 Hello. Good afternoon. Today, we're going to look at Derek Parfit's classic article personal identity in the small peri collection. Someone pointed out to me last time that if you're doing the essay on Parfit, well, the essay is due on Tuesday. Is that right? So it's a little bit jammed up against when we're discussing Parfit in class. So the GSI suggested we might push it back to Thursday, the deadline for the essay. I can't see any downside to that from your point of view. Is that correct? Can you put your hand up if you'd be in favor of moving the deadline back to thought? I see. That's for all prompts. OK, that would be OK. So in that case, the essay is due on Thursday. Well, that was difficult. Hello? Yes? Oh, I thought you put your hand up. OK. And next week, class. Next week, class? Next week, we'll carry on looking at the Parfit and look a little bit at the Hume. We'll look a bit at the Hume today, but I'm not going to be presupposing that anyone's read it. So to begin with, I want to look at Parfit's example of fission. I'm just trying to say what that is, fission. Then he says this has morals for how we think about survival and the fear of death, how what it tells you about the way that our concern with dying and survival is connected to the idea of the self. And in the second section, I'll try and give a deeper analysis of what is going on in this fission example, and then finally, just trying to ram Hume Parfit's main point once more. Here is an old Chinese proverb. How can we not fear death when from the moment of our birth it follows us like a murderer with axe upraised to slay us? Here's Rousseau. He who pretends to look on death without fear lies. Everyone's afraid of dying. This is a great law of sentient species without which the entire human species would soon be destroyed. When you think about being afraid of dying, one thing that you can be afraid of is that all your plans and projects are going to be left unfinished. The people who depend on you will be left unlooked after. So there are lots of things about you dying that you might reasonably be appalled by. But there's a more primitive, a kind of visceral fear of dying that everyone has. I don't know if you've ever had the experience of someone who really has got a life threatening illness. They really are facing the idea of their own death. And there's something about it. It's the fear of the light going out. It's as if they're just walking up to a dead cliff wall and there is nothing on the other side of it. And that really doesn't have to do with what's going to happen to other people or whether your novel will ever get finished or that kind of stuff. It's just death itself is intrinsically terrifying. Death in itself is intrinsically scary. There's a kind of panic you can feel the idea of the end of the world, the end of your world, when the light just goes out. It's not that objectively things are going to be so very dreadful. I mean, after all, maybe your novel wasn't any good. Maybe nobody was depending on you anyway. And maybe everybody's going to be much happier once they've moved on. Even if you accept all that, the idea of you dying is still terrifying. And in the face of it, that concern with your own death, that concern with your own survival that you want to make it, that's a concern that you should survive. It's a concern with identity. I mean, it really seems one of the most basic motivations humans have, as Rousseau said. You've got to have that motivation. But what is it that you're concerned about when you say you want to survive? And how would you describe that? The concern with wanting to survive. Suppose you're told you've got a life threatening illness, but there is an operation that might get you through. So you're looking at the situation now, and you're saying, am I going to make it to 2014? Then what you're asking about there is, here you are now. What you want to know is, in 2014, will there still be someone around who's identical with me? That's me one and the same person. That's a fair way to put it. So in 2014, if you show me a picture of who's got, if the soothsayer looks in the crystal ball and shows you the people who are around in 2014, and you can find one of them and say, that's me there, then you've survived. That's you making it. If you can't, then you haven't made it. That's the end of the world. That's the light going out. So the concern to survive when you spell it out, this is kind of laboring it out, is you want there to be someone existing at a later time who's identical to you now. So personal identity, the identity of the self is obviously a kind of important notion, but it really seems to be at the center of that concern to survive. But now Parfit's point is, this can't be right. This isn't the right way to think of it. And he introduces the notion of fission cases. Fission cases, you can try and explain them using amoeba, amoeba, sometimes split into two. Well, just to give the idea of fission, let me try and demonstrate fission for you right now. I have to do this in two separate stages, but then you can imagine watching a movie where the two stages happen at once. So watch me very closely. Now, I walk forwards and I turn to the left, right? OK. Now, keep watching. I walk forwards and I turn to the right, OK? Now, all you have to imagine is that I do these two things simultaneously, that as I walk forwards, two people step out. Each of them, molecularly, very, very similar to me right now and very, very similar to each other, right? But two just walk out, yeah? Now, if I just do the turn to the left, then nobody says you stopped existing, right? Life would be much scarier than it actually is if you couldn't do that, right? If I turn to the right, nobody says you stop existing, right? So all that's happening here is both are going on simultaneously. So if only one of these people had existed, you'd have been happy to say, that's the original person. Yeah, the other branches didn't take off. So here's a diagram of the situation in fission. In the tread, the two products of the fission are called lefty and righty for reasons for technical reasons we need not go into here, right? So here's you. I mean, suppose