In my introductory thread I mentioned the issue of personal identity, and specifically the fact that I don't believe that it exists. Arepo prompted me to expand on that, and faithlessgod to make a separate thread of it. So this is it.

Concerning what I mean by personal identity, and when I say that it doesn't exist, I refer back to my introductory thread, specifically to the 9th post on that page. For convenience I copy here two paragraphs where I try to frame the question:

I obviously do not deny that there is a strong connection between the mind that occurs in the body that is typing this text right now, and the mind that will occur in the body commonly identified as “mine” tomorrow morning. There is a strong causal connection, for instance in the production tomorrow morning of memories in that mind of what “I” am doing right now. What I believe, to borrow Parfit's expression, is that there is no further fact in that relation.

Sentience — the fact that there are sensations, emotions and so on — is I believe something that we cannot currently explain. Others believe it is within the scope of current science. But either way, sentience is just that: feelings — sentiency events — that occur in certain physical bodies at specific times. There is nothing in a sentiency event that implies a further object, an I, to which it should be ascribed. Such an I is an imaginary further fact, one we have no reason to believe in.

I mentioned that I think that the rejection of personal identity has ethical implications. Actually, I see those implications as the core of the matter. The commonly held view that there is a personal identity is mainly put forward as an obvious reason to do certain things, or at least to care about certain things; for instance, it seems obvious that I will “naturally” care more about a future misfortune happening to me than about its happening to someone else. Ethics, as I define it, is about answering the question “What shall I do?”; so debunking the idea that there is some special, self-evident, link between myself today and myself tomorrow that is qualitatively different from the link between myself today and anyone else tomorrow, and thus debunking the idea that there is some self-evident, special “naturalness” about my caring more for my future self than for anyone else's future self, is directly an ethical issue.

The rejection of personal identity implies that the relation between myself now and myself tomorrow, and the relation between myself now and someone else tomorrow, are not qualitatively different. They are both relations between different instant selves. This view has two faces. On one hand, it makes us closer to “others”, about whom we should care as much as about our future selves. On the other hand, it makes us farther from “ourselves”, by weakening the link between our successive instant selves.

The latter aspect hass, I believe, important consequences concerning the foundation of ethics. In a sense, any motivation is an altruistic motivation. If I am hungry, and leave my chair to fetch something from the kitchen, I am not acting for my own instant pleasure. I am acting for the pleasure of my future self, the self that thirty seconds from now will have the pleasure of sinking its teeth in the stinky tofu sandwich. The question that so often comes up about altruism — “Why should I care about what happens to others” — applies just as well concerning our own future pleasures. “Why should I care about the pleasure I will experience thirty seconds from now?” It doesn't affect me (= my present self)! But the consequence of such an attitude would be that we have no reason to do anything at all, since all consequences of our acts are necessarily in the future. We would have no reason to take any decision, including the decision to do nothing. But we cannot decide not to decide, since that again would be a decision! I think it is inherent to our position as sentient, conscious beings that we cannot avoid deciding; and since all decisions are altruistic, it is inescapably part of our position that we are altruistic beings.

That is one consequence I see for the rejection of personal identity. There are various others:

— There is no qualitative difference between prudence and altruism. Prudence is an ethical obligation too. It is wrong to harm one's future self as much as to harm someone else's self. Of course, there are many practical reasons for leaving up to the individual decisions concerning eir future self, but those reasons are not reasons of principle, and can have many exceptions.

— Concepts such as private property, the force of contracts signed by one's past self, and so on — in other words, many of the foundations of capitalist society — lose the absolute status that they are often given. They may subsist only insofar as they are useful. Which may be less than is commonly believed.

— Ethics without guilt. Our perception of ethics still remains too often permeated by the idea of sin. Rejecting personal identity, and thus accepting that to harm others is qualitatively like harming ourselves, brings us to perceive doing wrong as just a case of taking the wrong decision. Like a mistake. Hitler was mistaken. He made “others” suffer, but qualitatively it's not different from someone who makes “emself” suffer.

— The issue of death. Is there a life after death? Of course there is! There is the life of the billions of others who will go on living. No need to have “heaven” or whatever!

