The Second Night
• Sam now points out some problems for
Gretchen’s view that the bodily identity is
personal identity
• When you wake up in the morning, you
know you are the same person, without
checking your body to see
• It seems possible for a person to discover
that they have a different body.
• These considerations suggest that
personal identity consists in psychological
continuity.
• It is neither a material nor mental
substance, but a relation that obtains
between the times of a person’s life.
Four Dimensionalism
• A person is extended not just in space, but
also time. Each moment of time is a
segment, a part of a person’s life.
• Personal identity depends on a
constitution relation that obtains between
these different parts.
• What is the constitution relation?
• Sam answers: the Constitution relation is
memory.
• But memory can’t just be an experience, a
seeming to remember. It has to be
genuine Memory
• Gretchen thinks this leads to a problem
We need to distinguish genuine
from apparent Memory
• Gretchen: My memory is genuine, if I
actually did what I remember myself doing.
• But if this is right, memory cannot account
for personal identity. It leads to a circular
definition
• Personal identity is defined in terms of
memory, which is defined in terms of
apparent memory and being identical
• Dave comes to Sam’s rescue with an example.
• Dave seems to remember knocking over a
menorah. He actually did knock over the
menorah.
• So this example fits G’s definition of a genuine
memory
• BUT it was not a genuine memory. Dave was too
young. He thinks he remembers it because he
was told the story by his parents
• Dave and Sam think the example shows
that genuine memory is not apparent
memory plus identity
• Instead it is apparent memory, plus the
right sort of causal chain
• A real memory needs to be caused by the
experience remembered, not by
something external (such as hypnosis, or
a being told a story by other people)
Is survival after death then
possible?
• Sam suggests God could recreate a
heavenly Gretchen whose memory
experiences are related in the right way
with the earthly Gretchen, thereby allowing
her survival after death
The duplication problem
• It is a principle of logic that: If A=B and
A=C, then C=B
• This poses problem for the memory view
when we consider God creating TWO
causal chains linking the earthly Gretchen
to two heavenly Gretchens
• Gretchen cannot become two people. But
if personal identity was constituted by
memory relations, then she can become
two people. Just recreate the correct
causal chain twice.
• Dave responds by changing his view:
• Personal identity is constituted by memory
and the absence of duplication.
• Thus if God creates one person with
Gretchen memories, that person is
Gretchen.
• If God creates two people, neither will be
Gretchen
This solves the problem, but it
leads to oddities
• If Dave is right that identity is memory and
no duplicates, then my personal identity is
determined by something completely
separate, extrinsic to me.
• Whenever God creates a duplicate of a
person, that person dies (and another
takes their place).
• Gretchen thinks this is an absurd
consequence