your doctor tells you, you have a very rare condition. It doesn't happen very often. With some time in the next few years, you will, there's a pretty good chance, fission. Then how are you to think about that? I mean, what's happened to you? Are you lefty? Are you righty? Are you maybe both of them? Well, could you be both of them? You can't be both of them, right? Because they're two different people, lefty and righty. Yes? Yes? Half? No, no, it's not that I've been cloving down the middle, right? Two full-blown people, each molecularly very similar to me, have stepped out. The human being, well, I don't know what you mean. I mean, that's actually what we're trying for. I'm trying to articulate what has happened here. Is it the same person? That's right. Imagine each individual cell splitting into two. One, two. Well, what? Where are the original atoms? I don't really have the technical vocabulary to explain exactly what's happened to the original atoms. But each of them has, there's been a kind of multiplication and splitting of each of the individual atoms. Yeah? Each individual. That's right. And all the gaps have been filled in. Yeah, I don't really, I can't really explain the process to advance, but yeah, that's what's happened. Yes, that's right. They are all very similar. Well, could they all be identical? Uh-huh. It is like mitosis. Yes. OK. Let's go. Right, the question is, not are we very similar? The question is, is it one and the same? Yeah? Right, so what is your hunch? Are both lefty and righty the same? One and the same is the original person? Yes? Yes? That's right. Yeah, I think that's true. Right, if you look at it objectively, there are two different people that are lefty. Is lefty the same person as righty? No, of course not. Right, I mean, as someone said to me the other day, they might have a deadly jewel. Right, they can't be the same person. Yeah, they might have a fight. One of them might shout and the other one might stamp. Yeah? So there's got to be different people. If they're both trying to get on the bus and the conductor says, only room, only for one more, they can't both get on. Yes? There are two different people, yeah? Yeah, that's what you want. Lefty is identical to x and righty is identical to x, but lefty is not identical to righty. Yeah? The trouble is, that's a contradiction. If lefty is x and righty is x, then lefty is righty. Right? That's kind of straightforward maths, yes? So you can't have that, right? They can't be identical, they can't both be identical to x, because if they were both identical to x, they'd be identical to each other. Yep? Yep? What is it? Yeah? If you or me? Yes. That would work, all right. But the trouble is, does lefty, was x, mean the lefty and x are one and the same? Yeah, OK. In that case, wouldn't it just have the duck? Goes up, yeah. That's right. You can say it, look, yeah. Yes, I agree, they do have a specially close relationship, right? People say they have a close relationship with their children, but these guys are very closely related, right? So you do want some special talent for this particularly intimate relationship here, but they are different things, right? That's the basic point, yeah? Yeah? What does that mean, property? You mean who? OK, that's fine. I don't mind about that, I really just want to get straight to about who is identical to who, right? OK, just give me that, they're not one and the same person. Yeah, let's hold on to that, yeah? Last one, no. I'm sorry, look, let me put that and hold them in it. I'm perfectly serious, it's important that that doesn't make sense, I'll come back in a minute. So look, the first thing is X can't be identical to both lefty and righty, right? Because they're two different people, two different people, they can't both be identical to the same thing because they're not identical to each other, right? That's all right, that's rock solid. OK, so then ask the question, well, could we say that X is identical to lefty? X made it, X is identical to someone, but it's lefty, not righty. Well, the trouble with that is that the situation is completely symmetrical, right? I tried to describe it in such a way that there's no basis for saying that one of them is identical to the original and the other one's just a branch. There's no, lefty isn't in any privileged relationship to the original person, the righty isn't. Similarly, there's no basis for saying that the original person's identical to righty rather than lefty, OK? So the original person isn't identical to both of them, and the original person isn't identical to one rather than the other. Are you following me here? Yes? OK, so when you look at this situation, after this point, I mean, if this is time up here, after this time, is there anyone around who's identical to the original person? No, there's no one around who's identical to the original person. So after the fission, the original person has ceased to exist. That's what I meant about dying. The original person is not there anymore, and you can't make a distinction between the situation in which the original person is not there anymore and the situation in which the original person has died. That's the same thing, right? Not being around anymore and dying. You're just not there. But if you were told fission was about to happen to you, would that be scary? OK? Suppose you're told, we understand what goes on here perfectly well. It's painless. It's very well known. You actually know physical danger here, yeah? Yeah, but when you're told you're about to fission, it's not like the light is going to go out, right? It's not. The end of the world. I mean, you'll be seeing, well, what should I put this? The world will be being seen through twice as many eyes as before. Yeah, isn't that great? I mean, shouldn't you rejoice? Yeah? So the thing about fission is, if you're concerned about your own survival, you're told in 2014, by 2014, you will have fissioned. What that brings out is that you can have everything you want. No need to panic. No terror at the thought of the light going out, even though you don't exist anymore. So your own existence is not actually the key consideration, it seems to be. I began with