on all precisifications, and a borderline case iff it is true on some but not all precisifications. The many precisifications of the predicate ‘bald’, e.g., are supposed to be sharp properties such as having fewer than 51,492 hairs on one’s head.
Here and in the remainder of this section, ‘because’ means the same as ‘at least in part because.’ These phrases express something similar to what Rosen (2010) calls ‘partial ground’, the main difference being that ‘because’ is a connective, whereas Rosen uses a predicate to express partial ground. Lewis himself does not frame his view in terms of partial ground.
Pain by Courtesy is inspired by, but crucially different from, a view that Merricks (2003: 155) calls ‘SPOC’ and attributes to Sider (2003). According to SPOC, consciousness is maximal and hence extrinsic, whereas consciousness* is intrinsic, and both I and certain proper parts of me are conscious*, but only I am conscious.
The view expressed in this paragraph, minus the commitment to plenitude about material objects (!), is defended by van Inwagen (2014: 153–182, 238–258).
Strictly speaking, some of the questions at issue concern counterfactual sentences, roughly, ‘if the specified procedure were to occur, some one conscious thing would be in both S and S*’, ‘if the specified procedure were to occur, it is not the case that some one conscious thing would be in both S and S*’. One might think that the counterfactual conditional fails to be joint-carving (Sider 2011) and, further, that this somehow renders the resulting question non-substantive. I am more optimistic about the joint-carving status of the counterfactual conditional, but that aside, it would seem that even if that condition is not joint-carving, the question remains substantive, provided that we can be sufficiently specific about the set of background conditions that are to be held fixed when we interpret that conditional.
Modulo worries about the counterfactual. See note 15.
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Gilmore, C. Personal Identity, Consciousness, and Joints in Nature. J Ethics 19, 443–466 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10892-015-9211-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10892-015-9211-8