THOUGHT EXPERIMENTS, ONTOLOGY,

AND CONCEPT-DEPENDENT TRUTHMAKERSI

1. What thought-experiments do
Thought experiments are usually employed by philosophers as a tool
in conceptual analysis. We pose ourselves questions such as "Would it be
the same F if pT or "Would it count as knowledge if q," where p and q
state some bizarre circumstances that are unlikely actually to occur and
may even be beyond current technical possibility.^ The answers we are
inclined to give to such questions are held to throw light on the nature of
our concepts of, in these cases, identity and knowledge. But the facts
about our concepts that are unearthed in this way £ire implicitly assumed
to be deep, not superficial, facts. They are not meant to be facts contingent
upon our current linguistic usage, psychology, or social structure, where
these could easily be otherwise. If they were just facts of this superficial
kind, it would hardly be worth the effort of uncovering them, for they
would bind no-one who preferred a different convention or practice. The
conceptual truths revealed are meant to be unavoidable, in some sense,
and not merely conventional: there is something Platonic or Kantian in the
background. The argument of Sections 2-8 of this essay is that, in the case
of the thought experiments used to throw light on our concepts of person
and personal identity, the results do not seem to be deep or hard to revise,
and that this is so largely because of the ontological assumptions shared
by more or less all participants in the debate.^ I shall be arguing that it is
primarily these ontological assumptions, rather than the insight into our
concepts that the thought experiments are supposed to bring, that
determine the answers to the questions about persons and their identity. In
the final two sections I shall make some cautious qualifications to this
conclusion.

"Thought: Experiments, Ontology, and Concept-dependent Truthmakers" by Howard Robinson,

The Monisl, vol. 87, no. 4, pp. 537-553. Copyright © 2004, THE MONIST, Peru, Illinois 61354.
538 HOWARD ROBINSON

2. The "Accepted Ontology"

The ontological assumptions in question constitute what I shall call
the "Accepted Ontology." This ontology is as follows:

(1) There are human bodies.

(2) There are mental states "associated with" or "belonging to" these
bodies. (It does not matter for present purposes whether these
mental states are themselves thought of physicalistically or in a
property-dualist fashion.)
(3) The mental states of a given person are related with each other over
time roughly in the way that Parfit characterizes as continuity and
connectedness, (which, following others I shall call R-related-
ness) and, if they were not so related there would, at the very
least, not be a normal person there.
(4) There is no further entity—such as an immaterial substance—re-
sponsible for the identity at or through time of the person.

My claim is that, given that these ontological decisions are already made,
further revelations about what our concepts determine can only be trivial.
In order to bring this out, I shall distinguish between two kinds of truth-
makers for factual claims.

3. Crucially concept-dependent truthmakers

The distinction that I wish to draw is between those truthmakers that
are crucially world-dependent and those that are crucially concept-
dependent. If I claim that there are two billiard balls on the table, concepts
are, of course, involved in this claim. But, in ordinary circumstances, the
nature of the world entirely determines, for all practical circumstances,
how those concepts apply to the world. The same is true under normal cir-
cumstances if I say that there are two people in this room or that I am the
same person as I was yesterday. But the situation is different under the
following circumstances:

(i) it is contentious whether a concept applies in certain dif^cult

cases:
 CONCEPT-DEPENDENT TRUTHMAKERS 539

(ii) this contentiousness is not thought to be a reflection of any sub-

stantive uncertainty about what is out there in the world, except in
so far as such uncertainty reflects doubt about the proper use of
the concept:
(iii) even if there is a fact to be discovered about whether the concept
actually applies in these cases, there is no reason why there
should not be or have been a counterpart concept which delivers
the same result in uncontentious cases, but that delivers the
opposite decision in the contentious ones.*

When these three conditions are met, the tnithmaker is crucially

concept-dependent. When a fact is concept-dependent in this way, it is
merely a form of conceptual conservatism to insist on the factual status of
claims using the present concept, rather than allowing equal propriety to
a "fact" articulated by using one of the counterpart concepts. The connec-
tion between the Accepted Ontology and crucially concept-dependent
truthmakers is shown in condition (ii) above. A tnithmaker is crucially
concept-dependent if the concepts employed in articulating that truth-
maker do not figure in the articulation of the basic ontology, and if the
very same states of affairs in the basic ontology are open to different con-
ceptualizations at the non-basic level of the tnithmaker in question. Which
of the different conceptualizations one chooses will determine what the
tnithmaker is.