these quotes that suggest, your own identity is really just one of the fundamental human concerns. But when you think about this kind of case, what you realize is your own identity is not actually the key thing you care about. Your visceral concern is with something else, not with identity. So as a basic point of a fission case, it's taking something that really seems to matter profoundly to each of us and saying that concern is not what you thought it was. It's not about identity. It's about something else. And then the task is to say, what is it? What is that other thing that you're concerned about here? So that's a basic idea of a fission case. Is that plain as day? Completely unmistakable? Survival does not equal personal identity. Survival and personal identity are different things. What was wrong? That's right. It's a lot was wrong. Very good. Yeah. This example implies that same as a human. Well, I don't know if this example doesn't. No, the example doesn't actually imply that same as a person is different to same as a human being, though it's natural to interpret that way. But the way I describe the fission case, turning left and right, it really doesn't matter whether a person goes with human being or not, whether people can swap bodies or not. Even if people just are human beings, they're still fissioning here. The human being is still fissioning. And the person is fissioning simultaneously. The thing in Locke that this is contradicting is Locke said, personal identity is what we all care about. Personal identity is the foundation of all right and wrong. When we want to survive, when people think, well, maybe we make it past physical death and into another life, what they're thinking is, I want it to be me in that other life. If it can be me through the dissolution of the body, then that would be just great. That's what I want from survival. Locke thinks all that is correct. But those ideas about what's important, about what matters, or what are being attacked here, is not identity that matters. It's something else, OK? So I want to say that this is to describe it at the most superficial level, just what the example is. And to try and give some analysis, some diagnosis of what's going on here. There's a remark, Leibniz made somewhere that he said, where there are complexes, there must be symbols. OK, some objects are complex, right? Like this room, for example, is kind of complex. But there must be simple objects. I mean, atoms are complex, right? You have protons and neutrons and electrons, right? So what are protons made of quarks? Yeah? OK, what are quarks made of? They haven't broken it down yet. Well, the thing is, however it gets broken down, it's got to come to a stop somewhere. At some point, there have to be simple objects. It can't be, as it were, quarks all the way down. If there are complex objects, there must be simple objects. So what are the simple objects going to be? Well, you know, I mean, the traditional candidates for simple objects were atoms. Whatever the fundamental physical particles are, maybe they're perceptions, maybe they're mental, maybe the simple objects are sense data or something like that. Or maybe it's people, maybe people are simple objects. Whenever you have a complex object, like an atom or the solar system, you can say, what are the principles by which all the constituent objects are being organized into the larger system, right? How do you put these components together to get a complex object? So you've got a complex object here like a widget. Then as you can see, this has got lots of components, right? And what this kind of exploded view does is it shows you how to assemble all the components into a single complex object. So are people simple or complex? Are you a simple object or a complex object? Complex. Put up your hand if you think the answer is complex. And if you think the answer is simple, OK. A small but significant proportion there for simple. OK. The overflowing majority says complex. OK, well, Descartes, if you remember Descartes, we did this, right? It seems like a long time ago now. The body is by its very nature always divisible while the mind is utterly indivisible. And in the face of it, Descartes is saying that the mind is simple. The mind has no components. Yeah? It is just a kind of blob of ectoplasm, right? So Descartes saying the mind or the self has no parts from which it's composed. There are no components to the self. And there's nothing to say about the way components are put together, the way you get unity of the system. And Hume in the selections in Perry is trying to blow that up. Hume doesn't agree for a minute with a guy who says the self is simple. Hume says, what are you talking about when you say the self is simple? What is that thing? For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, when I look, I mean, you can try this now, look inside your own mind. What is there in your own mind? Do you see the self? What do you get? You always come upon some particular thought that's going through your head, some feeling that you're having, some particular perception or other of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. That's all you get. What you never get when you look inside yourself, when you look inside your own mind is the self. I never catch myself, myself, at any time without a perception. And I never can observe anything but the perception. So if there is a self the way Descartes thought there was a self, it's something you never see. You don't see it when you look inside your own mind. You don't see it when you look at your body. That's just another accompaniment of the soul. I mean, what would it be to look inside yourself and see your own essence, see which particular soul you are? Hume says, if any impression gave rise to the idea of the self, that impression must continue invariably the same through the whole course of our lives since, after all, through the whole course of your life, you were always around. You see what I mean? So it would have to be that when right now I say, think about what's going through your mind right now. When you looked inside your own mind, you always got the same person. You always looked and you