In Reasons and Persons Derek Parfit argues for a Reductionist View of personal
identity. According to the Reductionist persons are nothing over and above the existence
of certain mental and/or physical states and their various relations. As Parfit states it,
"on the Reductionist View, each person’s existence just involves the existence
of a brain and body, the doing of certain deeds, the thinking of certain thoughts, the
occurrence of certain experiences, and so on." (1) Just
as we are not apt to think that a social club has any ontological status over and above
the existence of its members and their relations to one another, so too the Reductionist
claims that we should not take persons to exist apart from the various physical and
psychological events that characterize them. Given this, Parfit believes that it follows
"that the fact of a person’s identity over time just consists in the holding of
more particular facts." (2) Parfit provides further
arguments to show that the facts in question concern psychological continuity and/or
connectedness, and thus that personal identity can be reduced to this psychological
continuity and/or connectedness. This is what Parfit terms the Psychological Criterion for
personal identity. Further, since personal identity just consists in this psychological
continuity when it takes a non-branching, or one-one form, personal identity is, as Parfit
puts it, "not what matters." What does matter is the psychological continuity
and connectedness, what Parfit terms Relation R.
Parfit realizes that his view on personal identity is contrary to what many people
ordinarily believe concerning the nature of persons. Parfit thus notes that "even if
we are not aware of this, most of us our Non-Reductionists. It thus follows that most of
us have false beliefs about our own nature, and our identity over time." (3)
Further, Parfit thinks that since our views about morality and rationality are often based
upon our views about personal identity we may also come to change our beliefs about
rationality and morality when we become Reductionists. He thus writes "when we see
the truth, we ought to change some of our beliefs about what we have reason to do. We
ought to revise our moral theories, and our theories about rationality." (4)
However, Parfit thinks that such changes in many cases represent an improvement over what
we formally held to be the case when we considered personal identity to be what matters.
In this essay I will not be concerned with the cogency of Parfit’s Reductionist
View of personal identity itself. Rather, I would like to raise some questions as to
whether or not the theories of rationality and morality resulting from his views do indeed
represent an improvement in the way that Parfit thinks they do over their more common
counterparts. More specifically, I wish to examine the implications that Parfit’s
view of personal identity has for our understanding of moral commitments such as promises.
In order to do this, I will first examine Parfit’s claims concerning what follows
about persons and commitments given his Reductionist View. In doing this, I will also
provide some examples to show why someone might find Parfit’s claims here initially
plausible. Then, I will show why despite such examples, Parfit’s view of what matters
for morality actually undermines any substantial notion of moral commitment.
As stated, Parfit thinks that what matters for our deliberation concerning morality and
rationality is not personal identity but psychological continuity and connectedness. While
personal identity is an all or nothing affair, psychological continuity and connectedness
come in degrees; I may have greater continuity with myself last year than I do to the
child I was twenty years ago. Once we realize this Parfit believes that it follows that it
is not personal identity that carries moral significance but psychological continuity.
Thus, in discussing desert Parfit claims that "we can defensibly claims that
psychological continuity carries with it desert for past crimes." (5)
And, since there are degrees of psychological continuity and connectedness the
applicability of our moral commitments will also come in degrees. When the degree of
psychological continuity has changed to a large extent within a life, we may then no
longer hold someone responsible to their former commitments. We might say that on
Parfit’s view we should proportion moral commitments to degrees of R-Relatedness.
What concrete effects does this view have on our consideration of our moral
commitments? Parfit uses the example of promises. When we were Non-Reductionists we took
personal identity to be what matters for moral considerations. Since personal identity is
an all or nothing affair, it seemed to follow that our commitments would extend equally
over all parts of our life. Thus, if we take personal identity to be what matters it seems
that if we make a promise when we are young we are still morally required to uphold it in
our old age. And this will be true even if we are very weakly psychologically related to
our youth, because we are still that same person. However, on Parfit’s view our
responsibility will be proportioned to the degree of psychological continuity and
connectedness. Given this view we may well not be bound to uphold commitments that we made
when we were younger. We may actually come to think about and treat certain aspects of our
past and future as different selves rather than as equal parts of our life. Just as
someone else cannot commit me to something, so too my former self cannot make commitments
on my part. Indeed, Parfit notes that "when we are considering commitments, the fact
of personal identity enters twice." (6) Thus, we may
need to consider the degrees of continuity not only between our own successive selves but
the continuity that holds between the persons to whom we make our commitments as well.
