Transporter Problem and PID

SMBC has another winner here, where they consider the transporter problem.  In Star Trek, a transporter dissolves your molecules and then rearranges them, effectively destroying and then reconstructing an individual.  What consequences might this have for personal identity? 

The Joy of a Child

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal is an often philosophical and inappropriate webcomic.

This comic about the lost pleasures of childhood can be understood as a thought experiment that shows us the difference between higher and lower pleasures.  Recall that Mill, who thinks morality depends on maximizing happiness, thought that some pleasures were of a better quality.  For example, intellectual pleasures such as playing chess or reading poetry are higher quality then merely sensual pleasures such as eating ice cream or snuggling.  Mill also notes that physical health is a higher pleasure.  Unfortunately, many people seem to prefer lower pleasures that actually harm physical health.  Mill would say that such people have forgotten how to enjoy the higher pleasures such as physical well-being, as, "Capacity for the nobler feelings is in most natures a very tender plant, easily killed, not only by hostile influences, but by mere want of sustenance..." (Utilitarianism, Ch. II)

Hiedegger: Being and Time

What follows is a list of definitions of terms and clarifications of those definitions.

For Heidegger, Being is whatever transcends our reality/existence.  Traditionally, philosophers have understood Being as a substance or a kind of stuff.  Heidegger wants to avoid this substance ontology and instead is concerned with Being as something that transcends all beings, or all things in our reality. 

Whereas Being is the most universal concept, the fact that it transcends our reality means that it is most obscure, so we cannot think of its universality in terms of a genus to a species, as philosophers have traditionally thought.  Another prejudice of traditional ontology is to think that just because Being is not able to be defined in terms of beings (things in our reality), this eliminates the question of Being.  But Heidegger thinks we just need a new kind of questioning.  Although we lack clear knowledge about Being in spite of that fact that it is a self-evident concept insofar as it is part of everything, the reason why we have no clear knowledge of it is because its everydayness obscures it. 

So rather than do traditional ontology, Heidegger wants to do fundamental ontology as the existential analysis of Dasein.  Dasein, or people, are the kinds of beings who in their Being as a being are concerned with their own Being.  In other words, part of our essence as physical beings is to be concerned with what transcends our own existence. 

Dasein is also able to reveal truth.  For Heidegger, truth is what we call it when something is revealed as it is itself.  Truth as uncovering or revealing is contrasted with the traditional correspondence theory of truth, according to which sentences are true insofar as they correspond to reality.  In other words, the traditional theory of truth says that statements are true because they accurately represent some fact about the world.  In contrast, Heidegger thinks that truth is in the things themselves when they are revealed as they really are.

The title of the book, Being and Time, reflects the fact that Heidegger thinks that time is the basic meaningful structure for our existence.  Dasein is its past and its past is always ahead of itself.  To say that Dasein is its past means that Dasein is shaped by its history.  To say that its past is always ahead of itself means that our future is also shaped by our history.  These features of the meaningful structure of time are the result of Dasein's ecstatic temporality.  Although the experience of time is as of a series of 'now' moments, the meaning of time is such that our past shapes our present and future.  In addition, our present determines how we interpret our past and how we envision our future.  Likewise, our envisioned future changes how we interpret our past and our present.

Tons of Links

Hello, folks!  All the links listed below are for this website.

Here I link to previous posts about Locke on PID.

This is a short bit about Locke on Living Things.

Here I connect issues of personal identity with Star Trek.

Various Links on Parfit and PID.

The relationship between personal identity and moral responsibility is explored here.

Pfizz #1 and the relationship between PAP and moral responsibility are addressed here.

Humans are Fleshy Robots?

In Breakfast of Champions, a novel by Kurt Vonnegut, the main character reads a book that convinces him that all other humans are no more than fleshy machines.  He believes that he alone is capable of free will.  This belief affects his behaviors towards other people and is a way he justifies mistreating some of them.  This novel is a silly and vulgar expression of the effects of how we define personhood and humanity. 

