PART 2: CONTINUITY, TRANSFORMATION,
AND VALUE
Chapter 3
A
Transformationist Account of Personal Continuity
INTRODUCTION
Part One of this
dissertation examined causal conditions necessary for personal identity, and
then developed a new conception of death based on this. In Part Two I develop
the psychological reductionist theory, but focus more on the effects of changes
in a person on the degree of their psychological connectedness. This part of
the dissertation will move from metaphysical considerations to normative
conclusions about the rational constraints on our concern for our future
phases.
The current chapter begins with metaphysical concerns:
First, I fill in the blanks in Parfit’s explanation of psychological
connections as memories, intentions, and dispositions, by examining more
closely various components of connectedness to clarify their relative
significance and weighting. I have endeavored to be as precise as the subject
matter allows, but without pretending a quantitative pseudo-precision
inappropriate to the subject matter. Because Parfit did not develop a thorough
account of the nature of psychological connections, I argue, he ends up with
implausible normative conclusions. Although I largely agree with Parfit’s
metaphysical views on identity, in filling in the missing parts of his account
I show how we can come to normative conclusions that diverge from his.
In the second, normative, part of this chapter I analyze
Parfit’s view on the relative importance of connectedness and continuity. Then
I set out a transformationist view of
the normative consequences of psychological reductionism. I show that our
degree of concern for our future phases need not (rationally) be proportional
to the degree of connectedness, and that psychological reductionism does not show that life is less “deep” than
we thought (as Parfit claims). Connectedness may be higher than apparent in a
simple counting of connections, and we may care less about reductions in
connectedness that move us closer to our “ideal selves.” I examine the role of
projects, principles, life plans, and a concern with meaningfulness in
connecting us with and sustaining our concern for our future selves.
The metaphysical disagreement in this chapter, then, is
not with Parfit but with essentialist views. Essentialist views of personal
identity (which can be reductionist or non-reductionist) hold that we require
strong connectedness with regard to an essential property, such as a soul, a
brain, or the capacity for consciousness.
In terms of the normative issue, a question implicit in
my position is: Why should we value remaining unchanged? Parfit appears to care
little or nothing for future stages of his with whom he is weakly connected. It
is not clear whether Parfit is saying (a) it is rationally defensible to care
only in proportion to connectedness, or (b) it is irrational to care more than
proportionally to connectedness. Even if Parfit doesn’t hold (b), someone
might, and I will take that strong position as a foil in contrast to which to present
my view.
MEASURING PSYCHOLOGICAL
CONNECTEDNESS
Parfit’s version of
reductionism is based on the R-relation: Psychological connectedness and
continuity. He tells us little about the elements of psychological connectedness.
Since my transformationist account of psychological reductionism accepts the
basics of Parfit’s theory but seeks to fill in the gaps and develop further
lines of inquiry, I recognize the need to examine in more detail the components
of continuity and their relative contributions to psychological continuity.
Rather than simply extending Parfit’s discussion, it will turn out that a
closer look at the components of continuity will lead me to conclusions at
variance with Parfit’s when it comes to issues of the rationality of prudence
and our attitudes towards death, as well as providing grounds on which we can
determine the relative importance of various kinds of changes in the self.
Which connections does Parfit identify? In defending
Locke against certain criticisms Parfit suggests revising Locke’s view to allow
in elements of psychological connectedness other than memory:
Besides direct
memories, there are several other kinds of direct psychological connection. One
such connection is that which holds between an intention and the later act in
which this intention is carried out. Other such direct connections are those
which hold when a belief, or a desire, or any other psychological feature,
continues to be had.
Parfit explicitly mentions memory, intention, belief, and
desire, but allows for contributions to continuity by “any other psychological
feature.” For convenience I will often
refer to a limited set of psychological features such as this, but here I will
set out a more extensive list of features, comment on each, and assess their
relative significance. The list of features is as follows:
Memories
Intentions
Dispositions
Beliefs
Abilities
Desires
Values
Projects
Memories: According
to John Locke, personal identity over time is secured by memory connections. I
am the same person as an earlier person if I can remember “from the inside”
doing the actions done by the earlier person. But memory alone is not
sufficient to cover all the psychological connections of importance. I might
remember (or q-remember) someone’s past experiences, but I will not count as
the same person if my character is entirely different from that of the person
whose experiences I remember.