— Retribution. When we do good to others, why should we expect that good to be doubled by a retribution to “ourselves”? If I do something to make someone else happy, then the retribution of my deed should simply be... that that other being is happy. The retribution for Hitler's deeds was the suffering of those people who suffered in consequence of those deeds. It is that suffering that make Hitler's deeds wrong.

— Deontological theories rely heavily on personal identity, and issues such as autonomy and so on. The concept of rights too is very dependent on personal identity.

— More or less for the same reason, rejecting personal identity goes against preference utilitarianism.

It's getting late again over here, so that's all for tonight, though I do think there would be a lot more to say on the issue.

David

This reminds me of Eternalism. I take both philosophies for granted, as I do for Utilitarianism.

Okay, I think I agree with what you've just said, David. But I'll take you up on two points:
1. If doing things that favour one's future self e.g. buying a hamburger are also 'altruistic', how come they are so easy? The fact that a future version of yourself will experience that hamburger makes a hamburger purchase more appealing than donation to charity.
2. You say that you reject the self. Fair enough, I think I do too. But these sentiency events that you refer to aren't objective. That is, when you punch someone who you dislike, you might feel a sadistic pleasure whereas they might feel a sting of pain and a thirst for revenge. So I don't know if that's what philosophers have conventionally referred to as a self, but it's something. Sentiency events are personal.

DanielLC wrote:This reminds me of Eternalism. I take both philosophies for granted, as I do for Utilitarianism.

So do I take eternalism for granted, but only up to a point. Eternalism seems very much in sync with classical physics, and even more with relativity. But then it seems radically incompatible with quantum mechanics, unless one accepts the exotic many-worlds interpretation, which I believe describes a universe we can make no sense of, and actually have no reason to believe in.

David

RyanCarey wrote:1. If doing things that favour one's future self e.g. buying a hamburger are also 'altruistic', how come they are so easy? The fact that a future version of yourself will experience that hamburger makes a hamburger purchase more appealing than donation to charity.

My son, I will quote thee from the Holy Bible:

In Genesis 15, God wrote:1 After these things the word of the LORD came unto Abram in a vision, saying: 'Fear not, Abram, I am thy shield, thy reward shall be exceeding great.' 2 And Abram said: 'O Lord GOD, what wilt Thou give me, seeing I go hence childless (...)?' (...) 4 And, behold, the word of the LORD came unto him, saying: '(...) he that shall come forth out of thine own bowels shall be thine heir.' 5 And He brought him forth abroad, and said: 'Look now toward heaven, and count the stars, if thou be able to count them'; and He said unto him: 'So shall thy seed be.'

I take this not as the word of some supernatural being, but as evidence of another way of feeling about retribution. It seems that for the people who invented this story, it appeared quite natural for the answer to the question “What will be my reward?” to be in terms of something that the person will never experience at all. Abraham can expect to still be around at the birth of his own child. But when the future generations (his “seed”) become as numerous as the stars, Abraham will certainly be dead. Despite that, it was taken to be quite natural for a person to care about that, which seems to show that in those times a man was expected to identify with his “seed” (what women were supposed to be happy about, I don't know).

That shows that what we count as being “ourselves”, and we feel motivated to promote the well-being of, is largely culturally determined. If I have been brought to identify with “Deutschland”, I can still die screaming “Deutschland über alles!”, feeling happy that that extended myself — Deutschland — will (I believe) prevail.

I don't say that that identification process is entirely culturally determined and can with perfect ease be extended to just about anything. There are obvious evolutionary reasons that explain why it is much easier for us to identify with the myself who will taste the hamburger than with the non-myself waiting in the slaughterhouse to contribute to their production. My point is that there is no logical validity in the objection against altruism “Why should I care about the suffering of someone else?”; or at least that there can be no more logical validity that that objection than in the corresponding objection against prudence “Why should I care about my own future suffering?”— even for the suffering I will experience in ten seconds.

In other words, the rejection of personal identity changes the basic ethical problem, from “Why altruism, rather than egoism?” to “Why take any decision at all?”

