Epistemic Possibility and the Necessity of Origin

Metaphilosophy 51 (5):685-701 (2020)
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Abstract

The necessity of origin suggests that a person’s identity is determined by the particular pair of gametes from which the person originated. An implication is that speculative scenarios concerning how we might otherwise have been had our gametic origins been different are dismissed as being metaphysically impossible. Given, however, that many of these speculations are intelligible and commonplace in the discourses of competent speakers, it is overhasty to dismiss them as mistakes. This paper offers a way of understanding these speculations that does not commit them to incoherence but aims to make the best sense of what they are expressing. Using the philosophical framework of two‐dimensional semantics, it proposes that the speculative scenarios are best analysed as epistemic possibilities, rather than as metaphysical possibilities. It then explores some implications of this analysis for the ethical challenges associated with the non‐identity problem.

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Hane Htut Maung
Lancaster University

References found in this work

Reasons and Persons.Derek Parfit - 1984 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press.
Does conceivability entail possibility.David J. Chalmers - 2002 - In Tamar Szabo Gendler & John Hawthorne (eds.), Conceivability and Possibility. Oxford University Press. pp. 145--200.
Freedom of the will and the concept of a person.Harry G. Frankfurt - 1971 - Journal of Philosophy 68 (1):5-20.

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