In the thought experiments that Williams presents, which of them do you think offers a more compelling account of identity? The case for psychological continuity in the first though-experiment, or the case for bodily-continuity in the second? Why do you think this? (100+ words)

Discussion
Introduction
In the paper, The Self and The Future, Bernard Williams presents two thought-experiments. The first thought-experimentthe body swapping scenariois intended to show that personal identity is constituted by psychological continuity, that what constitutes our identity through time is our capacity to remember experiences that we once had, or for some future person to remember the experiences that I now am currently having. When the A-body person is asked who should receive the money, presumably he will say that it should go to the B-body person; after all, that is where all his (A’s) memories will be. If, after the experiment, the B-body person finds themselves being tortured, he will presumably say, “This isn’t what I asked for, I asked for the money!”; that is, the B-body person will remember their decision (as A) to have the money go to whoever ends up in the B-body person. This seems to give credence to the intuition that A really is now in B’s body, and that B is now really in A’s body. Even though A’s body has fundamentally changed (he now has B’s body), the fact that he can remember his past experiences as A inclines us to say that this really is person A in a new body.

Williams, however, presents a second thought-experiment (a re-description of the first, but now from the first-person perspective) that is intended to undermine this intuition, and suggests instead that personal identity is constituted by bodily continuity, that what constitutes our identity through time is the continuation of this very same physical body. In this scenario we are to imagine that we are undergoing the experiment and being confronted with the possibility of torture. We are told about all the changes that we will undergo before the torture occurs, the amnesia we will experience, the changes in our character that will occur, the new memories we will have implanted. Williams thinks, that when put this way, even though everything about our psychology will have completely changed, we still have adequate reasons for fearing the experience of future pain. If that’s correct, then it looks like our expectation of pain reaches through all of those psychological changes, that our fear of future pain extends to a self in the future who is independent of those psychological states. Williams concludes that it is to the body that our personal identity is tied, that the reason we fear this future pain is because it is this very same physical body that will undergo the torture. Ultimately, Williams thinks that this second scenario is more reflective of what one would undergo in their first-personal experience if such an experiment were to take place. He thus concludes that the theory of bodily continuity is more explanatory of personal identity than is the theory of psychological continuity.
In his essay, “Personal Identity”, Derick Parfit takes a different approach than Williams, arguing that while some conception of psychological continuity can adequately handle most ordinary cases, certain other cases (i.e., fission) suggest that our conception of numerical identity is altogether inadequate. In such cases, we find that if our conception of psychological continuity presupposes numerical identity, we have no idea what to say. Parfit thinks that once we give up the notion of numerical identity, well be able to give an answer to such cases. What matters is not one-to-one relations, but rather, relations of degree. If we abandon one-to-one identity in favor of a conception of psychological continuity that comes in degrees, well be able to give an account of how the person who fissions goes on to survive as both the resulting persons, even though neither of those persons will be him. For Parfit, once we recognize that psychological continuity without identity is the best way of understanding whats happening in the case of fission, well also begin to see that this is a better way of understanding identity more generally. Well come to realize that our talk of identity need not imply a single underlying person who exists through the various stages of life.

Objective
Consider whether identity is best understood from the view of psychological continuity or bodily continuity, or if it is better understood if we drop the notion of numerical identity?

Steps
In the thought experiments that Williams presents, which of them do you think offers a more compelling account of identity? The case for psychological continuity in the first though-experiment, or the case for bodily-continuity in the second? Why do you think this? (100+ words)

Does Parfit’s account of psychological continuity that doesn’t presuppose identity offer a better explanation of our actual experience of identity than either the psychological or bodily theories of continuity? Why or why not? (100+ words)

If you were pressed to give an account of what you think the self is, how would you respond? (50+ words)

Last Completed Projects