The Further Fact View of Personal Identity: The Case Against Parfit's Reductionism
Dissertation, The Claremont Graduate University (
2001)
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Abstract
In this dissertation I defend the claim that what matters in survival is continuing to be conscious or recovering consciousness, and its corollary that identity is a necessary condition for what matters in survival. ;Derek Parfit opposes this view, and my defense of it consists in a critical examination of the main types of imaginary cases he uses to argue for his Reductionist View . I argue for the following points: In a spectrum of cases in which varying percentages of one person's cells are replaced by duplicates of someone else's, it is plausible that there would be a sharp borderline between cases in which the resulting person is identical to the original and those in which he or she is someone else. In a case in which a person is replicated in such a way that no one, including the principals, would be able to tell which person is the original and which is the replica, we can understand nevertheless how there would be an important fact about identity. In a case in which a person splits into two, Reductionism implies results that are either inconsistent with Reductionism itself or else that are unbelievable. Imagining fission from a first-person perspective supports the Further Fact View: Either I survive as one of the offshoots, or as the other, or not at all. Parfit argues that these are three different ways of describing one and the same outcome. To support this view, he refers the reader to Russell's "On the Nature of Acquaintance". I examine Russell's arguments and find that they undermine Parfit's claim. ;In an epilogue, I offer the truth or falsity of the continuum hypothesis, which can be neither formally proved nor disproved, as an analogy of the Further Fact of identity in cases where no one will be able to tell who is who. I also briefly discuss an account of how one can reconcile oneself to one's own death, within the constraints of the Further Fact View