say, oh, there I am again. You see what I mean? You just showed up kind of like having tinnitus or something where you hear that note running through your entire psychological life. You look inside your mind and you say, oh, there I am. There it is, good old me, yet again. And Hume's point is that is just not what happens. There is no such thing as the self over and above the body and strings of mental states related to that body. That's all the self can be. The self has got to be a complex object because we have no picture of what any simple object might be that would be the self. The only thing we have any conception of are the body and strings of mental states associated with that body. And we have to think of the body as a kind of complex, sorry, we have to think of the self as a complex of the body and those strings of mental states. The self being whoever you are, whatever it is that you want to survive, if I'm asking what is it that I want to survive, then one first question to ask is it a simple object or is it a complex object? And what Hume's arguing, what I'm arguing is, it's a complex object, it's not a simple object. And when you ask what the components of this complex object are, it's a body and a string of mental states related to that body. Yep, fair enough. Do the guys you think the self is simple want to protest at this point? Let me, no? Okay, come back later. Okay, Hume says, I cannot compare the soul more properly to anything than, I mean, he means the self, you. I cannot compare it more properly to anything than to a republic or commonwealth in which the several members are united by the reciprocal ties of government and subordination and give rise to other persons who propagate the same republic in the incessant changes of its parts. So here's Hobbes' picture of the famous picture of Leviathan. The state, actually you can't see this very well, but this is composed of lots of individual people. So the idea is the state is composed as a classic complex object. The state is composed of lots of individual citizens all interacting with one another, organized into subsystems, organized into groups that interact with one another. And the identity of the state is a matter of how those groups of individual people are organized. This says, Hume says, you should compare the mind to the state, to our republic or commonwealth. You have all these individual components, all these thoughts, feelings, experiences and the body and they are all organized into systems. They are all interacting with one another. The self is nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity and they're in perpetual flux or movement. So when you're thinking, I want to make it, I want to survive, I want to be here in 2014 or 2015 or whenever, you want to make it through. What you're concerned about there is the persistence of a bundle or collection of different perceptions. That's okay? This is analyzing what that concern to survive is. That's spelling it out. So here the way Hume's putting it, the identity of the self is like the identity of a river. That you can think of a river as organized out of lots of particles, of flowing upon one another. I mean we talk about the stream of consciousness, that hoosh, that torrent of feelings, thoughts, experiences, perceptions and so on. And suppose you think about the identity of the river as the identity of a river and all of the nothing process. And if you ever get interested in waterways, it's actually often quite difficult to know when you get the same river again. Suppose a river branches, which branch is the same as the original river? Yeah, that's kind of hard to say. If you just look at a map, it's very hard to just read off. To tell just from the shapes of the river what paths they take, when you've got the same river again and when you haven't. When one splits off and goes to a dead end and the other branch carries on and then loops back round, when do you have the same river? It's very hard to answer these questions. And with rivers, I mean who cares frankly, right? I mean it doesn't really matter. You can arbitrarily say what you like because the hard facts are the facts about the flux of all the water molecules. So the concern to survive is concern for the survival of a person. And if we think of a person as a complex object, then we ought to be able to give an exploded view of what a person is. I mean I said we've got a picture, you can give a picture like this when you've got a complex object or what all the components are and how they're put together. So if you want this to survive, well what is it that you're concerned about? That gives you an analysis of what you're concerned about if you want that thing to last. So how would you specify the components of a person and how they're to be put together to make a thing? What are the components of a person? All you guys said to people you were, all you guys wanted to be complex, right? If there are complexes, there must be symbols. So what are the symbols? Excellent, yeah, I agree, that's absolutely a natural starting point, yeah? Yeah? Emotions, sure, yeah. Right. Yeah, I mean just as with the state, you could say there are different kinds of systems here. They're all combined together to give you the state. One, two. Physical components, yeah, the body, the heart, the lungs, the liver, that kind of thing. Sure, yep. Sorry? Motivations, absolutely, yeah. So you would expect those to be the components, yeah? There is one, I strongly agree, that's a terrific list. There is one puzzle here. Usually with a complex object, when you've got components, the components can exist independently of their being in the thing, right? I mean you could take any one of those components out and it would still be fine, even if it wasn't organized into the thing. But with experiences, it's kind of different. Could you have experiences that were existing outside the life of a person? I mean, you could take the spring here and put it on the shelf, right? Can you take one of your experiences extracted out of your life and just leave it hanging about somewhere? You see what I mean? We haven't assembled that one into a person yet. Yeah? I'm sorry. Yes, well, I