2. You say that you reject the self. Fair enough, I think I do too. But these sentiency events that you refer to aren't objective. That is, when you punch someone who you dislike, you might feel a sadistic pleasure whereas they might feel a sting of pain and a thirst for revenge. So I don't know if that's what philosophers have conventionally referred to as a self, but it's something. Sentiency events are personal.

The sentiency event is not the punching itself. In the incident you describe, there are two sentiency events: the pleasure I might feel, and the pain of my victim. The fact that there are two events doesn't prevent them from being objective! Both happen. If two atoms disintegrate, one here and the other there, you don't have to call them “personal” or “subjective” to accept that there are two different events!

If by being personal you mean that the sentiency events must be ascribed to something called a person, an object that is more than just the fact that the events happen to take place in a particular place and time, within a particular piece of matter, then you are postulating personal identity. It would be a strange object, one that we actually have no reasons to believe in, and that would be unique among all physical phenomena.

David

Hi David, this is a fascinating piece, as I understand it mostly of Parfit's view, but nonetheless very well stated and thought provoking. So I provide many of these provoked thoughts below

David Olivier wrote:In my introductory thread I mentioned the issue of personal identity, and specifically the fact that I don't believe that it exists. Arepo prompted me to expand on that, and faithlessgod to make a separate thread of it. So this is it.

My view is that PI is a dynamic construct and that to be constructed requires ongoing pre-PI and non-PI processes and capacities of a particular causal system. This construct is a heuristic device and nothing more but is an effective heuristic. Like all heuristics this can be over extended and lead to errors in application with all sorts of costs that could result. Here the error is to think this construct is basic - not (naturally or experientially) reducible - and that it is, in some sense, static, so instead of this construct being a means it becomes an end and eventually the end. This mistake occurs as the result of heuristic recursing over itself and reifying the result into some sort of fixed, dominant feature of the particular causal system. (This is a bit rough and simplistic but that is hopefully sufficient for here).

David Olivier wrote:I obviously do not deny that there is a strong connection between the mind that occurs in the body that is typing this text right now, and the mind that will occur in the body commonly identified as “mine” tomorrow morning. There is a strong causal connection, for instance in the production tomorrow morning of memories in that mind of what “I” am doing right now. What I believe, to borrow Parfit's expression, is that there is no further fact in that relation.

Agreed

David Olivier wrote:Sentience — the fact that there are sensations, emotions and so on — is I believe something that we cannot currently explain. Others believe it is within the scope of current science. But either way, sentience is just that: feelings — sentiency events — that occur in certain physical bodies at specific times. There is nothing in a sentiency event that implies a further object, an I, to which it should be ascribed. Such an I is an imaginary further fact, one we have no reason to believe in.

I believe that sentience (and sapience) are within the scope of scientific examination and explanation. This is work in progress. Otherwise I agree with you with the proviso that both sentience and sapience generate the PI. The heuristic is the process, the product is, let us say, a momentary PI, if the heuristic (process) stops then the product seizes to "exist", when it starts again (e.g on waking) then the product is generated again - not regenerated, it is always generated anew.

David Olivier wrote:
I mentioned that I think that the rejection of personal identity has ethical implications. Actually, I see those implications as the core of the matter. The commonly held view that there is a personal identity is mainly put forward as an obvious reason to do certain things, or at least to care about certain things; for instance, it seems obvious that I will “naturally” care more about a future misfortune happening to me than about its happening to someone else.

Yes these are obvious but only because of this functioning heuristic. This is the prime reason nature selected this heuristic, suitably sophisticated organisms that otherwise lacked this heuristic failed in the evolutionary struggle. (Less sophisticated organisms lack the capacity for heuristics and so are incapable of having a PI nor need one. Here sophisticated means sufficient to operate with malleable heuristics and requiring at least some to operate in the evolutionary successful sense)

David Olivier wrote: Ethics, as I define it, is about answering the question “What shall I do?”; so debunking the idea that there is some special, self-evident, link between myself today and myself tomorrow that is qualitatively different from the link between myself today and anyone else tomorrow, and thus debunking the idea that there is some self-evident, special “naturalness” about my caring more for my future self than for anyone else's future self, is directly an ethical issue.

Here I really disagree as morality if it is anything, in contrast to your phrase above, is about "what shall we do?", a better phrasing being "what is good for us?"