Suppose I have q-memories of being Prime Minister of
England during the Second World War. I remember giving dramatic speeches and
taking decisive actions and having the name “Winston Churchill.” If I now am a very timid and indecisive
person and have no interest in politics, I should think that I am not Winston
Churchill. Some of Churchill’s psychological characteristics have survived in
me, but too few for me to feel intimately connected psychologically with
Churchill. The degree of connectedness is too minor to sustain a judgment of
psychological continuity between Churchill and myself. If some unknown cause
actually preserved Churchill’s memories, later sparking them in me, we might
say some part of Churchill had survived, but not the person himself. I would be
too much myself and not Churchill.
Contrary to Locke, I maintain that I would still not be
Churchill even if I lost all my own memories, so long as all (or enough of) my
other characteristics remained intact. Memory alone constitutes a small part of
personal continuity, unless we stretch the concept to include other processes
and characteristics. Memory is often divided into declarative and procedural:[1]
If I have all the declarative memories of Churchill I will be only very weakly
psychologically connected with him, if at all. Simply being able to recall the
same facts as another person leaves room for enormous differences in character.
The possession of bits of information need have little effect on a personality,
especially if the information is of an impersonal kind. The same is true if we
include procedural memory. I might start to q-remember Parliamentary procedure
and how to plan a battle or a national budget, yet I still would say that I had
acquired someone else’s q-memories rather than that I was that other person. If
we talk in terms of survival or continuity rather than identity, we would say
that a small aspect of Churchill’s person had continued on in me but so small a
part that it would not be of significant comfort to Churchill’s surviving
friends or family and would not lead me to think that my own personality had
been displaced. The Churchill q-memories would be more of an addition to than a
displacement of my own selfhood. The new q-memories would be interpreted with
my own unique ecology of psychological characteristics rather than those of their
original context in Churchill’s personality. Compared with Churchill, I may
respond to the q-memories with quite different emotions, draw different
conclusions and lessons, and evaluate remembered situations differently.
Memory will seem more important if we stretch its meaning
to blur the distinction between memory and other psychological features. If my
memories of Churchill caused me to start acting like him, then there would be
more continuity of Churchill’s personality. To the extent that remembering a
past action, intention, or belief leads me to adopt those actions, intentions,
and beliefs I will be the person who had those psychological features. However,
while memory may sometimes have some effect of this kind it is not so much the
having of the memory that constitutes continuity but its effect in bringing
about or maintaining other psychological connections that is important. To some
extent we can blur the distinction between memory and other psychological
features if we include dispositions as a form of memory. If I am disposed to
act in many particular ways just as would Churchill (and because of a causal
link to Churchill), I am psychologically connected to Churchill. However, I
will keep memory distinct from dispositions and other characteristics.
Remembering (or q-remembering) a former person’s intentions, dispositions, and
values will not in itself cause me to adopt them because my view of them will
be filtered through my existing personality and because dispositions, for
example, are formed over a period of time through repeated stimuli;
dispositions do not spring into existence because of a memory.
Intentions: I
am connected to earlier person-stages if their intentions cause my actions. The
earlier person-stage forms an intention, say to donate $2,000 to life extension
research, and I now fulfill that intention by carrying out that action.
However, a mere coincidence of intention and later action is insufficient for a
connection to exist. The connection between intention and fulfillment must be causally direct: My carrying out the intended action must be because of the earlier intention. (As we
will see, there can be cases in between mere coincidence and causal
directness.) This causal connection between intention and fulfillment, to count
as direct, will also have to operate internally to my psychology. By this I
mean to exclude cases like the following:
(1) In 1994 Sarah forms the intention to read the
complete works of Aristotle. After a few months of failing to start reading
Aristotle’s works, Sarah relinquishes her intention. In 1995 Brian, who has no
knowledge of Sarah nor any causal interaction with her, picks up the Poetics and proceeds to read through
Aristotle’s entire works. Here, the intention and matching action have no
causal connection of any kind.
(2) Sarah forms the intention to read the complete works
of Aristotle. After a few months of failing to start reading Aristotle’s works,
Sarah relinquishes her intention. Dr. Megalos—a fanatical Aristotle
devotee—learns of Sarah’s giving up her intention. He can’t bear the thought of
this and so imprisons Sarah and coerces her into reading Aristotle on pain of
death.
I hold a modified version of the Conservative
Interpretation of the Widest Reductionist View (CIWR) for changing persons.
CIWR allows as genuine connections some that have indirect or abnormal causes.
The abnormal or indirect causes allowed by CIWR, however, are those (such as in
the transporter case) that underlie or support the typical functioning of
psychological characteristics—such as the way intentions motivate actions.
Neither of the present cases counts as an example of a true psychological
connection. In the first, there is no causal connection between intention and
later action, even though they match up. The later action cannot count as the
fulfillment of the earlier intention; the apparent match is merely accidental.