see, it's not part of the person until it's put into your memory. Yeah? Yeah? What about your perception? That's a really interesting idea, yeah? I mean, the perceptions you're having right now, don't they belong to you? Yeah, they didn't have to wait for you to remember them. I mean, if they weren't yours to start with, then you wouldn't know which ones you had to remember. If you see what I mean, yeah? Because I'm having perceptions, you're having perceptions, but if they're just kind of in a heap there, not owned by anyone, then how do I know which ones to remember? You know, it's only my own perception that I remember. Yeah? Okay, but that's an interesting idea. The great philosopher H.H. Price thought that, I'm blasted, thought that there were actually, just as you can have this kind of component lying around right in a garage or something, you might have a bunch of parts lying around that haven't been assembled into a person. Or as the last question that was suggesting, you know, perceptions that haven't been integrated into a person yet. Price thought that there were kind of orphaned experiences floating around in the world and that the great merit of, and what's the word I want? Mind-expanding drugs was that sometimes those perceptions would then bump into you. Other people, you know, unowned perceptions would be integrated into your own mental life. And that's when you got these strange parapsychological experiences, right? That was when one of these orphaned perceptions bumped into your bundle of perceptions. But it's kind of a weird idea. I mean, it's hard to know what to make of this, the idea that I agree that experiences must, if people are complex and experiences have got to be one of the components, but they're a little bit puzzling because it's not obvious that they really have a lives of their own outside the life of the person that they belong to. Yeah? Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Don't try this at home. I was merely quoting the views of the philosopher H.H. Price, right? I'm not making any recommendations to anyone, particularly not, because I mentioned it because the idea is so daft that it's not that the experiences are not understood. The idea, his idea was the experiences are kind of bouncing around, unowned by anyone. It's not your experience, it's not my experience, they're just in a heap. You see what I mean? It's not understanding, it's not understanding, they're not anyone's experiences, they're orphaned experiences. They don't belong to anyone. It's not that they're not understood. That was the example, right? That was Price's suggestion, but what I'm saying is that's a very difficult idea, right? It probably doesn't make any sense. Yeah? And if it doesn't make any sense, then the idea that experiences are components of the complex is a little bit puzzling because the experiences don't exist outside the complex. And usually when you break down a complex object into simple objects, the simple objects are ones that can't exist independently of the complex, yeah? The thing is, there's a hard drive, there's the files, and then there's the thing that's doing the processing. The CPU, okay, right. Data in the hard drive. Okay, but what's the identity of the self? What's the analog for the identity of the self? If you say it's just the CPU, then it doesn't have memories as components, yeah? Cause the CPU doesn't have data as components, yeah? Okay, Hume says the true idea of the human mind is to consider it as a system of different perceptions or different existences which are linked together by the relation of cause and effect and mutually produce, destroy, influence, and modify each other. That's kind of a powerful picture of what the person is, right? So if you ask, what is a person? Then you've got components like a body and experiences. And there was that much better list that people gave, motivations, emotions, and so on. And the body with its limbs and organs and so on. And then you ask, how are all these experiences and that body organized? How do you put them together? And Hume's saying, it's by what causes what. Now really, what's going on here is that we're doing the same thing we did in the last lecture from a slightly different angle. Last time I was saying memory is a cause or relation between an earlier perception and a present perception. You've got your current impression of the window in your childhood bedroom or your current impression of what happened here last week. And you had your perception then, your perception back then, and your perception back then causes the impression that you have right now. So that's part of what makes you hang together as a single person. That your past life is one of the big causes of your current mental life. Your past mental life is what's causing your current mental life. So if you ask, well, how can I give an exploded view of a person like that? Then it would be something like this, that you've got an earlier experience, you've got a later experience, you've got the body, those are the components. And then you put them together by causation. The earlier experiences cause the later experiences and the body is causally sustaining the whole lot. None of that would be happening without the body. And in the central, what if Locke's right are the central cases, perception and memory are really the clear examples here of the earlier perception causing the later memory. So that's like the exploded view of a person, okay? That's the analog to that for a person. Fair enough, that's plain as day. Okay, so when you say, but will it be me? I want to make it, I want to survive. Then we can ask, what is it that you are so concerned about? What is the object that you're concerned about? And it's a complex object like this. Yeah, that's what you're concerned about. You're concerned to survive. But once you get it that the self is a complex object like that, it's a good question whether what we care about in survival is really all or nothing. And with a complex object after all, I mean, if you took a complex object like this and said, I really care about this, this is great sentimental value. I want this to continue to exist. Well, whether it makes