David Olivier wrote:The rejection of personal identity implies that the relation between myself now and myself tomorrow, and the relation between myself now and someone else tomorrow, are not qualitatively different.

Yes but one does not need PI to see that they are quantitatively different and that is all that is needed.

David Olivier wrote: They are both relations between different instant selves.

But very different causal and quantitative relations - you are looking at similarities I am looking at differences, lets see where this takes us.

David Olivier wrote: This view has two faces. On one hand, it makes us closer to “others”, about whom we should care as much as about our future selves.

Why should we? Nothing you have said yet implies this should AFAICS.

David Olivier wrote: On the other hand, it makes us farther from “ourselves”, by weakening the link between our successive instant selves.

Since I hold PI is just a useful shorthand and not necessary, recognising this should make no actual difference to this link, let alone weaken it, as there are still quantitative and causal relations and that is all that is required. Rather reified PI made this link unjustifiably and mistakenly strong, recognizing it as only a useful construct would remove this unjustified strength of the link, but nothing more.

David Olivier wrote:The latter aspect hass, I believe, important consequences concerning the foundation of ethics. In a sense, any motivation is an altruistic motivation.

Here is where we are going to disagree but I take altruism in the narrow sense to help map out the space alongside egoism, mutualism, utilitarianism and egalitarianism. I will try and accept your sense of altruism in what follows but AFAICS altruism narrowly construed requires sacrifice. Sacrifice of what you might, ask PI? No, not necessarily, altruism/sacrifice can be understood this way (without PI) in biological terms and similarly it could be applied psychologically e.g via a behavioural 3rd person approach.

David Olivier wrote: If I am hungry, and leave my chair to fetch something from the kitchen, I am not acting for my own instant pleasure. I am acting for the pleasure of my future self, the self that thirty seconds from now will have the pleasure of sinking its teeth in the stinky tofu sandwich. The question that so often comes up about altruism — “Why should I care about what happens to others” — applies just as well concerning our own future pleasures. “Why should I care about the pleasure I will experience thirty seconds from now?” It doesn't affect me (= my present self)! But the consequence of such an attitude would be that we have no reason to do anything at all, since all consequences of our acts are necessarily in the future. We would have no reason to take any decision, including the decision to do nothing. But we cannot decide not to decide, since that again would be a decision! I think it is inherent to our position as sentient, conscious beings that we cannot avoid deciding; and since all decisions are altruistic, it is inescapably part of our position that we are altruistic beings.

Hmmm... it looks like that altruism has been universalised so that all motives are altruistic, but this then, pardon the lingo, looks to me like "defining all meaning out of the term". If altruism is simply a constant to all motives, this cannot then be used as a means to differentiate motives. That is it looks like altruism is inert as a tool to use in moral thinking? There is more to say here but enough for now.

David Olivier wrote:That is one consequence I see for the rejection of personal identity. There are various others:

Just to make sure, I understand the main thrust of the above, the consequence you are referring to is that all motives are altruistic, yes?

David Olivier wrote:— There is no qualitative difference between prudence and altruism. Prudence is an ethical obligation too. It is wrong to harm one's future self as much as to harm someone else's self. Of course, there are many practical reasons for leaving up to the individual decisions concerning eir future self, but those reasons are not reasons of principle, and can have many exceptions.

Hmm this use of altruism is slightly confusing to me. The way I see this point is that prudence is just a type of altruism, a sub-set? Fine, yet how does it become an moral obligation - or is it assumed that altruism is co-extensive with morality? I will assume so but then my issue still is that there is no qualitative difference but that there is a quantitative difference - in scope - between prudence (harm to one's future self) and morality (harm to others). I think we both consider these as questions in ethics and both agree they are not independent, however we disagree in how they relate. Your approach is to collapse this distinction that I am making?

David Olivier wrote:— Concepts such as private property, the force of contracts signed by one's past self, and so on — in other words, many of the foundations of capitalist society — lose the absolute status that they are often given. They may subsist only insofar as they are useful. Which may be less than is commonly believed.