Unfortunately, Western civilization has seen many similar sorts of stories manifest in real life.  Consider how the ways we define humanity and personhood have been used in the past to justify oppression and violence.  To what extent should our definitions of 'humanity' and 'person' be inclusive?  Consider how such definitions influence our concepts of moral responsibility and morality.  Are there non-human persons?  Is it conceivable that non-humans may have something like 'humanity'?  To what extent is humanity necessary for moral obligations? 

Regan on Vegetarianism

Like Singer, Regan wants to provide an argument for vegetarianism. Unlike Singer, Regan does not want to base his argument on utilitarianism. Instead, Regan thinks that animal rights are the way to defend vegetarianism. We can think of rights in three ways. A legal right is a right granted by a legal authority. A natural right is what people talk about when they think that there is a naturally given right that people (or animals) ought to have. A moral right is just the other side of a moral obligation or duty. If someone has a duty to do X for you, then you have a right to have them do X. Regan is concerned with rights of the second and third kind. Regean claims that Singer's strongest arguments in favor of vegetarianism are arguments based on animals rights. Specifically, it seems that animals have a right to life.

Why might we think that animals have a right to life? Regan thinks that although Singer is wrong to base his arguments in utilitarianism, there is something right about focusing on an animal's capacity for pain. Regan says that the capacity for suffering is the basis of a right to life, or a right to live. He notes even though some humans are non-rational, they still have similar capacities for suffering as non-human animals. Regan says that the reasons why we don't eat non-rational human beings apply to animals as well. Namely, we don't eat non-rational human beings because they have the capacity to suffer. This capacity to suffer is the basis of a right to life. Regan notes that a rights-based approach is better equipped to explain why we do not kill and eat non-rational humans better than utilitarianism, Kantian ethics and egoism (self-interest).

Singer, Utilitarianism, and Vegetarianism

Singer argues that if one accepts utilitarianism, then one must also accept vegetarianism. Basically, if you accept that pain is morally bad, then eating meat is bad on the grounds that is causes pain to animals.

1. If Utilitarianism is true, then pain and pleasure are the basis of all moral value.

2. Animals experience pleasure and pain.

3. If pleasure and pain are the basis of all moral value, then animals are morally significant.

4. So, if utilitarianism is true, then animals are morally significant.

Singer notes that there are three ways that this kind of argument seems to fall short of supporting full-fledged vegetarianism. First, it seems like utilitarianism gives good reason only to avoid certain kinds of sourcing meat. Specifically, it seems like factory farming should be avoided but that free-range organic methods of raising animals are morally neutral or good. Singer replies by reminding the reader that A) most meat on the market is from factory farms and B) even if we raise livestock in humane ways before we kill and eat it, even the mere act of killing animals puts us on a slippery slope towards further harm towards animals. Second, someone might object that the consequences of abolishing factory farming are worse than the consequences of business as usual. Singer notes that many things must be taken into account: the potential loss of happiness of vegetarians, the loss of livelihood of producers of factory-farmed products, environmental consequences, global and individual health concerns and the suffering of animals. Even if the loss to those employed by the industrial livestock industry were greater than the suffering animals are caused now, Singer notes that this would be a one-time loss of happiness, whereas business as usual means the continued suffering of animals. Third, Singer note that some people may think that consequentialist analysis cannot lead to the conclusion of vegetarianism. Consider, for example, that it may take ten thousand vegetarians to save the lives of twenty thousand chickens. Unless you are the ten thousandth vegetarian, then you will not meet a threshold needed to save those chickens. But Singers says that consequentialists act based on likely outcomes, so being certain that I save ten chickens is just as good as being the single vegetarian responsible for saving twenty thousand chickens. Perhaps this is not his best point. But he notes that refusing to consume meat is the most straightforward and practical step to limit meat consumption. Also, by refusing to eat meat, one expresses condemnation for a practice that causes animals to suffer. Either way, Singer thinks that utilitarianism will lead to vegetarianism.