The second example also fails as a case of psychological connection in the
relevant sense, but it fails in a more interesting and informative way.
Here a causal connection does exist between Sarah’s original intention and her later action
that (in a neutral sense) fulfills it. Her intention, combined with the
peculiar psychology of the fanatical Dr. Megalos, was causally sufficient to
produce the behavior. On the Widest Reductionist View I cannot reject the case
as an instance of a true psychological connection between the earlier and later
Sarah-stages solely on the ground that the causal connection is an indirect or
abnormal one. It must be the specific kind of abnormal cause that is the
problem. I can reject the case because the resultant action is motivated not by the original intention but by the
insane desires of Dr. Megalos combined with Sarah’s desire to live. Neither of
these new desires have the same motivation as the original intention. The
original intention dissipated, later to be replaced by new motivations. There
is no psychologically coherent connection between, no integrated process or
mechanism by which, Sarah’s original intention causes her to take the action.
The real cause of her action is a desire of Dr. Megalos combined with her
desire to live. Her action is motivated
by her desire to live; it is only accidentally explained by her original,
abandoned intention.
The contribution of intentions to connectedness derives
from the significance of beliefs and desires. An intention to take some action
results from a desire to see a certain outcome eventuate (or to be the agent
responsible for some outcome) and a belief that the intended action will bring
about the outcome.
Dispositions: This
term can plausibly cover a wide range of psychological traits and so assumes
much importance as a component of connectedness. Dispositions constitute a
large proportion of psychological traits that lead to action. We can define a
disposition as a propensity to behave in distinctive ways in certain standard
situations. Alternative ways of distinguishing various kinds of disposition are
possible. We could separate dispositions to act, to think, and to feel, though
these are so intertwined that such a set of distinctions will not be terribly
revealing. Rorty and Wong,[2]
in setting out their schema for aspects of identity, divide dispositions into
(a) somatic, proprioceptive, and kinesthetic dispositions, and (b) central
temperamental or psychological traits.
Somatic, proprioceptive, and kinesthetic dispositions
include traits such as “deft or awkward, excitable or calm, muscularly strong
or weak, active or passive, quick or sluggish, slender or heavy, flexible or
stiff.” [21] These kinds of dispositions affect both the kinds of actions
characteristically taken by a person and the manner in which she executes them.
If a person is somatically awkward, for instance, she may be disposed to avoid
situations and tasks calling for deft, finely-controlled movements, especially
in public situations. Somatic dispositions, affecting posture and style of
movement, will modify any chosen action, making it graceful, slow, jerky, or
efficient.
Temperamental or psychological traits include those
characteristic behavior patterns that we call virtues and vices: Aggressiveness
or timidity or friendliness, cautiousness or impulsiveness, suspiciousness or
trustfulness, generosity or meanness, prudence or profligacy, industriousness
or indolence, optimism or pessimism. Two individuals may perform essentially
the same action, yet do so in differing ways due to their distinctive
temperamental dispositions. Both of them sweep and mop, but one does so
sullenly, the other cheerfully. This makes it clear why simple descriptions of
actions will be a poor way of assessing a person’s identity. A revealing
description of the action will refer to the disposition motivating the action.
In the household chore example, the first person cleans the floor resentfully
and slowly, the action motivated by a mean disposition that hopes to make other
members of the household feel guilty. The second person performs the same
action swiftly and buoyantly, taking pleasure in efficiently reducing household
entropy and benefiting everyone.
Basic temperamental dispositions commonly provoke regular
and identifiable responses from other people. Thus a hostile, suspicious
individual will typically encounter responses quite different from those
experienced by a trusting, friendly individual. Repeated exposure to these
standard responses to the person’s disposition will tend to generate further
beliefs and dispositions, forming a mutually reinforcing cluster. Our
suspicious and hostile individual will often spur others to back off, hold
back, and keep quiet, leading her to form reinforced beliefs about people’s
untrustworthiness while developing devious means of acquiring information about
recalcitrant persons.
Apart from a disposition’s generating new traits as a
result of other people’s responses, it will also directly lead a person to
develop particular kinds of beliefs, habits, and desires. Thus the pessimist
will develop self-defeating habits and predictable beliefs regarding the state
of the environment, the health of the economy, and their probability of dying
of heart disease.