Well I never thought they had absolute status - that is the deontological view? Provisional, reliable and mostly stable yes, however in the light of new evidence once could, say, refuse to honour a contract with now newly understood immoral consequences etc. However one does not decide to not honour a contract just because it is now not in one's interests (PI or no PI) to do so i.e. no longer useful. Well one could but then the institution of obligations would become a failed institution?

David Olivier wrote:— Ethics without guilt. Our perception of ethics still remains too often permeated by the idea of sin.

What you have omitted in this interesting exposition is that the common element of morality everywhere and in the past and present which is the use of praise, condemnation, reward and punishment - social forces- to reinforce what is regarded as morally right and wrong, good and bad. The appropriate use of these social forces is to elicit such emotional responses - such as guilt - and, as a result of them, to modify ones' preferences or desires in the future. Now one of the emotional responses is guilt, other similar ones include embarrassment and shame and there are other responses too of course. If successful this means that an agent would less likely to act in a similar "immoral" fashion in the future. Yes, sin is a religious concept (technically it means to disobey god's commands), however if we drop the fiction of god there is no need to throw out the baby with the bath water. Surely guilt remains as just one of those emotional responses that serve to modify one's preference or desire set ? (BTW no need for PI to make this point)

David Olivier wrote:Rejecting personal identity, and thus accepting that to harm others is qualitatively like harming ourselves, brings us to perceive doing wrong as just a case of taking the wrong decision. Like a mistake. Hitler was mistaken. He made “others” suffer, but qualitatively it's not different from someone who makes “emself” suffer.

But it makes a huge quantitative difference as your Hitler example shows!!!!(We agree there is no qualitative difference but that is insufficient for the ethical issues being considered here). And again harming oneself is felt in a way that is qualitatively different to harming others. This is a first person POV of course but is an unavoidable experiential fact. Consider me breaking my leg versus me breaking your leg there are quite different causal results that follow. It does matter whose leg is broken surely or are you denying that?

David Olivier wrote:— The issue of death. Is there a life after death? Of course there is! There is the life of the billions of others who will go on living. No need to have “heaven” or whatever!

Yes but what about murder? Not all mistakes have the same consequences.

David Olivier wrote:— Retribution. When we do good to others, why should we expect that good to be doubled by a retribution to “ourselves”? If I do something to make someone else happy, then the retribution of my deed should simply be... that that other being is happy. The retribution for Hitler's deeds was the suffering of those people who suffered in consequence of those deeds. It is that suffering that make Hitler's deeds wrong.

This seems to be unreasonably modifying the notion of retribution. As a consequentialist I see no justification for retribution period. The suffering due to Hitler's deeds is not retribution at all, this is a misuse of the term IMHO. Yes suffering is what made Hitler's deeds wrong. Without anyone suffering or being harmed there is no moral harm surely? Not sure of what you are really getting at here.

David Olivier wrote:— Deontological theories rely heavily on personal identity, and issues such as autonomy and so on. The concept of rights too is very dependent on personal identity.

No argument here, although I would add there is an element, even amongst quite a few atheists and naturalists, of a residual "little god" of PI and also free will/responsibility. Eliminate PI and one eliminates "little gods" and this does remove a significant piece of the grounds for deontological and rights-based morality. However these can be demolished on related grounds (not quite distinct, just a different way of approaching this) namely they both directly rely on fictional entities - as they are fictions they do not exist.

David Olivier wrote:— More or less for the same reason, rejecting personal identity goes against preference utilitarianism.

This does not follow, or at least please could you adumbrate this point. I support a variant of preference utilitarianism called desire utilitarianism (DU). DU has no need for PI, indeed it does not need consciousness either only intentionality in any of the non problematic for science versions, so I fail to seer how rejecting PI necessarily means rejecting DU. For now, unless required please assume this is just preference (rule) utilitarianism and explain why rejecting PI means rejecting PU. Further since utilitarianism is impartial or impersonal, surely rejection of PI means rejecting of agent-relative common morality (intuitionism) in favour of (maybe not just) utilitarian agent-neutral solutions?

David Olivier wrote:It's getting late again over here, so that's all for tonight, though I do think there would be a lot more to say on the issue.

Great1 looking forward to more and your responses to the above.

