Personal Identity

个人身份

• 批准号: AH/F006020/1
• 负责人: Scott Campbell
• 金额: $ 3.27万
• 依托单位: University of Nottingham
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2008
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2008 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=AH%2FF006020%2F1
• 关键词: Personal; Identity

The issue of personal identity concerns the issue of what constitutes the continued existence of a person over time. Or, to put it another way, in personal identity we seek to provide answers to questions such as 'What makes a person A at time t1 the self-same person as a person B at a later time t2?'.One of the most important contemporary theories of personal identity is known as the psychological criterion. According to the psychological criterion a person's continued existence is constituted by 'psychological continuity'. In other words, B at t2 is the self-same person as A at t1 if enough of B's psychological states are causally related to A's psychological states in the right sort of way.In recent years the psychological criterion has been subject to vigorous attack. Much recent work in personal identity has questioned the adequacy of the psychological criterion's account of the relation between the person you are and human being you also are. The standard version of psychological criterion distinguishes between these two things and takes them to be distinct. They do this because of various thought experiments, such as John Locke's story of the minds of a prince and a cobbler swapping places. The conclusion that modern Lockeans draw from this story is that if it is logically possible that this could happen (even if it is not technically possible), then a person and their body cannot be the same thing. But this raises the question of what is the person, if it is not the same thing as the body or the brain, and if it is not conceived of as a traditional non-physical soul.Most psychological theorists wish to maintain that the person is a physical object of some sort, but as they are committed to the view that the person and body are distinct, they are committed to the apparently counter-intuitive view that two distinct physical objects exist, the person and the body. But how is it that there only appears to be one physical object associated with our existence? Their solution to this is to adopt a 'constitution theory' and claim that although there are two physical objects, they share the same matter and the same space. They are nevertheless distinct, however, because it is possible that one could exist when the other does not.I argue that the psychological criterion is not compatible with the constitution theory. For one thing, according to the psychological criterion the existence conditions of people are psychological, but the existence conditions of physical objects are not. I also point out that the psychological criterion allows that people can 'body-swap', but it does not make sense to suppose that a physical object can body-swap.I develop instead an alternative version of the psychological criterion, according to which a person is a series of mental states and events. I then show that on this theory, that while a person is not literally a substance, a person is nevertheless an entity that exists in a way that is akin to the way that substances exist. Such an entity I call a 'quasi-substance'.I also defend the psychological criterion against a number of objections to it, but I finish by developing a significant new problem for it. Certain influential psychological theorists wish downgrade the importance of continued existence in favour of what they say is 'what matters in survival', which they claim is 'Relation R'. R is defined as being 'psychological connectedness and/or continuity', and they wish to make R, unlike continued existence, a matter of degree. I argue, however, that there are various interpretations of what 'psychological connectedness and/or continuity' mean, and that none of them are consistent with the principle that since what matters in survival is of great significance, whether we have what matters in survival cannot depend on a trivial fact, a principle which is used (and required) by this sort of psychological theorist.

个人身份问题涉及到什么构成一个人随着时间的推移而继续存在的问题。或者，换句话说，在个人同一性中，我们寻求提供诸如“什么使人 A 在时间 t1 与人 B 在稍后时间 t2 成为同一个人？”等问题的答案。当代最重要的个人同一性理论之一被称为心理标准。根据心理学标准，一个人的持续存在是由“心理连续性”构成的。换句话说，如果 B 的足够多的心理状态与 A 的心理状态以正确的方式存在因果关系，则 t2 时的 B 与 t1 时的 A 是同一个人。 近年来，心理标准受到了猛烈的攻击。最近有关个人身份的许多研究都对心理学标准对“你所是的人和你所是的人”之间关系的充分性提出了质疑。心理标准的标准版本区分了这两件事并认为它们是不同的。他们这样做是因为各种思想实验，例如约翰·洛克关于王子和鞋匠交换思想的故事。现代洛克主义者从这个故事中得出的结论是，如果这种情况在逻辑上可能发生（即使在技术上不可能），那么一个人和他们的身体就不可能是同一件事。但这提出了一个问题，如果人与身体或大脑不是同一回事，并且不被认为是传统的非物质灵魂，那么什么是人。大多数心理学理论家希望坚持人是某种物理对象，但由于他们坚持认为人和身体是不同的观点，所以他们也坚持明显反直觉的观点，即存在两个不同的物理对象，即人和身体。但为什么看起来只有一个物理对象与我们的存在相关呢？他们对此的解决方案是采用“构成理论”，并声称虽然有两个物理对象，但它们共享相同的物质和相同的空间。然而，它们仍然是不同的，因为一个可能存在，而另一个不存在。我认为心理学标准与构成理论不相容。一方面，根据心理学的标准，人的存在条件是心理的，但物理对象的存在条件不是。我还指出，心理标准允许人们可以“身体交换”，但假设一个物理对象可以进行身体交换是没有意义的。相反，我开发了心理标准的另一种版本，根据该标准，一个人是一系列心理状态和事件。然后我证明，根据这个理论，虽然一个人实际上并不是一个实体，但一个人仍然是一个以类似于实体存在方式存在的实体。我将这种实体称为“准物质”。我还针对许多反对意见捍卫了心理学标准，但最后我为其提出了一个重要的新问题。某些有影响力的心理学理论家希望降低持续存在的重要性，转而支持他们所说的“生存中最重要的事情”，他们声称这是“关系R”。 R 被定义为“心理关联性和/或连续性”，他们希望使 R 与持续存在不同，成为程度问题。然而，我认为，对于“心理关联性和/或连续性”的含义有多种解释，而且没有一种解释与这样的原则相一致：既然生存中重要的东西具有重大意义，那么我们是否拥有生存中重要的东西就不能取决于一个微不足道的事实，这一原则是这类心理学理论家所使用（和要求）的。