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    The question of whether a person would have existed under... — Carmelics
    Home/Personal Identity
    HistoryEditSee Inverse

    The question of whether a person would have existed under slightly different causal origins cannot be resolved by appeal to overlap of physical constitution alone.

    Personal Identity
    ?Rate how convincing each reason is below to see the overall strength.
    1 reason for
    2 reasons against

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • 1.For physical objects with no consciousness, identity over counterfactual scenarios is fully explained by overlap of material constitution.
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    • 2.Persons possess consciousness, which introduces additional dimensions of identity beyond physical constitution.
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    • 3.When Jones asks whether he would have existed if created from a slightly modified sperm and the same egg, at least three distinct answers are coherent — indicating the question is not settled by physical overlap.
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Kripke's essentialist framework entails that origin is a strict necessary condition for identity, making the modified-sperm scenario simply a case of non-existence.
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    • 2.If origin essentialism is correct, there is exactly one coherent answer — the person would not have existed — dissolving the alleged indeterminacy the claim relies upon.
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    • 3.The appearance of multiple coherent answers reflects semantic imprecision about 'slight difference,' not a genuine gap that consciousness must fill.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
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    • 1.Parfit's reductionist account holds that personal identity consists in overlapping chains of physical and psychological continuity, with no further fact beyond those relations.
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    • 2.Under reductionism, questions about identity under counterfactual causal origins are not uniquely problematic for persons, since the same indeterminacy afflicts all complex physical objects with branching histories.
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    • 3.The claim therefore misidentifies consciousness as the source of irreducibility when the indeterminacy is a general feature of how identity concepts apply to continuants under branching conditions.
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    Topics

    Personal Identity

    Connections

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    Consciousness & Mind1 linked

    Related

    For physical objects with no consciousness, identity over counterfactual scenari...If origin essentialism is correct, there is exactly one coherent answer — the pe...Kripke's essentialist framework entails that origin is a strict necessary condit...Parfit's reductionist account holds that personal identity consists in overlappi...
    +5 moreShow less
    Persons possess consciousness, which introduces additional dimensions of identit...The appearance of multiple coherent answers reflects semantic imprecision about ...The claim therefore misidentifies consciousness as the source of irreducibility ...Under reductionism, questions about identity under counterfactual causal origins...When Jones asks whether he would have existed if created from a slightly modifie...

    Similar

    When Jones asks whether he would have existed if created from a slight...78%For any human individual, we can consider a counterpart with different...75%There exist cases where the difference in origins of a human body is s...72%The separateness of persons objection depends on a hard-and-fast metap...72%

    Source

    AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid
    SEP: dualism
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    Why is this so? Imagine the case where we are not sure whether it would have been Jones’ body – and, hence, Jones – that would have been created by the slightly modified sperm and the same egg. Can we say, as we would for an object with no consciousness, that the story something the same, something different is the whole story: that overlap of constitution is all there is to it? For the Jones body as such, this approach would do as well as for any other physical object. But suppose Jones, in ref
    Extraction notes

    Validity: Extracted via Max plan + API grounding/validity checks

    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (1 for, 2 against)
    Edits
    1 edit