it is not actually an all or nothing matter. I mean, some of these parts might be replaced by others. You might replace all of the parts by others. You might replace just one and there might be lots of intermediate cases and you might change its functioning, you might change its structure. It might not be put together in just the same way. So there might be a clear case where you say, this is definitely the same thing. A clear case where you say, is not the same thing, but lots of cases in between where you're not quite sure what to say and where your feelings about it are really intermediate, mixed, ambivalent, you're not dead sure if it is the same sentimental value for you that it used to. So what we care about when we care about survival, when you care about your own future, that might not be an all or nothing matter. After all, maybe in 10 years, you'll have completely forgotten the person you are now. Maybe in 10 years you'll be completely unlike the person you are now. Why should you care about that person? Because it's you. But maybe that's not an all or nothing matter. Maybe it can be more or less you. If the self is really, what I mean is, your reply there is really powerful if you think that the self is a simple object. If you think, well, there's just this blob of ectoplasm, that's me, right? What really matters is, is that there or not? But if the self is a complex object, then it's not an all or nothing matter. It's a matter of degree. Have I got what I want here well to some extent? Yeah, that's the first pass way of putting it, but I mean to go one step further than that and say, what is it that I care about? Yeah, you don't got an analysis of what I care about. This is giving an analysis of what you care about. So it's not that you care about the identity of any one of those components, yeah? What you care about is the whole structure. What you care about is that these experiences in that body should keep propagating into the future. So concern with an identity is really a concern with causal propagation. That was really the model of that thing about the table. Remember the thing about the table, the table annihilator and the table creator. Remember that, yeah? Identity is causal connectedness from the past into the future, yeah? So when you say, what I care about is, will it be me? What you're saying is, what I care about is, will there be causal propagation into the future? That's the same thing, yeah? We're getting an analysis of what that is. It's causal propagation into the future. You want all these components to keep propagating. And the thing here is, that can be a matter of degree. I mean, what kind of causal propagation you care about might be different from person to person? I mean, this has come up in the class before. People said, look, suppose I'm a great athlete or a pianist or something, then what I care about propagating into the future might be something pretty physical or I might care about my kind and generous disposition or the memories I have. I want them to keep being held on into the future. But there are lots of different dimensions to this. And if what you care about in caring about identity is causal propagation into the future, then that can come in degrees and you can get more or less of it. So if people are complex objects, then what matters in personal identity need not be and all or nothing are fair. We tend to say, but will it be me? In the case of the prince and the cobbler, if William's is saying, well, one of them is going to get tortured, one of them is going to get rewarded, and you say, but will it be me who's getting tortured or rewarded? Then that's talking as if the self was a simple object, but the self is a complex object. If the self is a complex object, then what we're talking about here is what's been causally propagated from me to that future person. One body has been causally propagated from this body. Another set of experiences has been causally propagated from this set of experiences. And to what extent I'm getting what I want here, there might be to be a mixed answer there. It's not all or nothing. Putting it in terms of, but will it be me is just too simple. Let's to look at what happens to the question, but will I survive? Once you take on board the popular idea that the self is a complex object, it stops being a simple all or nothing matter. Is that perfectly straightforward? Exactly, you wouldn't fear death. You would not fear death. I vote you care about is causally, your current moods, feelings, experiences, memories, what you care about them is affecting what happens later. Well, you might get that to a very large extent, even through physical death. If you have left your mark on a ton of people, then the impact of what you've done will keep going pretty much as if you'd been alive. So identity isn't important. What you really care about anyway, when you naively put it, when one naively puts it by saying, I want it to be me that's still there. That's not really what you care about. What you care about is this causal continuity, but you could have that even if you weren't there. So death should lose its thing. That's right, that's right, it really should. Having children should allow you to be a particularly easy way of allowing you to causally propagate your influence into the future. You're going to have a big impact on them, yeah. And isn't that the truth? That's exactly how it works, yeah. Yes, people with many children should be less afraid of death, yeah. And aren't they, isn't that in fact how it works? I don't know, I don't know. Yeah. You can let us know, Jocop. Yeah, but exactly, that's exactly the picture here. Okay, so we started out with that thing of, that panic, or the light going out. And then you analyze, what is it that I'm scared of here? What is going on? And you take on board that the self is complex and that identity here is just earlier things affecting later things. You can say, well, that's what I'm so fired up about. And now you find, well, actually there are lots of ways I can get that affecting the future bit. And identity is really not key here at all. My own identity just drops out, Wednesday. So, part of its thing about fission