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Shoemaker on theduplication argument,survival, and what mattersL. Nathan Oaklander aa The University of Michigan-FlintPublished online: 02 Jun 2006.

To cite this article: L. Nathan Oaklander (1988) Shoemaker on the duplicationargument, survival, and what matters, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 66:2,234-239, DOI: 10.1080/00048408812343331

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Australasian Journal o f Philosophy Vol. 66, No. 2; June 1988

S H O E M A K E R ON T H E D U P L I C A T I O N A R G U M E N T , SURVIVAL, AND W H A T MATTERS

L. Nathan Oaklander

In this contribution to the debate with Richard Swinburne on personal identity, Sydney Shoemaker at tempts to defend two closely related theses. 1 The first is that the identity of persons consists in non-branching psychological continuity. The second is that what matters in survival is not identity per

se but the psychological continuity and connectedness that normally accompany it. I shall argue, however, that a consideration of Shoemaker 's replies to the duplication argument will reveal that his defence of the two theses in question is inadequate.

One way in which Shoemaker supports the psychological continuity view of personal identity is by considering an imaginary society in which there is a device that enables people to have the information stored in their brain transferred to the brain of a body which is an exact duplicate of the one housing the original brain. He calls this process a 'brain storage transfer procedure ' (BST-procedure, for short). For reasons that need not concern us, Shoemaker says,

Periodically a person goes into the hospital for a 'body-change' . This consists in his total brain-state being transferred to the brain of one of his duplicate bodies . . . . I f we confronted such a society, there would, I think, be a very strong case for saying that what they mean by 'person' is such that the BST-procedure is p e r s o n - p r e s e r v i n g . . . But if they are right in thinking that the BST-procedure is person-preserving, and if they mean the same by 'person' as we do, then it seems that we ought to regard the BST-procedure as person-preserving. 2

Of course, if we should conceive of the BST-procedure as person-preserving, then bodily identity is not necessary and psychological continuity is sufficient for personal identity.

There is, however, an objection against construing a body-change as person-preserving, namely, the duplication argument. Suppose the machine operator of the BST-device forgot that he transferred my brain states to a duplicate body, and produced not one, but two of me. Or suppose my brain is split and each part is transplanted to two different bodies so that instead of there being one person, there are two people who are psychologically

1 See 'Personal Identity, A Materialist Account', in Shoemaker and Swinburne, Personal Identity (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1984).

2 Ibid, pp. 109-110.

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L. Na than Oak lander 235

continuous with me. Since I, a single person, cannot be identical with both of the resulting people, it follows that personal identity cannot be analysed solely in terms of psychological continuity. Shoemaker guards against this objection by claiming that personal identity is preserved if and only if there is no branching, that is, if and only if I am psychologically connected with one person. Unfortunately, this view has paradoxical consequences that Shoemaker's replies do not adequately avoid.

One paradoxical consequence is raised by Swinburne. He says that on a view such as Shoemaker's

The way for a man to ensure his own survival is to ensure the non-existence of future persons too similar to himself. Suppose the mad surgeon had told P~ before the [fission] operation what he was intending to do . . . P~ is unable to escape the clutches of the mad surgeon, but is nevertheless very anxious to survive the operation. If the empiricist theory in question is correct, there is an obvious policy which will guarantee his survival. He can bribe one of the nurses to ensure that the right half-brain does not survive successfully. 3

Since it is absurd for P~ to try to guarantee his survival by bribing the nurse, the view from which that absurdity is derived must be rejected. Shoemaker points out that the objection assumes that what matters in survival is identity and that, therefore, the way to ensure our survival is to ensure our identity. He replies by rejecting Swinburne's assumption and by explaining the absurdity in a manner compatible with his View of personal identity.

Suppose, he says, that half my brain and all of my body are riddled with cancer, and the only hope for my survival is having my healthy half-brain transplanted to another body. He then describes two possible operations:

The first, which is inexpensive and safe [so far as the prospects of the recipient are concerned] involves first transplanting the healthy hemisphere and then d e s t r o y i n g . . , the diseased hemisphere that remains. The other, which is expensive and risky [the transplant may not take, or it may produce a psychologically damaged person] involves first destroying the diseased hemisphere and then transplanting the other. Which shall I choose? 4

Even though the first operation does not preserve identity, since there will be two persons psychologically continuous with the original person, whereas the second case does preserve my identity, Shoemaker claims that it is obvious that the first procedure is the one to choose. For the first operation guarantees my psychological continuity, and in wanting to survive it is psychological continuity and not identity that is important. Thus, bribing the nurse would be absurd because it 'would contribute nothing to giving me what I really want in wanting to survive 5 namely, psychological continuity. I will argue,

3 Ibid, p. 118 4 Ibid, p. 119. 5 Ibid, p. 120.

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236 Shoemaker on the Duplication Argument, Survival, and what Matters

however, that Shoemaker's response to Swinburne's objection is incompatible with his treatment of a more pernicious version of the duplication problem to which I shall now turn.

