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    Carmelics

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    There must exist some difference in a human body's origin... — Carmelics
    Home/Personal Identity
    HistoryEditSee Inverse

    There must exist some difference in a human body's origins such that neither natural language nor intuition determines whether that difference alters the identity of the human body.

    Personal Identity
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    1 reason for
    2 reasons against

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    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • 1.For any human individual, we can consider a counterpart with different origins where it is not obvious whether the difference affects who that individual is.
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    • 2.If sameness of sperm is held essential to personal identity, we can further ask whether a counterpart sperm with some different molecules is the same sperm.
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    • 3.Pursuing such questions far enough produces indeterminacy in the identity of the sperm, which infects the identity of the resulting body.
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
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    • 1.Kripke's essentialist framework entails that origins are metaphysically determinate even when epistemically inaccessible to intuition or natural language.
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    • 2.The indeterminacy the argument locates is semantic or epistemic, not ontological, so it fails to establish genuine indeterminacy in identity itself.
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    • 3.A body either did or did not originate from a particular sperm-egg pair; vagueness in our concepts does not make the underlying fact indeterminate.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
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    • 1.Parfit's reductionist view dissolves the problem differently: personal identity is not a further determinate fact beyond physical and psychological continuity relations.
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    • 2.If identity is not a separately existing fact, then the regress through origins does not produce indeterminacy but rather reveals that the identity question was not well-formed to begin with.
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    • 3.The claim therefore misdiagnoses vagueness in origins as threatening identity when reductionism shows the concept of bodily identity itself carries no hidden determinate content to be threatened.
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    Topics

    Personal Identity

    Key Terms

    Identity(Adams treats identity statements as a variety of atomic formula rather than a logical truth exempt from existence presuppositions)
    A relation between an object and itself, expressed as an atomic formula (a=a), subject to the same existence-entailment conditions as other atomic predicates under GSA
    Natural language(as used in logic and linguistics)
    Language as people actually speak and write it (like English or French), rather than artificial systems created for specific purposes.
    intuition(Kant, Prolegomena 4:286)
    In Kant's usage, immediate sensory or spatial awareness that is not reducible to conceptual thought; the mode by which the distinction between right and left is apprehended.
    metaphysics(Hartshorne's naturalistic redefinition of metaphysics)
    On Hartshorne's view, the study not of realities beyond the physical, but of features of reality that are ubiquitous or that would exist in any possible world.

    Connections

    2 topics

    Modality & Possibility1 linkedPhilosophy of Language1 linked

    Related

    A body either did or did not originate from a particular sperm-egg pair; vaguene...For any human individual, we can consider a counterpart with different origins w...

    Source

    AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid
    SEP: dualism
    View source passageHide passage
    Let us now apply this thought to conscious subjects. Suppose that a given human individual had had origins different from those which he in fact had such that whether that difference affected who he was was not obvious to intuition. What would count as such a case might be a matter of controversy, but there must be one. Perhaps it is unclear whether, if there had been a counterpart to Jones’ body from the same egg but a different though genetically identical sperm from the same father, the perso
    Extraction notes

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

    Details

    If identity is not a separately existing fact, then the regress through origins ...
    If sameness of sperm is held essential to personal identity, we can further ask ...
    +6 moreShow less
    Kripke's essentialist framework entails that origins are metaphysically determin...Parfit's reductionist view dissolves the problem differently: personal identity ...Pursuing such questions far enough produces indeterminacy in the identity of the...The claim therefore misdiagnoses vagueness in origins as threatening identity wh...The indeterminacy the argument locates is semantic or epistemic, not ontological...When indeterminacy propagates through the chain of identity conditions, there wi...

    Similar

    There exist cases where the difference in origins of a human body is s...95%For any human individual, we can consider a counterpart with different...79%If persons and physical bodies differed in how their identity works, t...78%Whether a given human body is the same body as a counterpart body is n...77%
    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (1 for, 2 against)
    Edits
    1 edit