Abstract

[B]ecause I have shown my hands to be empty you must now expect not only that an illusion will follow but that you will acquiesce in it.Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving oneself.What has to be overcome is not difficulty of the intellect but of the will.“Are you watching closely?”The last line of Parfit’s description of the “branch-line case” of tele-transportation, the very epicenter of his hugely influential thought experiment that famously proposes a radically new view on “personal identity,” runs as follows: “[W]hile I stand here speechless, I can see and hear myself, in the studio on Mars, starting to speak.”1 Parfit, notoriously, goes on to argue that the “branch-line” version of me, the “I” in the..