Parfit thinks that this result actually fits our moral intuitions better than the
Non-Reductionist View. He states that adopting the Reductionist View in these matters and
"using the language of successive selves, seems both understandable and
natural." (7) He provides an example to show why this
is so. The example concerns a young Russian with idealistic tendencies who will inherit a
large amount of property. Given his present ideals, he intends to give the land to the
peasants. But he also knows that people change over time, and thus that his ideals may
fade. In order to prevent this possibility he asks his wife to promise that she will never
consent to revoke a legal document that he has signed giving the land away. Parfit thinks
that if the man does in fact change later in his life and asks her to revoke the document
we would find it perfectly acceptable of her to regard herself as committed to the young
man whom he was and thus refuse to be released from her commitments by her present
husband. On this view, her husband in his middle ages "is, in some sense, not he
to whom she is committed." (8)
In the case of the Russian we might find the results of Parfit’s theory appealing.
Many of us would agree that for the wife to revoke the document would be to somehow or
another betray her former commitment. I think there are other, even clearer, cases in
which Parfit’s theory seems to provide the right result. I will just mention two
here. Suppose a soldier is captured behind enemy lines. When in captivity, he is tortured
severely; beaten, deprived of sleep, sunlight, food and water and so on. Under great
duress he finally gives the enemy highly classified information that he had solemnly
promised never to release. We would not, I think, be inclined to hold the soldier morally
blameworthy for breaking his promise in such a situation. On Parfit’s view we could
easily claim that this is because his torture was extreme enough to render him weakly
R-Related to the young recruit who made that promise. The second example I wish to mention
involves cases in which persons have lost control over their mental faculties to a large
degree. Such cases are quite commonly discussed in legal contexts. Without going into
great detail, I think most of us would agree that our commitments to persons is greatly
modified when such persons become, say, mentally disturbed or have been stricken with
Alzheimer’s disease. Parfit’s view provides a natural explanation for why this
is so. We may think that our commitments no longer hold towards them in the same way that
they previously did because they are now weakly R-Related to the persons whom we
originally made our commitment to. Likewise, we would normally not hold the person
stricken with Alzheimer’s responsible for their former commitments either.
It may seem then that Parfit’s Reductionist View actually provides some positive
support and explanatory force for our moral intuitions in certain circumstances. However,
despite the appeal that Parfit’s theory might have for us in considering such
situations, I think that the results of Parfit’s view are actually extremely damaging
to our normal conception of moral commitment. To see why I think this is so, I will again
provide some examples; this time of situations in which the results of Parfit’s view
are less then desirable. I will then make some general claims as to why I think this
negative result is inherent to Parfit’s view. Finally, I will say a few words about
the relationship between personal identity and morality.
First, consider the following scenario. Suppose I am a struggling artist, unsure of my
own abilities, despondent over my situation, and almost ready to end it all. However, just
as I am about to throw myself off the bridge an extremely wealthy investor comes upon me.
Taking pity upon me, he offers to use his wealth and influence in order to help my career
and to make a name for myself in the more prominent art circles. In exchange, he only asks
that if he is ever in need of a favor that I promise to help him as well. Due to his
patronage, I eventually become an extremely successful artist. My works fetch outlandish
prices and my presence commands the respect and admiration of high society. However, my
patron does not fare so well over the years. Unscrupulous employees bring about his
financial ruin, and he is eventually reduced to tatters, living on the streets from hand
to mouth. One day while walking with friends in the park, my former patron sees me and
asks me to remain true to my former promise to help him if he should ever need it. We
would all, I believe, think it morally repugnant of the me to refuse to honor my
commitment. However, on Parfit’s account there are two reasons for thinking that this
will not be the case. First, the successful and wealthy artist that I have become is
surely very weakly R-Related to that starving and despondent wreck who was about to kill
himself so many years ago. Likewise, the decrepit tramp before me now bears little
continuity to the commanding and prosperous investor that I made my promise to on that
day. Thus, on Parfit’s we could reasonably claim that neither myself nor my former
patron are the same selves as those involved in the establishment of the commitment. I
thus have no special moral obligation to the person before me.
There are also situations that are even more difficult for Parfit’s theory.
Remember, that on Parfit’s theory the R Relation, unlike personal identity, can take
a branching or one-many form. Consider Parfit’s Teletransportation case. Here we have
a teletransporter that can reproduce a perfect replica of myself that is fully
psychologically continuous with me as I am in the present. Suppose I am with a friend who
is about to get into the teletransporter. I promise my friend that I will watch her money
and other personal possessions for her while she goes into the teletransporter. Now, due
to some still unsolved glitches in the teletransporter, it causes some slight damage to
the person who is duplicated. However, the replica created on a different site suffers no
such damage. The result is that the replica actually will have a higher degree of
R-Relatedness to my present friend then she will. Now, imagine the process is completed
and my friend comes out. We then turn on our viewing screen and see her replica at a
distant site. They both turn toward me and ask me to return their belongings. To whom am I
committed? On Parfit’s view it would seem reasonable to maintain that I am more
strongly committed to my friend’s replica than I am to her, as her replica is more
strongly R-Related to the person to whom I made my promise.