4. Thought experiments used in discussing personal identity

Let us consider how the thought-experiments used in the discussion
of personal identity relate to these two kinds of tnithmaker, in the light of
the ontology that most of the major discussants seem to accept.
For a normal human being, continuity of mental life and bodily con-
tinuity naturally go together. There are real-life cases of breakdown in
mental continuity, in, for example, total amnesia and multiple personality,
but the thought experiments set the normal bodily and mental signs of
personal identity against each other in more systematic ways than in such
pathologies. Understanding the role of these thought-experiments is made
more complicated, however, by the fact that two issues are at stake in the
debate. One issue is whether the psychological criterion or the bodily
criterion plays the crucial role in determining personal identity; the other
540 HOWARD ROBINSON

is whether identity is what matters for "survival." These issues tend to be

treated as overlapping because the psychological criterion tends to push
one towards accepting that fission or reduplication preserve what matters
to the human subject, whilst being inconsistent with identity proper.
Opponents of the psychological criterion, therefore, tend also to be
defenders of the importance of identity. There are, therefore, two main
initial kinds of imaginative case. First, there are those that seem to
challenge the necessity of identity for "personal survival." These are
mainly cases of the splitting of mental life, for fission of this sort notori-
ously leads to contradictions with the logic of identity. Second, there are
cases that purport to show the superiority of one of the criteria. Those that
are intended to support the psychological criterion illustrate various ways
in which R-relatedness can survive body swapping. Whole-brain trans-
plants are an instance of this. The brain flssion with transplants cases
support both the priority of the psychological criterion and the lack of im-
portance of identity. Those that are intended to support the bodily criterion
are meant to illustrate how mentality can be replicated without preserving
the subject of experience. Williams's cases (1956-57; 1973) are meant to
be instances of this.
There is a third kind of case, however, that brings together, from the
perspective of the psychological criterion, the supposed results of the
other two. If one accepts the priority of the psychological criterion and the
non-essentiality of identity, then straightforward reduplication or
"xeroxing" of persons will preserve "what matters." For some (e.g.,
Johnston: 1997) this is a reductio of the psychological approach, for
others, such as Parfit, it is a triumphant liberation.5

5. The thought experiments and the Accepted Ontology

It seems to me that, given the Accepted Ontology, there is no relevant
dispute about the facts in any of these cases, and so the truthmakers in
disputes about personal identity must be crucially concept-dependent. In
the case of fission, all agree about what happens to the body, and what the
R-relations are after the flssion. With replication, it is agreed that there is
a different body with apparent R-relations to the original. With Williams's
cases, it is agreed that the identity of the body remains unchanged, but
certain mental states are altered. What, then, in terms of the Accepted
Ontology, is in dispute in any of these cases? On the ontology in (1) to (4),
 CONCEPT-DEPENDENT TRUTHMAKERS 541

if A and B are psychologically connected, and A and C are not, but A and
C are somatically connected and ^4 and B are not, those are all the facts.
The further question "but which of 5 or C is the same person as A?" has no
further factual content; at most, it reflects the concept we happen to possess.*

6. The thought experiments and crucial concept-dependence

To see whether this is the correct diagnosis, let us look at the
imaginary cases in the light of the three criteria for being crucially
concept-dependent. Criterion (i)—that the application of the concept is, in
some cases, contentious—plainly applies because it is contentious how
the concept of 'person' applies in the thought-experiment cases; (ii)—that
this contentiousness does not arise from any disputes about "the facts"—
is what was argued in Section 5. Only by appealing to intuitions about the
content of the concept of a person cein the issue be further decided. It
seems, then, that (iii)—whatever our concept says, there would be an
equally workable one that delivered different verdicts in the contentious
cases—is the only possible area for dispute. It must be claimed that it is
not merely accidental or arbitrary that we have the precise concept that we
do. Prima facie, it is difficult to see why this should be so. It is agreed on
all sides that the bodily criterion and the psychological criterion give the
same results for all normal cases: this is why science-fictional thought ex-
periments are required to bring out the difference. Suppose we somehow
discovered or decided that our linguistic-conceptual practices, at a deep
level, really confirmed the bodily criterion. I can see no reason in theory
or practice why those of another community could not similarly confirm
the psychological one. As they both work for all the actual cases that have
so far occurred, neither could be dysfunctional. For similar reasons, if
teletransportation, brain-transplanting, etc., became actual practices, a
Parfitian might recommend that we change our linguistic practices and
hence our concepts so as to accommodate them. If the ontology stated in
our assumptions is correct, then the protest "but they would still not really
be the same person," can mean no more than "that is not exactly how we
have so far used the concept 'person'."
If these considerations are correct, the dispute can be about nothing
more than how our present concept happens to legislate the matter. If it
were to be about something more than such a crucially concept-dependent
decision, this could only be because there is what Parfit terms a "further
542 HOWARD ROBINSON

