Brook

179. Against our intuitions, Kant shows that even a memory of having an earlier experience
and doing an earlier act is no proof that it was had or done by the person who now remembers
having or doing it. Equally, our sense that we have persisted for quite some time (normally,
consinously since about age four or five) is quite compatible with no having persisted for
anything like that long. Memory and the sense of having persisted require unity of
consciousness, and this unity ‘reaches back’ into the past in a sense. However, this reaching
back does not require identity.
Para él las memorias de haber tenido experiencias o haber realizado acciones generan una
ilusión de que el sujeto del pasado es uno mismo.
¿La unidad de autoconciencia tiene una dimensión temporal?
182. To support immortality, personal identity must have three properties. First, it must
support true personal identity, that is to say, not persistence as some soul or other, even less
some thing of some sort of other, but persistence as me, the person I am right now. Second,
it must be able to survive the death of the body. Third, what it supports must yield clear
identity, not some loose situation where it is unclear whether the concept of identity applies
or not.
Lo que la inmortalidad require es identidad estrica y filosófica.
En el tercer paralogismo Kant está atacando que nuestra persistencia sea absoluta e
incorruptible. La idea de que en las personas la identidad es estricta y absolua.
Kant investiga la conciencia de mí misma en la memoria.
188. Some might argue that I am not entitled to use the Word ‘remember’ in the way I have
been doing here. Saying that I remember the earlier experience as though I had it entails that
it was me who had it – I can only remember having an experience that I had. To meet this
objection Shoemaker coined the term ‘quasi-remember’, which Parfit shortened to ‘q-
remember’, the form in which it is now usually used. Q-memories are exactly like memories
except that it is not ruled out as a matter of definition that I might q-remember having an
experience that someone else had.
188-189: Whether he or she was me or not, whoever actually had the remembered experience
or did the remembered action certainly does appear when I remember having the experience
or doing the act in question. Two points now become vital. Two points now become vital.
First, such a past subject or agent will be represented in my memories of having experiences
or doing actions from the same point of view as I represent myself right now, namely, from
the point of view of being that subject or agent. Right now I represent myself to myself from
the point of view of being that self, represent that self as me, ‘from the inside’. I represent
myself from the point of view of what it is like to be me. Similarly with the earlier subject or
agent. I represent the earlier subject or agent from the point of view of what it would have
benn lie to be that subject or agent, too (what it was lie, if the subject was me). In short, I
represent the earlier subject or agent as me. This creates the central illusion of the Third
Paralogism. The reason it is an illusion is that I will think that the earlier person who had the
experience I remember having or did the action I remember doing was me whether that or or
she was me or not. When I retain an earlier representation in the way required to remember
the object of that representation ‘from the inside’, its subject will appear simply as me. I have
been dealing with real memories, at least to the extent that their object or content is veridical,
but acts of imagination, hallucinations, being told about something, and so on can reinforce
the point. In representational states like these, a subject will still appear –an imagined or
hallucinated on—and that subject will still appear as me—even though there neither is nor
was any such subject! That is how much a representation of an earlier subject as oneself tell
us about identity.
Sin embargo, como Parfit menciona, el sujeto o agente anterior será asumido como si fuera
yo.
Sobre el A363: “I think Kant’s point is clear. He and Parfit are saying the same thing. They
also draw the same inference: even if I will automatically assume that it was me who had an
earlier representation I now remember having, it does not follow that it was me”. 189.
190. Morever, and this is the crucial point so far as reconciling the unity demands of TD with
the sceptical arguments of the attack on the Third Paralogism are concerned, someone else
appearing in one of my q-memories as though he or she were me, appearing in such a way
that I will automatically assume he or she is me, is just as good – so far as synthesizing the
earlier q-remembered representation or action with current representations is concerned – as
the earlier person actually being me. For unity of consciousness, I must q-remember earlier
representations and actions as though they were mine (A672 = B700) – but they need not
have been. Morever, what matter to us is not identity per se, what matters is the transcendental
unity of our consciousness and the continuities, memories, and so on that sustain it”.
194. To be sure, unity of consciousness represents in a temporal dimension. For many Xs,
awareness that X is F requires awareness that X was F; it also requires an expectation that X
will continue to be F, ceteris paribus. As we will see, this temporal dimension is not at all
like what we might expect; but whatever it is like, Kant argued that it does not require that I,
the subject of awareness, have persisted as myself. Temporal representation does require
some form of causal continuity, the continuity required for retention of objects of earlier
representations. However, an earlier subject could be connected to a later subject by many
types of continuity without necessarily being the same subject, so the continuity required for
retention is compatible with absence of identity. There is nothing about the unity of
consciousness that requires identity over time.”
205. About two decades ago, something like a consensus emerged among many philosophers
about personal identity, primarily because of Derek Parfit. Strictly speaking, there is no such
thing as personal identity. Transitivity can never be guaranteed, a condition of identity being
one to one, and judgments of identity can never be securely all or nothing; however good the
reasons for affirming that a later person is an earlier person, there will always be reasons for
denying it. Memories fade, other continuities weaken, and relevant similarities diminish as
bodies and personalities change. Thus, strictly speaking, we should not talk about personal
identity and switch instead to some other sort of survival concept, one that does not require
that the relationship be one to one and all or nothing.
206. His account of how, in memories of having earlier experiences, an appearance –that a
subject of earlier experiences was me—is entirely consistent with the subject of the earlier
experience having been someone else is just an anticipation of Parfit […] But Kant’s theory
of why these earlier subjects appear in these memories to be me and yet might not be provides
a diagnosis of why these appearances incline us to the illusion that we persist in a strict and
philosophical way, a diagnosis that goes further than anything in contemporary philosophy”.