Surely my second example is a bit fantastic. However, it does add additional support to
what I take to be the problem with Parfit’s view. According to Parfit, we should
weight promises and other commitments in relation to degrees of R-Relations. And, we have
seen that the R-Relation can both fail to hold within one life and can branch across more
than one life. As such, on Parfit’s theory the R-Relation can range over multiple
selves, each individual life can be thought of as a series of successive selves, and the
psychological continuity and connectedness that matters always comes in degrees. The
problem is whether, given all these factors, we can even make sense of the idea of a
commitment or a promise. In effect, as soon as they are made their force begins to weaken
on Parfit’s view since R-Relations are arguably always degenerate. Theoretically,
their scope could be infinite: after all you could indefinitely reduplicate yourself
causing me to be committed to countless generations of yourself. The examples thus show
that the results of Parfit’s view are not only counterintuitive, but that his theory
would make it impossible to construct any general principles concerning the nature and
scope of our commitments.
The real problem here is that if commitments such as promises are to have any practical
hold over us, we must take them as having two features. First, the force of a promise
holds precisely in so far as we suppose that it will hold through various changes in
psychological character. Indeed, the primary reason that we ask others to make promises is
in order to assure ourselves that they will remain committed in spite of such
psychological changes. Indeed, if we supposed that the strength of a promise held its full
strength only when the degree of psychological continuity and connectedness was equivalent
with that of the person making the commitment as they were presently constituted, we would
have no need for the promise at all since we already know that in their present state they
are willing to take on the obligation. Similarly, there is a problem of relevance as well.
In other words, on Parfit’s view we would have specify not only what degree of
R-Relatedness is necessary for a commitment to hold but what kind of continuities are
relevant for the purposes of our commitments since there are many different types of
continuity that hold within a single life. The attempt to provide a workable framework of
practical deliberation that accounts for such specifications is hopeless. Thus, it seems
to me that if we are to give promises any real weight we have to take persons as the basic
unit over which they range.
Second, I would maintain that common moral deliberation presupposes that promises and
other commitments cannot be degenerate in the way that Parfit’s View entails that
they are. That is, if commitments are to practically have any hold over us we cannot
suppose that they change their degree of strength over time. This is not to say that we
might not have degrees of obligation between various commitments, or that certain types of
commitments are stronger than other types, but that whatever degree of strength they do
have cannot be altered simply in relation to certain temporal connections between
ourselves. Here, I am again simply not sure what sense we could practically make of
Parfit’s view that we are obligated to our promises only to varying degrees as our
degrees of R-Relatedness to our past changes. If I promise not to tell a secret, what does
it mean to say that when my degree of R-Relatedness to my past self changes, I am now only
obliged to a certain degree not to tell it? If we are to attach any real practical
efficacy to promises we must suppose that their strength over us is not temporally
degenerate. Once more, the obvious response is to take personal identity as the basis of
our commitments rather than the R-Relation.
Of course, if we reject Parfit’s view on these issues we need to be able to
account for the type of situations that they seemed to handle so well. I do not, however,
think that this is too difficult. Most of the cases that Parfit’s theory seemed to
provide a natural explanation for can easily be covered by considering the other moral
obligations that we have. Thus, we have other general commitments towards persons;
including perhaps not harming them, acting for their general welfare, and so on. In many
cases it is then simply possible that other moral considerations override our commitments
and promises, without supposing that the selves involved are in fact different. Likewise,
we may arguably disregard certain commitments and promises in certain situations because
of other mitigating non-moral factors. Therefore, even if we take the intrinsic nature of
our commitments to be invariable there may well be extrinsic factors that allow us to be
released from our commitments and promises.
My concerns are not meant to show that Parfit’s theory of personal identity is
wrong. Indeed, for the most part I find his Reductionist View convincing. What I do think
is that if we are to give certain sorts of moral commitments any practical weight we must
suppose that they apply to persons. Thus, in many respects my own view is close to that of
Christine Korsgaard who argues that we may have practical reasons for regarding ourselves
as the same person over time even if we do not have deep metaphysical ones. (9)
In other words, it may be the case that if certain basic assumptions we have about
commitments and practicable deliberation are to hold, we may have to suppose that they
range over persons even if we have no deep metaphysical grounds for doing so. (10)
For matters of practical deliberation it appears at least that we have to suppose that
commitments hold between persons. Otherwise, if we follow Parfit’s suggestions
concerning the implications of the metaphysics of persons for issues of rationality and
morality I think that I have show that we will have to radically reconsider many of our
basic assumptions concerning our commitments and the range of their applicability.
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