fact" in the world, such as would be constituted by a Cartesian ego; that

is, only if one rejected (4) in the Accepted Ontology.

7. Smuggling in "furtherfacts"
It is worth labouring this latter point because it is so natural to take
the further fact for granted, without noticing it. It is, I believe, for
example, quite natural to think in the following way of the difference
between fission and reduplication: In the case of fission, complete conti-
nuity of consciousness through the process of division would seem to be
possible; experiences could, in James's phrase "flow into" one another
across the traumatic moment, as they do in normal experience. With redu-
plication, however, the overlapping of contents from moment to moment
that seems to characterize normal experience could not cross the divide
between the last experience had by the subject before duplication, and the
first experience of the duplicate. Even if there was no temporal gap
between the former and the latter, and even if the contents entirely
matched, there could be no actual overlapping of content.'' It is natural to
take this fact as evidence that it is or might be really you that survives
division, but it is not in duplication. The possibility of real overlap of
content in the one case and its impossibility in the other, is taken as a sign
of the possibility of real survival in the one case and its impossibility in
the other. But, on the Accepted Ontology, what could such "real survival"
in the fission case consist in? There are only different facts about how the
R-relations operate, and about relations of bodies. Given that, ex hypothesi,
it is not evidence for the existence of something further, how could the
fact that one situation could, in principle, sustain unbroken continuity and
the other could not, be, of and in itself, a matter of any particular signifi-
cance? It can only be a fact about kinds of continuity, and nothing else.
Nevertheless, one thinks that it indicates something further.
In fact, slippage of this kind goes back to the language Locke used in
the Essay Concerning Human Understanding (Locke 1690/1894/1959)
when first formulating the memory criterion of personal identity. He
adapts it from his account of the identity through time of organisms.
That being then one plant which has such an organization of parts in one
coherent body, partaking of one common life, it continues to be the same
plant as long as it partakes of the same life, though that life be communicat-
 CONCEPT-DEPENDENT TRUTHMAKERS 543

ed to new particles of matter vitally united to the living plant . . . {Essay

11.27.5)
One might wonder what this 'common life' is supposed to be, especially
in the light of his rejection of Aristotelian 'substantial forms'. The
important nineteenth century editor of the Essay, Alexander Campbell
Fraser, adds the simultaneously unhelpful and revealing note:
It is only in a loose sense in which the 'organisation' which is visible, can be
identified with the 'life' which is invisible. (Locke 1959: 443)
The comment is unhelpful because it is unclear what the 'loose sense' is.
It is revealing because it draws attention to the slippage in Locke's
thinking.
Locke's language reifies 'the same consciousness' in much the same
way as it does 'the same life'.
the same consciousness uniting those distant actions into the same person . . .
{Essay \\.21.\0)
For it is by the consciousness it has of its present thoughts and actions,
that it is self to itself now, and so will be the same self, as far as the same con-
sciousness can extend to actions past or to come... . {Essay 11.27.12.)
Locke's language, on both these issues, is sometimes reductionist,
but sometimes suggests that some further, real entity supervenes on, or is
immanent in, the continuities that underlie it. No doubt this slide happens
unconsciously in Locke, and a similar shift is liable to occur in us when
we think we are thinking in terms of a reformed and reductive ontology.
The reductionism obliges one to think of experiential unity at a given time
as a construct from the relations between mental contents, but one can
hardly avoid the thought that that very same unity—a unity of appercep-
tion—is passed on as the contents change, at least for as long as there is
unbroken consciousness: the unity itself becomes reified.

