September 2008 Archives

Imagine that you become very angry with Smith and sever three of his fingers, harming him severely. After a hospital stay and surgery, Smith decides to take a trip to Mars. We no longer use spaceships for this long trip. Instead, Smith hops in a teletransporter (TT). If Smith presses the red button, he will lose consciousness momentarily, the (TT) will then record the exact states of all of Smith's cells while destroying them. The information is transmitted to a Replicator on Mars which then creates, out of new matter, a brain and body exactly like Smith's. Typically, all of Smith's memories, psychological states, dispositions, and bodily states would be preserved. This time, it does not happen. The Replicator does not replicate the memories of Smith, but produces a completely different set of memories, psychological dispositions, tastes, desires, and so on. But the Replicator does preserve all other bodily states, including Smith's missing fingers.
On every contemporary view, the personal identity of Smith is not preserved in Smith*. Smith* is a numercially different person.

How many people did you harm? Did you harm Smith and Smith*? I think the answer is no. Compare Mars Harm Two.

According to a version of essentiality of origins for events, if an event E is explanatorily prior to an event F, then F could not have occurred without E. Of course, an event qualitatively just like F might have occurred without E, but F itself could not have.

Suppose Molinism is true. For a reductio, suppose God brought it about that George would be shipwrecked, because God believed that
(1) Were George shipwrecked, he would freely behave heroically.
Let F be the event of George's shipwreck. I shall assume, as is plausible, that it is an essential property of F that F is a shipwreck of George's. Let E be the event of God's believing (1) to be true. Then, E is explanatorily prior to F. By essentiality of origins for events, the occurrence of F entails the occurrence of E. But the occurrence of E entails the truth of (1) (by God's essential infallibility).

Therefore, that George is in F entails (1). Likewise, that George is in F entails the antecedent of (1), since it is an essential property of F that F is a shipwreck of George's. Therefore, that George is in F entails that George freely behaves heroically. (If p entails a subjunctive conditional and its antecedent, it entails the consequent, because modus ponens holds in all worlds.) But this means that if George is in F, he cannot but behave heroically, and for libertarian reasons, it follows he does not freely behave heroically. Thus he both does and does not behave freely in F. Therefore, we must reject the possibility of the assumption that God brought about George's shipwreck because God believed (1).

Thanks to comments from Adam, Christian, John and others, I offer this much improved version of Parfit Pills. Assume that the fetus F is identical to the child C or F is not identical to C. A slightly more complicated version of the argument would assume that F and C are two stages of the same 4-D being or they are not. Here is premise (1).

1. (F = C) v ~(F = C)

Let's assume that the causal consequences of not taking the pills are that three fingers on the right hand of the fetus F become permanently detached (make it four fingers or the entire hand or arm, if nothing less would constitute a harm). Premise (2).

2. M's failing to take the pill causes the fingers of F to become permanently detached.

Now either M's actions harm F or they do not.

3. M harms F or M does not harm F.

4. M harms F (Assume)

5. F = C (Assume)

6. M harms C, from 4,5 Leibniz's Law

So if M's actions (which causally affect F) constitute a harm to F and F = C, then M harms C. But suppose M's actions do not harm F.

7. M does not harm F (Assume)

If (5) is also true (viz., F = C) and if it is urged that M does harm C, then we have a violation of Leibniz's law. If M harms C and C = F, then M harms F.

Finally, suppose that (5) is false. So, we are assuming (8),

8. ~(F = C) (Assume)

If (8) is true then (6) (viz., M harms C) is false. What the mother did caused F to lose his fingers. But F goes out of existence before the distinct being C comes into existence. The being that the mother's actions affected no longer exists. So though it is true that the mother did cause F to lose his fingers, she did not cause C to lose his fingers. So the mother did not harm C.

Conclusion: The mother caused F to lose his fingers. If, in so doing, the mother harmed C, then she harmed F. In Parfit's case the mother's action causally affects F. If, in so doing, the mother harms C, then she harms F. If diminishing F's future is a harm to F, then taking F's life is a harm to F.

Consider this well-known situation from Derek Parfit's Reasons and Persons.

. . .A women is three months pregnant when her doctor gives her both bad and good news. The bad news is that the fetus she is carrying has a defect that will significantly diminish the future child's quality of life--although not so adversely as to make the child's life utterly miserable, or not worth living at all. The good news is that this defect is easily treatable. All the women has to do is take a pill that will have no side-effects and the future child will not have the defect.

Parfit plausibly argues that, in this situation, we would all agree that the woman should take the pill, and that she does wrong if she refuses to take it. That seems exactly right to me. It would be a monstrous thing to do not to take the pill. But why? The argument must be that the fetus has a legitimate complaint in the case in which she does not take the pill. Here's Parfit.

