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The division of individuals

University of British Columbia

While Jones' old heart is failing, strict copies of his brain are implanted into the brainless bodies of Smith and Brown. Soon two individuals awaken, each claiming to be Jones. Could each of these two persons be Jones? This is the puzzle John Perry tackles in "Can the Self Divide?" and it is also the central problem of this thesis. Perry develops three semantic theories, the branch language, the person-stage language, and the lifetime language, each grounded on a different concept of what a person consists of. Eventually he rejects the first two languages in favor of the third. In Chapter II I examine Perry's reasons for rejecting the branch language and contend that the branch concept of a person need not be blamed for the branch language's shortcomings. In Chapter III I inspect the person-stage language and uncover a fault much more severe than those Perry complained of» the person-stage language robs persons of properties we know them to have. Hence it cannot account for normal cases of personal identity, let alone complex ones like Jones'. This crippling fault also afflicts Perry's final semantic theory, the lifetime language) the theory and its defects are described in Chapter IV. In Chapter V David Lewis' contributions are reviewed there I maintain that various parts of his theory conflict, notably his analysis of personal identity and his theory of person counting. Finally, Chapter VI contains my own attempts at resolving the problems encountered by Perry and Lewis. The theory I present is based on the branch concept of a person, as is the branch language and Lewis' theory; its analysis of personal identity, though, differs radically from either Lewis' or Perry's, being couched not in terms of strict identity but in terms of identity at a given time. As far as I can tell, the theory is free from any of the defects plaguing its forerunners; its philosophical foundation, however, needs much clarification.

Text

2010-03-17

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http://hdl.handle.net/2429/21973

Philosophy

University of British Columbia

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