Suppose in our imagined society of body-changes, the BST-device malfunctions: it transfers the information stored in an A-brain person into a B-brain person, but the A-brain person is not destroyed by the machine. On the view that personal identity is non-branching psychological continuity, it follows that neither person is me. But this is absurd. Our intuitions clearly point to the fact that the original A-brain and body person retains his or her identity through time, whereas the copy is just that, a copy or duplicate, not the real McCoy. Furthermore, given that what matters in survival is psychological continuity and not identity, it follows that I should have an equal concern for the two people who are fully psychologically continuous with me. Thus, in the case just described, I should have an equal concern for the A- and B-brain persons, yet clearly this is not the case. Selfish concern will attach to the future person who will be me, that is, to the person with my (A-) brain and my body. It appears, then, that Shoemaker 's view can neither avoid the duplication argument nor make intelligible the special concern that persons have for their own continued existence and their own future welfare.

Shoemaker is aware of these difficulties and at tempts to avoid them by modifying his view: personal identity is non-branching psychological continuity unless the psychological continuity of one of the branches is realised in the normal functioning of the brain. 6 In that case the person with the same brain is the 'closest continuer ' o f the original and so is identical to the original. This move strikes me as ad hoc, but the point I want to press is that if Shoemaker appeals to the closest continuer theory of identity as a means of accounting for our intuitions concerning survival and identity, for why I have greater concern for the A-brain person rather than the B-brain person, then he cannot also claim that what matters in survival is psychological continuity and not personal identity, and so his response to Swinburne collapses. To see what is involved, we must first examine the closest continuer theory.

The closest continuer view is a schema for answering identity questions, that is, questions of the form: Is y at t 2 the same entity as x at tl • According to it, if y at t2 is a 'continuer' of x at tl, and if y is not only closer than all others (there is no tie for closeness) but also close enough to be x, then y is the same entity as x. By way of clarification, Nozick claims

To say that something is a continuer of x is not merely to say its properties are qualitatively the same as x's, or resemble them. Rather it is to say they grow out of x's properties, are causally produced by them [in an appropriate way], are to be explained by x's earlier having had its properties, and so forth. 7

6 Ibid, p. 131. 7 Robert Nozick, Philosophical Explanations (Cambridge, Mass,: Harvard University Press,

1981), p. 35.

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L. Na than Oaklander 237

He also maintains that '[h]ow close something must be to x to be x, depends on the kind of entity x is, as do the dimensions along which closeness is measured '8

There are two versions of the closest continuer view: the local and the global version. According to the local version, the closest continuer of an entity is that entity. So if an entity has two continuers, each sufficiently close to be that ent i ty ,but one is signficantly closer than the other, then that is the entity, even if it is substantially shorter lived than the other close continuer. 9 For example, suppose that the BST-device briefly malfunctions, and fails, for a short time, to erase the states of the brain A person when it records them and imposes identical states on the brain B person. On the local version of the theory, the pre-transfer A-brain person continues to exist in the A- brain and body and then dies since the B-brain person is a mere duplicate of the original.

The global version of the theory offers a different interpretation of the difficult case of temporal overlap. Suppose that a half-brain transplant takes place, but that the donor's body, (that is, the original body and half-brain) lingers on for a few minutes so that its life briefly overlaps that of the newly implanted body. During the period of overlap the closest continuer of the donor is the original body plus half-brain, and so on the local version of the theory the donor would die when it does. Nozick finds this troublesome. For, as he puts it, 'how can an entity's c o n t i n u a t i o n . . , be blocked by the merest continuing tentacle or echo of its previous stage'? 1° In order to rectify the situation Nozick introduces the global version of the closest continuer view according to which longevity takes precedence over closeness. On the global variant if an entity X has two (or more) continuers, each sufficiently close to be that entity, then its successor under identity is the longest lived item which, as a whole, more closely continues X than any comparably long-lived item. Thus, in the case just described, the newly implanted body would be identical with the original person, in spite of the brief period of overlap, because it is the longest close continuer of that person. With this background, let us return to the variant of the fission case that Shoemaker employs in his attempt to undermine Swinburne's objection.

Recall that Shoemaker claims that the first operation, where a healthy half- brain is transplanted to a different body, is the one to choose. However, in the first operation, the diseased half-brain and body person is the closest continuer of the pre-operative person. For though the healthy half-brain person is psychologically and (partially) physically continuous with the original, the diseased body person has more continuity of one of the kinds. The diseased person has greater physical overlap with the original person, and is in that sense the closest continuer. Thus, if Shoemaker adopts the local version of the closest continuer view then, contrary to what he says, it is the second (risky) operation and not the first, that we would choose. For in the

8 Ibid, p. 34. 9 See Harold W. Noonan, 'The Glosest Continuer Theory of Identity', Inquiry, Vol. 28, No.

2 (June, 1985), pp. 195-230. 10 Nozick, op. cit., p. 47.