Clearly dispositions constitute a considerable component
of our overall psychological identity. Accurately determining the relative
contribution of this component of connectedness is complicated by the intimate
causal interactions between dispositions and other psychological components
such as beliefs, values, abilities, desires, projects, and ideals. We will tend
to develop dispositions to action that will further our values and projects. The
dispositions we form will be selected by our beliefs and abilities: We will be
disposed to act in ways that we believe will produce desired results that we
see as within our abilities. The causation clearly goes in the other direction
too: Our temperamental and somatic dispositions affect the likelihood that we
will adopt particular values and projects. Someone of powerful physical makeup
and aggressive disposition will likely place higher value on physically
competitive games, and less on finer, more refined activities than will a
contrary type. Dispositions, being more enduring that most beliefs and simple
desires, will play a more significant role in maintaining connectedness over
long periods of time. Yet, as I will argue below, dispositions are far from the
most important component of diachronic identity.
Beliefs: Ordinary
beliefs are a relatively insignificant component of psychological
connectedness, plausibly to be ranked above only memory (in its narrow sense).
A vast number of our everyday beliefs are transitory, formed specifically for
particular situations and events. Many others last beyond the moment but have
little implication for one’s identity. For example, I may believe that Seinfeld
is the cleverest comedian currently on television, or that Intel’s P6
microprocessors will support faster computation than the PowerPC 501. Although
these beliefs will have effects on my actions, in the absence of special
background conditions such beliefs will have only localized, superficial, and
weakly ramifying effects on my personality.
Another reason for giving the category of beliefs a low
connectedness weighting stems from the realization that many beliefs are
implicit and unarticulated, only becoming explicit when circumstances arise
requiring a stand or demanding some action. Then, the crystallization of an
explicit belief will be heavily filtered through our dispositions and values as
they interact with the particular circumstances. This process indicates that
originally implicit beliefs actually derive most of their importance for our
personality from other traits, traits that play a role in shaping them into
explicit form.
Beliefs can, of course, be far more significant than I
have so far allowed. Many beliefs are trivial, but others are profound; many
are transient, but others are enduring. Powerful beliefs may be simple in
structure but more often are complexes of other beliefs. Such central beliefs
or belief-systems we label with terms like ideology, religion, philosophy of
life (or eupraxophy), principle, and morality. To the extent that we believe in
an ideology or belief-system we will exhibit reasonably predictable
regularities in our behavior, our other beliefs, and our attitudes—all the more
so to the extent that we have ironed out personal inconsistencies and developed
the ability to act on principle and resist errant desires.
A reservation regarding the degree of psychological
importance to assign to beliefs considered in isolation should arise when we
note that ideologies, religions, and moral systems are not only structured
clusters of beliefs; they also include values, desires, and dispositions. We
tend to talk of beliefs as though they can be cleanly distinguished from other
parts of our personalities because they have long been bestowed this status as
separately existing entities in folk psychology. Yet, typically, they may
actually be merely one aspect we focus on in a complex psychological
characteristic. Someone’s ‘belief’ that God is their savior cannot be
adequately analyzed as a straightforwardly factual belief like the belief that
Arnold Schwarzenegger has made millions of dollars acting in movies. The
religious belief might partly consist
in emotional dispositions such as a tendency to feel guilty, powerless, or
worthless, and in a temperamental trait of locating responsibility for their
life externally.[3]
So, while we should grant great psychological significance to certain kinds of
beliefs, we should bear in mind their complex interrelatedness with other
psychological components.
Abilities: Oddly,
abilities have been ignored by most philosophers writing on identity (neither
Parfit nor Rorty and Wong include them in their lists of characteristics).
Physical, cognitive, and emotional abilities and skills play an undeniably
sizable role in personality, especially if we focus on the self-phase. Possibly
these writers intended to include abilities under the heading of dispositions.
To some degree this is defensible in that dispositions and abilities are
usually integrated. If I am disposed to do or think X, we would naturally
expect me to have the ability to do or think X: I will rarely be disposed to do
something that I am unable to do. Furthermore, many kinds of abilities are
partly constituted by the appropriate disposition. We may be reluctant, for
instance, to grant that someone has the ability to write a book unless she has
the relevant dispositions (such as a disposition to write for its own sake, or
in order to develop some urgent idea, or for rewards expected upon completion
of the work). Nevertheless, while some dispositions may themselves partially
constitute abilities, the latter class is not equivalent to the former: Many
abilities can exist without one being disposed to exercise them. Also, for any
ability, differing dispositions to exercise the ability can exist (since a
disposition is individuated by a description of beliefs and desires, and one
can want to exercise an ability for diverse reasons).
Not only should abilities be granted a status distinct
from that of dispositions, they frequently influence which desires and
dispositions we develop. We have already seen how this occurs naturally in the
case of somatic dispositions where possessing a particular physiological
constitution brings with it associated dispositions. This relation applies
beyond somatic dispositions: We tend to have desires to engage in those
activities at which we excel or find easy. Knowing that he is especially able
at something, such as understanding and composing music, a person will tend to develop
habits of awareness of opportunities for displaying and exercising his ability.