was the human divides into two separate people. And if only one of them had taken, you'd have said that's the same as the original person. But, and I said, well, is that the light going out? But now you've got an analysis of what's going, of what you care about when you care about the light going out. What you care about is that the string of experiences associated with this body should be affecting what happens later. But of course, you're getting that here. You're getting a lot of impact from what happened here or what happens later. So in this case, you're actually getting everything that you care about in ordinary survival. If you make it through to 2014, then you've got all this stuff down here, causally, if this is 2014 here, then you've got what happens here at the early stage, causally affecting what happens there. That's what you care about when you say I want to make it through to 2014. But actually, if you fission, you're going to have double the causal influence that you would usually have had, right? Because down this branch, you've got one river of emotions and thoughts and memories and so on, all causally affected by what happened here. And down this branch, you've got another string of memories and so on, all causally affected by what happened down here. So is that as good as ordinary survival? It's better than ordinary survival. Is twice as good as ordinary survival? If you really care about your own survival, you should not just wealth, not fear fission. You should want it. You should be pleading for it, right? Because you're going to have all you care about in ordinary survival, even though there's no one around then who's identical to you. That's not the important thing. It just doesn't matter that there should be someone at the later time who's identical to you. In the fission case, what we've got is a plethora of causal influence in the future. But that's all that the concern to survive is. I mean, we're saying you can explain what a person is in terms of these components, the individual experiences, the emotions, the motivations, the body and its members, the body and its organs. And so we've got an analysis of what you care about when you want to survive. And so when you say I want to survive, I want to make it, what you're saying is I want that the stream of experiences causally related to these current experiences and this body should be as prolonged and rich as possible. Yeah? If you say I want to live a long life, I want to have a long, happy life, then that's what you're asking for. A string of experiences in the future that are prolonged, that are rich and they're all causally connected to your current string of experiences. Yeah? That's fair enough. That's just a laborious way of saying what you want in survival. But after ordinary death, you don't get that. Usually when you die, that string of experiences just comes to a halt. Yeah? Unless you've managed to influence people around you. But after fission, you get far more experiences causally related to your current experiences and to this body. So fission is far better than ordinary survival, even though you no longer exist. It's not just that you ought not to fear it. It's the best thing that could happen. You don't exist. I don't know what the rest of it means, but you don't exist. Yeah? That's the key thing. You've stopped existing. But nonetheless, this is a wonderful scenario. Be as selfish as you like. This is the best scenario you could hope for, even though you don't exist anymore. Yep? Yes? Yeah? The sudden stop? The sudden stop. Yes, right. There's a sudden stop in there. That's right. There's a sudden stop. Yeah. The next moment there is safety. That's right. So what's not to like? Because usually what happens in ordinary death is this is causally affecting that and that is causally affecting that and that is causally affecting that. And then there's a hiatus where this stops causally affecting stuff later. But here, you have double the usual effects without identity. So that's great. Can you put your hand up if you'd go for fission? I mean, if I said, give me the choice, okay. Yeah, we actually have here a small booth outside. Would you go for it? Can you put your hand up if you would? And if you wouldn't? Whoa. Well, I've done the best I can for fission. I mean, what's wrong with it? What's not to like? Yes. With a river. Yeah, you can see, yeah, okay. That's right. Yeah, that's right. I think that's right, yeah. There is renewal and replenishment in every life the whole time. All you're getting here is double the usual dose of renewal and replenishment. That's right. Yeah. I think that's exactly right. It is glorified, yeah, but it is a version of it. And the point is, that's just great, even though you no longer exist, even though there is nobody around who's identical to you. Yeah. No, well, in that case, you do exist. Yeah, there is one person all the way through, but that's not the important thing. I mean, you- Why should we say that? Yeah. Yeah. It's a little different. Uh-huh. Okay, yes, I see what you mean. Yeah, that's right. I mean, it's still literally cruel to say that there's exactly one person here. As you and I are talking, say, there's just one person that's talking to me the whole way through. But although that's literally through, it's not as important as we tend to think it is. The identity of the self is not such an important notion because of the kind of thing you're saying, that all the identity of the self is, is this causal continuation. And you're saying, but people affect each other the whole time. And that's right. And that weakens the importance of this notion that it's one in the same self. It weakens its importance. It's still literally true that there's just one person now the whole way through. One, two. I think in that case, we'd say you did still exist. Yeah, that was a kind of logical puzzle thing I set up at the start. There's no way of identifying the thing that is you in the future. It can't be one rather than the other. There are other. That's right. It's because there are two. That's why you don't think this, yeah. Yeah, I agree. It's a little bit frustrating this, but the trouble is there is