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238 Shoemaker on the Dup6cation Argument, Survival, and what Matters

second procedure the closest continuer would be the healthy half-brain person, and I would rather live as a psychologically damaged person or take the risk that the operation will be unsuccessful, than choose the first procedure where my survival is impossible.

A critic may argue that the above argument begs the question by assuming that m y survival, rather than psychological continuity is what matters. But this misunderstands my objection. I am not claiming - though I am inclined to believe - that survival, and identity (arising f rom physical continuity) are more intimately connected than Shoemaker would have us believe. Rather, I am claiming that the intuitions that support the closest continuer principle also support the view that what matters is identity (which arises in such cases in the way described f rom physical continuity), and not only psychological continuity, l' Thus, Shoemaker is arbitrary and inconsistent in applying the principle to one version of the duplication objection and not the other.

Recall the case where the BST-device malfunctions and both the A-brain person and a psychologically continuous duplicate, that is, the B-brain person, exist. Since on the closest continuing view I am the A-brain person, I would not have an equal concern for both future individuals, but a special concern for the one of them, namely, person A. It would matter a great deal to me whether person A or person B was to win the lottery or lose all his investments. And it would matter a great deal whether person A or person B gets to play with my sons, to teach philosophy, and to visit with my friends. I want the A-brain person to be able to do these things. Why is this so? It cannot be because of psychological continuity since both the original and the duplicate are psychologically continuous with the person who existed before the BST- device malfunctioned. Rather, the concern to survive is, in this case, a concern that I, this flesh and bones A-brain and body person, not miss out on a satisfying family, professional, and social life. I simply do not have that same special concern when I consider that a newly created replica of me will miss out. Thus, since the intuitions that lead Shoemaker to the closest continuer view also suggest that my survival (which arises in such cases f rom physical continuity) is what matters, it follows that on the local version we should choose the second operation which has the possibility of giving me what I want, rather than the first which does not.

On the other hand, if he adopts the global version of the closest continuer theory, then his choice of the first operation makes sense, although not for the reason he suggests. On the global view, the recipient of the healthy hemisphere would be the longest entity that most closely continues the original person, and so would be that person. For that reason, it would be more sensible to choose the first procedure, where the original person's continued existence is virtually risk free, rather than the second where the chance of psychological damage or death is great. Or, to put the point more modestly, if Shoemaker adopts the global variant o f the principle, then the choice of

1~ The importance of physical continuity in questions of survival is persuasively argued for in Raymond Martin, 'Memory, Connecting and What Matters ~, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 65, No. 1 (March 1988), pp. 82-97.

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L. Nathan Oaklander 239

the first procedure could not possibly support the view that what matters in survival is psychological continuity and not identity since the result o f the first operation preserves identity. Consequently, his response to Swinburne's objection, which depends on his rejecting the assumption that when I want to survive it is essential to the satisfaction of my want that I should exist in the future, cannot be sustained. 12

Thus, Shoemaker is faced with the following dilemma. Either he accepts the closer continuer principle or he does not. I f he does accept it, then the variant of the fission case he considers would lend no support to his claim that in wanting to survive it is only psychological continuity and not identity (arising in the way described f rom physical continuity) that matters, and so he would not avoid Swinburne's objection. I f he does not accept it, then his view of personal identity as non-duplicating psychological continuity cannot account for our intuitions in a case where the BST-device malfunctions, and so he cannot avoid the duplication argument. Perhaps Shoemaker would at tempt to escape these difficulties by arguing that when he introduces the 'closest continuer' schema, he is really only playing with it. He says that if we are to justify our intuitions in a case where the BST-device produces a duplicate without destroying the original, then we would need such a principle, but seems to imply that neither the principle nor our intuitions about the example are justif iedJ 3 Since, however, his claim about the example is highly counter-intuitive, I conclude that until he explains why such strongly entrenched beliefs are irrational, or as he calls them, 'parochial' , my objection stands. Shoemaker has not given an adequate defense of his view of what matters in survival, or he has not given an adequate defense of the non- branching psychological continuity view of personal identity against the duplication argument. ~4

The University o f Michigan-Flint Received

Jz Note too that the global mode is incompatible with Shoemaker's view of personal identity as non-branching psychological continuity since, according to the latter view, the recipient of the healthy hemisphere cannot count as the original person.

t3 See, Shoemaker, op. cit., pp. 131-132. 14 Earlier versions of this paper were read at the Pacific Division Meetings of the American

Philosophical Association in Los Angeles on March 27, 1986, and at the Canadian Philosophical Association Meetings in Winnipeg, Canada on May 29, 1986. 1 wish to thank this journal's anonymous referees for their useful comments.

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