8. Consequences for the psychological criterion/bodily criterion debate

How do the conclusions so far affect the debate between the psycho-
logical and the bodily criteria? They might seem to be neutral because
they only show that nothing much is gained by trying to unearth the
identity conditions implicit in our current concept of a person and so
favours the claim of neither to be the key to this non-issue. If one.
544 HOWARD ROBINSON

therefore, abandons the search for identity in a pure sense and instead sees
the dispute as one between two rival criteria for what matters in the con-
tinuity of persons ("personal identity" loosely so-called), then it might
seem that our argument has nothing to tell you about which to prefer, and
so to be neutral. The contest between the two criteria tends not, however,
to be represented in this way. Parfit claims that it is R-relatedness that
matters, not identity, but his opponents do not make the parallel claim that
it is bodily continuity, not identity, that matters. Rather, the kind of bodily
continuity they are interested in is strict one-to-one continuity, with no
branching or fusion, so they can assimilate it to strict identity for the body.
They then further assimilate the identity of the body to that of the person,
perhaps with the proviso that the body must be living. These moves are
often implicit, and options need distinguishing.
A supporter of the bodily criterion can be thought of as saying any of
three things. First, and most modest, accepting the neutrality postulated
above, would be the claim that, though he accepts that my arguments
show that nothing is at dispute of a deeply factual nature, he prefers the
bodily criterion. This position seems unmotivated. To prefer being the
same body when one does not see this as the key to being the same person,
but simply being the same body, per se, seems to lack any rationale.
The second is that bodily continuity without (bodily) branching con-
stitutes bodily identity, and that that identity counts, per se as personal
identity. This seems hardly better motivated than the first. Within the con-
straints of the Accepted Ontology, the suggestion that bodily identity
alone—^that is, in the absence of any R-relatedness—should count as
personal identity amounts to the claim that causal dependence on the same
body (or, if one is reductionist, being a property of the same body) con-
stitutes being experienced by the same subject. But the idea of being
experienced by the same subject carries with it something further than the
claim that all the relevant mental states causally belonged to the same
body—even if the more that it carries along with it is thought to supervene
on this fact. Williams wants to convince you that, when your body is
tortured after all your mental characteristics have been obliterated, it will
really be you that is in agony, where this is not another way of saying that
it will be the body that once housed your psychology that feels the pain.
If it were just the latter, it would remain an open question whether you, as
prudent, should care about the prospect. The third option is that sameness
 CONCEPT-DEPENDENT TRUTHMAKERS 545

of body constitutes personal identity because there necessarily supervenes

upon it—irrespective of our concepts—sameness of subject. This is why
it is a real fact that it will hurt you when your psychologically renovated
body it tortured. It is this last position which, I think defenders of the
bodily criterion tacitly, if unconsciously, assume. But, as with the case of
continuous overlapping consciousness considered above, this is actually a
hidden version of a "further fact" theory, and, as such, not compatible with
the accepted ontology.*
This gives us good reason for thinking that, within the constraints of
the Accepted Ontology, Parfit must be right. First, there is the realization
that, given the ontology, truthmakers for identity-claims will be crucially
concept-dependent and so trivial. But there is also a further consideration
that strongly favours him, which has emerged in the paragraphs immedi-
ately above, namely that the bodily criterion has no account of
subjecthood. With the Accepted Ontology there are only two forms of
connexion between mental contents that are possibly relevant to subject-
hood. One is their causal dependence on the body, the other is their
relations one to another that are summed up as R-relatedness. R-related-
ness is generally thought of as being a diachronic relation, but synchronic
co-consciousness—sometimes equated with the unity of apperception—
must also be something of the same sort: that is, it must be a construction
from a basic co-consciousness relation. The animalist believes that the
same subject can survive total obliteration of R-relatedness and, presum-
ably, by parity of argument, atomization of current consciousness. This
leaves him with no alternative but to claim that causal dependence on the
same body constitutes sameness of subject. Or, at least, it leaves him with
no alternative, if he thinks that sameness of person entails sameness of
subject. He might argue that the same body is equivalent to same person,
but allow that a person could be—or house—a series of different subjects.
This manoevre has the danger that it seems to transfer at least some of the
problems we re interested in to einother point. I am interested in myself as
a subject of experience, and if the person that I am gets detached from
this, then perhaps it is not myself qua person that most concerns me.
Assuming that the animalist wants to tie sameness of person to
sameness of subject, and that he cannot, therefore, explain sameness of
subject in terms of R-relatedness, he has no other resources with which to
explain it except as belonging to the same body. But this, without some
546 HOWARD ROBINSON