Suppose the women does not take the pill. . . . and that as a result [the] child has a significant disability. It would seem that [she] has done something wrong. The . . . woman has harmed her child. That child can say to her mother: 'You should have taken the pill. If you had done so, I would not now have this disability, and my life would be significantly better.'

I propose the following principle.

K. If the mother harmed her child in not taking the pill, then she would have harmed her child in taking it's life.

It is difficult to see how (K) could be mistaken. If I harm a fetus in diminishing the quality of its future life (by failing to take a pill) then I harm the fetus in removing it's future life entirely.

Suppose you could replace an otherwise healthy, non-self-conscious human with another possible, healthy, non-self-conscious human (who otherwise would not have existed). What makes the replacement permissible is that existing, non-self-conscious humans are a lot like existing non-self-conscious fish.

. . . beings who are conscious but not self-conscious more nearly approximate the picture of recepticles for experiences of pleasure and pain, because their preferences will be of a more immediate sort. They will not have desires that project their images of their own existence into the future. Their conscious states are not linked over time. We can presume that if fish become unconscious, then before the loss of consciousness they would have no expectations or desires for anything that might happen subsequently, and if they regain consciousness, they have no awareness of having previously existed. Therefore if the fish were killed while unconscious and replaced by a similar number of other fish who could be created only because the first group of fish were killed, there would, from the point of view of fishy awareness, be no difference between that and the same fish losing and regaining consciousness. (Practical Ethics, 126 ff.)

This is an interesting claim, but it is difficult to see how it could be true.

At the risk of exhausting the remaining good will of some friends and acquaintances, I'll try to spell out an interesting consequence of 'Saving Non-persons'. Here's a modified version of that argument,

1. On any standard list of morally relevant properties, a newborn N is clearly a non-person.
2. On any standard list of morally relevant properties, a normal adult human being H is clearly a person.
3. Given the exclusive options of saving the life of newborn N or saving the life of H, an disinterested agent A is morally permitted to save N.
4. If persons had greater moral standing than non-persons, it would not be permissible for A to save N rather than H.
5. :. Being a person does not itself confer greater moral standing than being a non-person.

The necessary and sufficient conditions of personhood are typically said to include the possession of some subset of the following properties: rationality, self-awareness, concern for others, language ability, sense of the future and past and so on. Add or subtract the properties that you think are relevant here; I'm not so concerned about which properties actually matter to personhood. To put all most of my cards on the table, I've never been given a decent reason to believe that the standard list of properties is anything but pulled from fairly thin air. For the moment, though, let's assume the list is correct and that being a person itself confers on it's possessor some important moral standing. It matters directly what we do to, and what we allow to happen to, those beings that are persons. It matters only indirectly what we do to, or what we allow to happen to, those beings that are non-persons. Here's an argument why it is false that being a person itself confers on its possessor some important moral standing.

Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois. Rank open, tenured or tenure-track, beginning fall quarter, 2009. Multiple positions possible. 4 courses/year spread over 3 quarters, undergraduate and graduate Thesis supervision. Usual non-teaching duties. AOS: Metaphysics or Epistemology or Philosophy of Language or Philosophy of Mind (including Philosophy of Cognitive Science). AOC: Open.Salary Competitive. AA/EOE. Women and members of minority groups are encouraged to apply. Junior candidates should submit complete CV, three letters of recommendation, and writing sample; senior candidates should submit complete CV along with list of references. Send application materials to Search Committee 1, Department of Philosophy, Northwestern University, Kresge 2-335, 1880 Campus Drive, Evanston, IL 60208. Candidates whose materials are received by November 15, 2008 will get primary consideration.

http://www.wcas.northwestern.edu/epistemology/employment.html

A few days ago, I posted about some derised philosophy of religion articles for the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.  My friend Shawn Floyd is the medieval philosophy area editor for the IEP and thought that some PB-readers might be interested in contributing to the IEP's holdings in this area.  In particular, Shawn's hoping to consign articles in the following areas:

Medieval Philosophers 
Albert the Great
Aquinas's Metaphysics
Roger Bacon
John Buridan
William of Champeaux
Giles of Rome
Robert Grosseteste
Henry of Ghent
Peter Lombard
Maimonides
Meister Eckhart
Peter John Olivi

 

Medieval Topics
Medieval Philosophy (overview)
Theories of Cognition
Medieval Logic
Theories of Practical Reason
Theories of the Trinity

But he'd probably also be open to other articles as well.  If interetested, contact Shawn here.