[edit] Sorry misread your quote below

David Olivier wrote:There are obvious evolutionary reasons that explain why it is much easier for us to identify with the myself who will taste the hamburger than with the non-myself waiting in the slaughterhouse to contribute to their production.

Yes those who did the latter would not survive and replicate.(this response does not make sense please ignore)[/edit] If you are discounting evolutionary reasons to create an ethical morals, I agree. However note that "ought" implies "can" and one cannot completely ignore evolution, surely it serves as constraints on what is possible or could be demanded?

David Olivier wrote: My point is that there is no logical validity in the objection against altruism “Why should I care about the suffering of someone else?”;

That AFAICS is not altruism... yet. Caring about others is one of the many desires one could have. Altruism is about helping others at a net deficit cost to the agent who has so acted - "sacrifice". At least that is my understanding of altruism.

David Olivier wrote: or at least that there can be no more logical validity that that objection than in the corresponding objection against prudence “Why should I care about my own future suffering?”— even for the suffering I will experience in ten seconds.

I agree there is no logical difference but surely there are physical, material, causal and quantitative differences and these are what are relevant here?

David Olivier wrote:In other words, the rejection of personal identity changes the basic ethical problem, from “Why altruism, rather than egoism?” to “Why take any decision at all?”

Aha! First of all I do not consider the basic ethical problem as a choice between altruism and egoism (that is a standard move made by Randians - deciding upon egoism). I argue that this is a false dichotomy and in support surely only need to indicate that utilitarianism and egalitarianism are distinct and different positions to those two choices.

In answer to “Why take any decision at all?” I regard this as a pre-ethical issue (again by contrast Randians who try to make all decisions moral which as I noted before wrt altruism, defines all meaning out of the term). I use the belief-desire-intention model of practical reasoning (and action). Beliefs+Desires->Intention->Intentional Action. Everyone seeks to substitute a more fulfilling state of affairs for a less fulfilling one. Which state of affairs - the decision is based upon everyone seeking to fulfil the more and stronger of their desires and acting to bring about this more fulfilling state of affairs given their beliefs.That is all I need to know about the decision making process. Everything else - the unique causal interactions of genes and environment, nature and nurture, biology and culture or however you wish to put it, are the prior and proximate antecedents in the selection of the more and stronger of the desires. None of this is yet ethical, it is just a stratosphere level description of how people make decisions but that is all that is required to then examine moral reasoning etc. certainly at least in DU terms. What is your decision model?

David Olivier wrote:If by being personal you mean that the sentiency events must be ascribed to something called a person, an object that is more than just the fact that the events happen to take place in a particular place and time, within a particular piece of matter, then you are postulating personal identity. It would be a strange object, one that we actually have no reasons to believe in, and that would be unique among all physical phenomena.

No Ryan is not, at least not necessarily. All sentient events require "ownership", that is they occur to a specific causal system - they do not occur in vacuo so to speak. Now how can you justify ignoring this feature of sentience?

I can't muster a proper response at this time of the night, but again it's an eerily close description of my own views (eerie because I've become so accustomed picking up on the slightest differences of opinion I hold with people that it's actually disconcerting to not immediately spot any). I've used precisely the same 'what should we do?' and 'why do we do anything?' formulations in the same contexts, but I've never seen such views carefully laid out...

I'm really keen to hear Ryan respond in full - not meaning to belittle FG, but since I have very similar views to Ryan on ethics so far, it should be fascinating to see whether we go the same way on this.

For the sake of providing you with something to respond to (although FG's done a pretty good job of that ), I'll play devil's advocate: how would you respond to the charge that this conflicts so strongly with our intuition that it makes no sense? Presumably you'd deny that our intuition is necessarily a reliable source of knowledge, but what do you rely on instead? Would you claim self-evident truths?

By the way David, would you mind if I used some of your posts for the interlinked utilitarianism series of posts I'm (very slowly) putting together? You've already said nicely many of the things I was planning to...

Arepo wrote:By the way David, would you mind if I used some of your posts for the interlinked utilitarianism series of posts I'm (very slowly) putting together? You've already said nicely many of the things I was planning to...

Certainly no problem for me!

David