further or emergent feature, cannot do justice to the fact that subjecthood

is not a matter of logical ownership alone—as a ball possesses its roundness
—but has an essential experiential aspect. Once the Cartesian ego is
abandoned, conscious subjecthood has to be understood in terms of some
basic relation between the only consciousness-possessing elements left,
namely mental states. Negating these, leaves one with notfiing.^
In the next two sections I shall discuss two recent accounts that, in
different ways, claim that our ordinary conceptions of personal identity
are untouched by reductionist accounts. From these will emerge a
cautious reservation about the argument so far.

9. Johnston's defence of "further facts "

Quite counter to the main argument above, Mark Johnston has
argued in various places, but especially his (1992) and (1997), that the
existence of a "further fact" about identity—and other things—is consis-
tent with a reductionist ontology. According to Johnston, ordinary
commonsense facts are, in general, autonomous and not dependent on
one's preferred theoretical ontology. It is proper to hold that normal
people are free agents whether or not one believes in "uncaused volitions,"
and whether or not one is a determinist. One believes that tomorrow is yet
to come, whether or not one accepts "a moving NOW" or a block universe.
Similarly, issues about the identity of human beings can be fixed in the
normal ways whether or not one accepts Cartesian egos or just bodies with
associated mental events. Johnston calls belief in the resilience of
ordinary conceptual practice in the face of metaphysical differences,
"Minimalism."
Johnston's position is complex and, perhaps, sometimes overgener-
alized. One might be tempted to think that some of our conceptual
practices are dependent on a certain metaphysical background, and others
are not. Johnston, via his doctrine of "minimalism," talks as if none of
them are. Johnston, for example, seems to believe that adopting a "redun-
dancy" theory of truth, and rejecting Parfit's claims that his theory of
personal identity has ethical consequences, are both instances of "mini-
malism," and, therefore, parts of the same general strategy. It is difficult
to believe that the kinds of considerations that enter into these questions
have anything interesting in common. But, in the present context, I am
only concemed with whether adopting the Accepted Ontology gives a
 CONCEPT-DEPENDENT TRUTHMAKERS 547

rationale to the psychological criterion, or whether, as Johnston claims,

our common-sense views on identity are untouched. In fact, the point I am
making in this section is not essentially ad hominem against Johnston. It
concems a quite general thesis which is widely and naturally held. It is
that we have many vital conceptual practices that do not concern them-
selves with basic ontology and which are not affected by different views
on basic ontology, and talk about persons is one such vital conceptual practice.
It can hardly be denied that what is said in this general thesis is often
true: not all our conceptual practices are dependent on our views about
basic ontology—indeed, perhaps few of them are. But the emergence of
novel cases—like fission or teletransportation—obliges us to consult our
ontology to see how to decide what we should do in those cases. Why this
consultation of our ontology should be required is clear from what has
been said above. The issue is whether the conceptual practices that are not
directly dependent on our basic ontology are not thereby rendered
crucially concept-dependent, and so open to revision. I have already
argued that in the case of the concept of a person, it clearly is concept-
dependent. Perhaps my basic point could be re-expressed as follows. In so
far as a conceptual practice is not determined or required by one's basic
ontology, the reason for adopting it cannot be that it is required if one is
to be true to the facts. But the disputants on the issue of personal identity
do, I think, believe that they are arguing about the truth.
Nevertheless, Johnston raises an important issue. The third clause in
the definition of crucially concept-dependent truthmakers required that
there be different concepts that delivered the same verdict in non-contro-
versial cases and different verdicts in the contentious cases. There is an
implication here that the adequacy of a concept is entirely a matter of its
descriptive adequacy: if two concepts deliver the same verdict in the un-
controversial cases, then they are equally acceptable candidates. But there
might be non-descriptive reasons for choosing one of the candidates.
Locke said that the concept of a person was a forensic concept. In other
words, the conditions for the unity of a person are determined by the re-
quirements for holding someone responsible. Rovane (1998), rather similarly
(though there are also serious differences) thinks that a person is that to
which agency can be ascribed. Parfit believes that the flexibility that ac-
companies the psychological criterion enables one to avoid the morally
pernicious priority of prudence. On the other side, Wiggins (2001:193-244)
548 HOWARD ROBINSON

