PID and Moral Responsibility

PAP, otherwise known as the principle of alternative possibilities, is the claim that someone is not morally responsible for actions when he could not have done otherwise.  How we define a person certainly has consequences, then, for claims about personal moral responsibility.  Recall that Locke thinks that humans and animals are different than machines because whereas machines must be operated by someone, humans and other animals are the source of their own movement. If determinism is true, then it seems like even our own thoughts are mechanical insofar as they are caused by external forces.  So if humans are 'mechanical' in this sense, then they never seem to have the ability to act other than they have.  As a result, it seems like humans could never be morally responsible. 

Derren Brown Messes with Memory

In this post, I talk about a short clip where Derren Brown messes with Simon Pegg.

This clip might make us worry that memory is too unreliable to serve as a criterion for personal identity.

Parfit on Personal 'Identity'

The problem of personal identity is the question about how we define a person.  In other words, what makes me me?  How do we decide if there is some person who is the same person as me?  Locke answers this problem by saying that personal identity consists of autobiographical memories.  Reid shows that this theory will violate the transitivity of identity.  Parfit's contribution to the literature on the problem of personal identity is to note that strict numerical identity might not be the appropriate concept.  Rather, he talks about survival.  The question of whether you survive is the same question as whether there is some person who is you.  In the links below, I discuss the difference between identity and survival in more detail.

Parfit on PID.

Identity vs. Survival.

The Memory Theory of Personal Identity and Star Trek

In season 1, episode 7 of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, entitled "Dax", the trill species is explored in some detail.  Trill are a species that can serve as a host for a symbiont species.  In other words, a small, crab-like conscious organism can be joined with the internal organs of a trill so that two consciousness are joined into one.  Upon joining, all memories & experiences of the symbiont and its prior hosts are incorporated into the consciousness of the host.  Jadzia Dax is a crewmember on DS9.  Dax is the name of the symbiont.  Jadzia is the name of the woman who is joined with the symbiont.  Although they were once two separate consciousnesses, Jadzia Dax is now one single consciousness.  In this episode, Jadzia is charged with a crime committed when the symbiont was joined with a prior host, Curzon.  In the episode, the characters debate whether Jadzia Dax is a different person than Curzon Dax and whether she should be responsible for what Curzon has done. 

In episode 8 of the same season, a criminal tries to escape punishment by hiding in the consciousness of other beings.

Both these episodes raise questions relevant not only to personal identity, but also to moral responsibility (our next topic)

BTW, all seasons of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine are available on netflix or on amazon prime.  Amazon prime is free to students for one year if you register with your .edu email address.  Just sayin...

Locke vs. Parfit

In this post, I link to other posts about Locke and Parfit on the topic of personal identity.

Lots of Locke!

In this post, I write about the problem of personal identity and Locke.

In this one, I explain how different things have different criteria for identity, according to Locke.

Here I give some context for Locke.

AND HERE I link to two tracks from members of MN hip hop collective Doomtree: P.O.S.'s De la Souls & Dessa's The Man I Knew.

Locke on Living Things

"That being then one plant which has such an organization of parts in one coherent body, partaking of one common life, it continues to be the same plant as long as it partakes of the same life, though that life be communicated to new particles of matter vitally united to the living plant, in a like continued organization conformable to that sort of plants." (Bk. II, Ch. XXVII, sect. 4)

In the above passage, Locke explains that the identity of a plant is determined by the fact that a plant participates in 'one common life' with 'an organization of parts' in one body.  Even though the life is 'communicated to new particles of matter', these new particles are 'vitally united' to the plant.  Vital here means not only essential but also related to the life of the plant (c.f., vital signs, vitality).

Even a cell is a living thing with an organization of parts.  The different parts of the cell each have a function in preserving and perpetuating the life of the cell.  Although the specific particles or atoms that make up the cell may change over time, the life is a continuous one.  The body may exchange some particles for others, but it remains coherent.