really no satisfactory way of saying which thing you would be in that future scenario. Yeah. Isn't it? I mean, who would you be lefty? Would you go for lefty? Yeah. Oh yeah, right. To whichever one. Okay, the ectoplasm went, but if the ectoplasm went the lefty, then you'd be lefty. And if the ectoplasm went righty, then you'd be righty. Yes. Okay, but remember what the problem always is for our dualism. Yeah. Suppose, so let's be dualist, right? Suppose the ectoplasm fusions. It doesn't fission. Okay. Sorry? Very good. Suppose X is male and X is a wife, yeah? I agree. There are going to be a number of practical problems, yeah. Yes. No, I think that's a real concern. The thing is, I mean, I don't wish to sound, I don't wish to sound like I'm trying to undermine the value of family or something, but complications about your partner seem to be different to fear of dying. Do you see what I mean? It's one thing to say, I don't like this scenario because there'll be such a complicated situation with my partner. It's a different thing to say, I don't like this scenario, because I'll be dead. You see what I mean? The dead thing, well, I don't want to weigh these against one another really, but the dead thing seems so visceral, right? Yeah. It is the same thing. I see you could say that, but I mean, really, if this one hadn't taken, I mean, suppose the way it works is like this, suppose you're told, your body is going through this very difficult regenerative phase, and the way it works is sometimes the whole system just breaks down, sometimes one of the fission products makes it, and sometimes the other fission product makes it, but sometimes one of them only has lasts for a couple of seconds, yeah? And so after the procedure, you wake up, you're lefty, and you're lying in a hospital bed, and you're thinking, well, if righty doesn't make it, then I'll be the same as X, yeah? And I'll have survived. Well, let's hope righty doesn't make it, right? You might go over and pull out righty's plug, right? I mean, but that really seems kind of mean. I mean, why not just wish righty the best? Yeah, I mean, apart from this thing about your partner, yeah? Right, but what's the X's perspective here? Yeah, well, let me put it like this, from X's perspective, suppose righty didn't make it, right? So X is here, up here on the lefty branch, we've still got X, yeah? Should X really be feeling triumphant because righty didn't make it? No, no, X has made it, if righty didn't take, yeah? Then X has made it. So from X's perspective, could it really be right to be saying, ha, I'm so happy about righty not making it? Yeah, I mean, that really seems kind of mean. I mean, why not wish righty the best? Why not do what you can to get righty through it? Do you see what I mean? Yeah, that's right, I change the scenario, yeah, yeah. I can do that. No. There was someone else, one or two? Yeah, right, yeah. That's still X? That's still X, that's what I meant by doing that walk, right? If I just walked to the left, well, sure, that's me. Yes, that's right, that's exactly what I'm arguing right now. Why should it be X to be a failure? Oh, yeah, I'm to the side, that's still X. Okay, well, if you just think, there's something that's really right about what you and people earlier were saying. But the thing that's puzzling here is, just the logic of identity. If you're really talking about identity, then there can almost be one of them, yeah? So if you've got two here, they can't be identical to each other and so on. Now, you're saying, well, just because you got branching, why is that such a big deal? Why does that matter? I think that's right, but the reason you see why that's right is, you say, well, what is identity anyway? Identity is when I got these causal connections between earlier and later. And the thing about these causal connections is, they can branch, yeah? So the underlying causal connections can be branching and that's all just fine. As you're saying, that's not a big deal. But you can't catch it by talking about identity because identity doesn't allow branching. Or X, like I could just easily say that X is chain. Okay, so you would, yeah, that is one thing. By definition, identity is one to one. Is that addressing what you're saying? Oh, Austin, you're informative. Yeah, like cartoon or something. Yeah, yeah. What will you mean by? Yeah, when you analyze what it is, it's just the psychological and bodily chain. And then you say, but I could get that saying kind of by psychological and biological chain branching. Yeah, and that's fine, but that's not identity. It can't be because of the branching, it's not identity. I guess what an email is like, right? Yeah. That's like, like, the first student all over the world, right? They're like French officers. Yes, that's right. That's right. I strongly agree. And that's emphasizing the importance of these causal connections generally. And saying identity is not the key thing. Yeah, I think that's actually agreeing with part of it. Yeah, it's a different identity. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You may have been powerfully affected. Yeah, I'm just trying to stay on, what should I say, on the ground of common sense and say, you know, this lecture may have affected you powerfully, but you're still the one and the same person as you are coming into the room. Because that would be a contradiction. Aha, that's exactly the point, right? You've got everything that matters in survival. You've got all the important things here, even though you don't have identity. Well, identity means there's just one person here, but there are two, right? I mean, yeah, yeah, yes, absolutely, yeah, yeah. That's right. But you know it can't go to both of them and you know that the situation is symmetrical. So there's no justification for saying it's one rather than the other. Okay, we've been going to find out what kind of thesis people were thinking of for their essays today. But discussion just hoted up so much in the last quarter of an hour that I let it run over. Shall we do that on Tuesday? Yeah, because I think that's really interesting hearing what people are up to and I'll pack it up for today. Okay, thanks guys, okay.