believes that the psychological criterion must be rejected on moral

grounds, rather than descriptive ones, because it leads to too insubstantial
a conception of human nature.
Perhaps it could be the case that two alternative conceptions are equally
acceptable in terms of simple descriptive ontology, but are not equally ac-
ceptable in terms of pragmatic ontology. Both answer with equal accuracy
to what is in one's fundamental ontology, but one serves some important
purpose that the other fails. Locke believes that taking bodily continuity
as the ground of identity would fail to meet requirements of justice:
whereas Wiggins thinks that adopting a Lockean or functionalist criterion
would leave us too easily victims to the machinations of evil technocrats.
Now it is no part of my argument that there could be no reasons for
preferring one criterion rather than another, perhaps depending on the
kind of case. But the nature of the dispute will have changed from being
one about metaphysical fact. Bad theories will no longer be false, but un-
fortunate, like the enactment of a bad law, which has destructive con-
sequences. The kinds of argument deployed will be different. My claim is
only that, in the strict domain of metaphysical truth, the accepted ontology
leaves nothing to be disputed.

10. Gendler's argument for the priority of identity over R-relatedness

Tamar Gendler (2002) has provided an illuminating defence of the
importance of strict identity for the survival of persons. Her argument is
that, although R-relatedness may be sufficient for personal survival in
some cases, this may be so for reasons that are parasitic on the central
"genuine identity" case. The concept she employs is that of "borrowed
lustre." An example might be as follows. (It is mine, not Gendler's.) I
might believe that human beings have the basic rights they do because of
their nature as rational beings. I might also believe that babies and
radically subnormal people also have most of the most fundamental of
these rights. Someone might argue that my granting rights to babies and
the subnormal showed that I do not think that it is rationality that really
commands respect, but whatever quality or qualities it is that normal
adults, babies, and the subnormal share. This would not be right, however.
I acknowledge those rights in the case of non-rational humans because of
the relationship that they stand in to the normal human adult. It is because
the mature state is what, by their very nature as human beings, they will
 CONCEPT-DEPENDENT TRUTHMAKERS 549

be or should be like, that they have those rights. They "borrow lustre"
from their essential relationship to the paradigm case. Similarly, according
to Gendler, the R-relatedness shown in Parfitian thought experiments has
sufficient affinity with standard cases of identity to squeeze in under the
same umbrella. It does not follow that identity matters only because it
involves R-relatedness. On the contrary, R-relatedness on its own "borrows
lustre" from its similarity to normal identity. In Gendler's own words
Tbe suggestion is tbis: suppose we had no sense that there could be identity,
as opposed to mere R-relatedness—would there be such a thing as prudential
concern? I suggest that the answer is 'No'... . Our views about tbe sorts of
rational and moral obligations we bave to ourselves and others, considered
as beings wbo exist tbrougb time, rest on tbe assumption tbat eacb of us will
bave at most one continuer, and tbat tbis continuer will be someone witb
wbom we will be identical. (50)
There is, of course, as Gendler acknowledges, a difference between
the claim that, if fission and fusion were too common, some or all of our
rational practices would break down: and the claim that these rest essen-
tially on the idea of identity. There is also a difference between insisting
on the importance of one-one continuation of psychological continuity,
and of ruling out body swaps. For body swapping is consistent with non-
branching psychological continuity, because an unbranching mind might
move from body to body. But the difference between, on the one hand,
insisting on identity and, on the other, accepting the ontological sufficien-
cy of stable continuity, can be reconciled by a Humean. Humeanism is an
ontological theory—a person is nothing other than a bundle of mental
events standing in certain relations. There is no reason, however, why he
should not agree that these relations must be such as to sustain the '"I
thought'—^that which enables one to treat oneself as the same subject
through time, and that this is possible only with a large degree of stability
in mental and, preferably, bodily continuity. The necessity of being able to
apply the oversimplifying category of identity will not worry a Humean—
the necessity of such illusions pervades his whole theory. It is still,
nevertheless, an illusion that it is genuine identity that is doing the work.
When the adequacy of continuity depends on the ability to treat it as
identity, and identity is no more than the reification, under our concept
'person', of an instance of continuity, which is borrowing its lustre from
which? (Blackburn [1997] engages helpfully with these issues.)
550 HOWARD ROBINSON

If Hume can accept the pragmatic unavoidability of appeal to identity,

perhaps it is less obvious that Parfit can do the same thing. This is an issue
to which we shall return in our conclusion.

11. Conclusion: What is at stake in the conflict between the two criteria?
At first sight, the point of the debate about personal identity that has
been raging over the last forty years seems clear enough. It is about the
make-up or constitution of persons. I think that what I have said about the
Accepted Ontology shows that, for the most part at least, that issue is
akeady begged. What, therefore, was at stake?
There are three major areas of conflict in this dispute, two of which have
been discussed above and one hinted at, at the end of the previous section.
(i). The one to which I have only hinted is Derek Parfit's main motive
for interest in the subject. Although not discussed above, it needs noting
because it has been one of the major motivations for the whole debate. It
is the belief that taking the R-relation, rather than identity, as "what
matters in survival" undermines our conviction that ethical rationality
must rest on prudence. Parfit seems to think that the logical possibility that
people, including myself, might have been R-related to more than one
person, or that such a thing might happen in the future (presumably not to
me, because it will not happen that soon) is a reason for me now to feel a
kind of connection with others, such that I do not distinguish sharply
between their interests and my own. It is a moot point how far acceptance
of a pragmatic need to employ the concept of identity would undermine
this argument. On the one hand, if one cannot avoid thinking in identity
terms, perhaps one cannot legitimately avoid accepting its consequences.
On the other, recognition that this is a pragmatic need and not one founded
in fundamental ontology might leave space for an argument that "really"
there is no fundamental difference between oneself and others. There are
different versions of a doctrine of pragmatic necessity and this might affect
this argument.
Of course, none of this affects the basic arguments for rejecting
Parfit's ethical claims. His view seems unconvincing (a) because the fact
that something is an unsatisfied logical possibility, or that something
might happen in the future to someone else, doe's not seem to be a reason
why I should revise my conception of rationality in the present. It is also
odd (b) because, even if fission were to happen, the fact that R-related-
 CONCEPT-DEPENDENT TRUTHMAKERS 551

ness, not identity, is what matters would only give me reason to be

concemed about those who are, or could reasonably be expected to be, R-
related to me. It would give me an extended family, not a general dis-
interestedness. I need have no more general a sense of civic responsibili-
ty than a corrupt politician.
(ii) The second concern that lies behind the debate is the pragmatic
importance of being able to treat people as "the same" through time, and
in what way this pragmatic requirement can be said to have ontological
consequences. Does it have the form of a Humean "unavoidable illusion,"
or (if this is different) a Kantian category, and, if the latter, does adopting
this kind of Kantianism have a metaphysical and ontological cost, or can
it be reconciled with the Accepted Ontology?
(iii) The third concern is the straight ontological one. Can one show that
Parfit's theory is defective in ways that force one to abandon the Accepted
Ontology in favour of a "further fact" that has direct Cartesian clout?
In sum, I think it is helpful to be clear about the role of the Accepted
Ontology; about the difference between world-dependent and crucially
concept-dependent truthmakers; and about the ethical, pragmatic, and directly
ontological issues at stake.

Howard Robinson
Central European University
Budapest

NOTES

1. My thanks to the editors, Tamar Szab6 Gendler and Dean Zimmerman, for helpful
comments on a previous version of this essay.
2. There is a different kind of thought-experiment which has the peculiar feature of
being essentially counteifactual. In the cases which will be discussed in this essay and
which constitute the main body of thought-experiments relating to personal identity, one
is asking "what would one say were such-and-such [for example, a brain transplant] to
occur?" Although no such thing has happened yet, some day it may. But there are other
cases relevant to issues of identity which are irreformably counterfactual. One might ask
"Would it have been the same F if pi" where it is essential that p was not in fact the case.
An example of such a case is "Would it have been me that was bom if the sperm which
fertilized 'my' egg had been different in certain ways from how it actually was?" No
future, however wonderful science becomes, could realize such a case, because if someone
had been bom from "my" egg and a slightly altered sperm, that would have done nothing
552 HOWARD ROBINSON

to show whether the person so produced was the same as would have been produced under
the conditions that obtain in our world. Because of this irreformably counterfactual
element, such experiments are condemned to remain etemally thought experiments, in a
way that speculations about transplanting brains are not. But these thought experiments
can still be important for problems in personal identity. For example, Madell (1981),
Swinbume (1986), and Robinson (2003) argue that such "would it have been me?" coun-
teifactuals as the one cited above must have a determinate answer, and that this proves the
simplicity of the self in a roughly Cartesian manner. Although such counterfactual cases
are not our present concern, they raise interesting issues of their own and their importance
should not be overlooked.
3. The exceptions are those who defend a broadly Cartesian theory of the self.
Examples are Madell (1981), Swinbume (1986), Foster (1991), and Robinson (2003).
4. I say "even if there is a fact to be discovered " because there are different views
about whether vagueness in concepts is possible, and, indeed, on whether, if it is not
possible, the true contours of the concept can ever be discovered. See Williamson (1994).
5. The case of "teletransportation," as found in the television series "Star Trek," is
often cited, for example, by Parfit, in discussions of duplication. There are, I think, two
ways of understanding this process, only one of which makes it a straightforward case of
duplication. On this interpretation the teletransporter destroys the initial body whilst also
extracting from it information as to its structure. This information is transmitted, and, on
the basis of it, a duplicate body is constructed. On the other interpretation, the machine
transforms the matter of the body into a form of energy that contains all the information
about it and "beams down" that energy to the target location, where it is re-materialized.
The important difference is whether what is transmitted can be regarded as a form of, and
not just data about, the original. If it can, then identity can be preserved.
6. There may be pragmatic reasons for choosing one concept over another, as we shall
see in Section 9.
7. I am assuming that experience is not a series of discrete "pulses," but that data or
qualia can overlap or "flow into" each other, so that one datum can begin half-way through
the existence of another. All views on the nature of experience are controversial, but the
one I am assuming seems to be the natural one. If the "pulse" view is correct, with content
reproduced moment by moment without genuine overlap of contents, then duplication and
continuation cease to be seriously different. Each new moment is rather like waking up in
the moming with one's memories intact: there is no real continuity.
8. Thomson (1997) is an animalist who is aware of this problem. But she acknowl-
edges that the problem presents itself as something with which her theory, as presently
understood, does not know how to cope. I am suggesting that the animalist is forced to
accept Ayer's "no ownership" theory of the self (Ayer: 1963); a theory refuted by Foster
(1968), which Ayer felt obliged to abandon.

REFERENCES

Ayer, A. J. (1963): "The Concept of a Person" in The Concept ofa Person and Other
Essays, London: Macmillan, 82-128.
Blackbum, Simon (1997); "Has Kant Refuted Parfit?" in Dancy (1997), 180-201.
 CONCEPT-DEPENDENT TRUTHMAKERS 553

Dancy, Jonathan (ed.) (1997): Reading Parfit, Oxford: Blackwell.

Foster, John (1968): "Psychophysical Causal Relations," American Philosophical
Quarterly, 5, 64-70.
(1991): The Immaterial Self, London: Routledge.
Gendler, Tamar Szab6 (2(X)2): "Personal Identity and Thought-experiments," Philosophi-
cal Quarterly, 52, 34-54.
Johnston, Mark (1992): "Reason and Reductionism," Philosophical Review, 101,
589-618.
(1997): "Human Concerns Without Superlative Selves," in Dancy (1997), 149-79.
Locke, John (1690/1959): An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. A. C. Fraser,
New York: Dover Publications.
Madell, Geoffrey (1981); The Identity of the Self. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Parfit, Derek (1984): Reasons and Persons, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Robinson, Howard (2003): "Dualism," in Stich, Stephen and Ted Warfield (eds.) The
Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Mind, Oxford: Blackwell, 85-101.
Rovane, Carol (1998): The Bounds of Agency, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Swinbume, Richard (1986): The Evolution of the Soul, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Thomson, Judith Jarvis (1997): "People and Their Bodies," in Dancy, 202-29.
Wiggins, David (2001): Sameness arid Substance Renewed, Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press.
Williams, Bemard (1956-57): "Personal Identity and Individuation," Proceedings of the
Aristotelian Society, 57, 229-52. Reprinted in Williams (1973): 1-18.
(1973); Problems of the Self, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Williamson, Timothy (1994): MJ^MCWCM, London; Routledge.