This heightened awareness of relevant opportunities may be combined with social
reinforcement and reward, turning the ability into a central personality trait,
a trait that organizes and explains much of a person’s activities.
Abilities will appear to be a tremendously important
psychological component, forcefully contributing to connectedness, if we focus
on the short-term of a self-phase. Switching to a focus on the components of
connectedness in changing persons over long stretches of time, this importance
will diminish somewhat, at least relative to other components yet to be
discussed (i.e., values and projects). Over time, old abilities may be weakened
or lost (perhaps deliberately neglected) and new ones acquired. The acquisition
of new abilities, while to some extent influenced by opportunity and
happenstance, will be shaped primarily by the agent’s values and life projects.
As with other components of personality, the causation will run in both
directions: One’s projects will sometimes, and to some extent, be determined by
the abilities one finds in oneself. In less reflective and ambitious persons
abilities may have as much influence on the formation of projects as vice
versa, but in highly reflective, imaginative, and ambitious persons (especially
those committed to personal transformation) projects and values will motivate
the extension of existing abilities, the neglect of irrelevant abilities, and
the development of abilities conducive to personal projects. Basic capacities
(approximate limits imposed by genetic, physiological, and neurological
constraints) will have more enduring but less specific effects than abilities
on the shape and development of personality, though even these can be modified
by projects and values. (In the next chapter, I explore some current and future
technological means that could allow changes even in basic capacities as we
currently conceive of them. Under such circumstances basic capacities can be
treated more like easily alterable abilities.)
Desires and
Values: I will consider desires and values together since I understand
values to be a particular type of desire (with important relations to beliefs).
Standard explanations of human behavior proceed in terms of an agent’s beliefs
and desires, so we should expect desires to be a crucial central component of
anyone’s psychology. Obviously not all desires are equal in their contribution
to someone’s identity, neither in their explanation of the behavior of a
self-phase nor in accounting for the character and development of the self. A
crude first attempt at distinguishing types of desires would divide stronger from weaker, transient from enduring, and instrumental from noninstrumental
desires. Stronger desires will dominate over weaker desires and so, other
things being equal, will have a greater effect on the agent’s action. Since the
ceteris paribus condition often will
not obtain, some weak desires may play a larger role in motivating action than
some strong desires. This may occur, for instance, if the weaker desire comes
into play in a more extensive range of situations.
Equally clearly, desires are more important the more
persistent or enduring they are. A desire flaming brightly, pushing all else
aside, on one occasion only to disappear after a moment will tell us less about
a personality than a milder desire whose soft glow persists over years, gently
influencing and moderating actions. The distinction between instrumental and
noninstrumental desires cleanly slices the category in two in a way that may be
implausible: A desire that is intrinsic in one context may be instrumental in
another, and one desire may simultaneously be both: I enjoy hiking up mountains
for its own sake and because it is an excellent form of exercise. Putting aside
these complications, we can say that an instrumental desire plays a lesser role
in our identity than an intrinsic desire in that the former is more a
reflection of circumstances than the latter.
Apart from the foregoing distinctions, we bestow the term
value only on a distinctive subset of our desires or wants. Economists say that
every desire has a value to us which is measured by the next most highly valued
thing we are willing to sacrifice for it (its ‘opportunity cost’). However,
though every desire we have is of value to us in this normatively neutral
sense, we do not and should not say that every desire is one of our values.
Thus, if someone asks me what are my values, they would be surprised and
puzzled if my answer were to begin “lemon meringue pie, a new novel by James P.
Hogan, a sound board for my computer…” These lack generality and multifarious
connections with other desires. An approach to the problem of distinguishing
values from other desires (that many have found intuitively appealing) consists
in a notion that our values are those of our desires with which we identify (in
more than the sense of agreeing that they are our desires). Probably the best known account of what it is to
identify with a desire is that developed by Harry G. Frankfurt.[4]
Since I will be adopting a different, though related, approach to making the
desire/value distinction I will briefly explain why Frankfurt’s view is
inadequate. In doing so I follow Stephen White’s arguments.[5]
Frankfurt classifies desires as first-order and second-
(or higher) order. A second order desire has another (first-order) desire as
its object. My desire to eat chocolate chip cookies is a first-order desire; my
desire that I not have or not act on this desire is a second-order desire.
Frankfurt refers to second-order desires as volitions and goes on to develop an
account of freedom of the will that need not concern us. What matters here is
to see why Frankfurt’s volitions are inadequate as an account of our values,
even though they seem to capture the intuitive notion that our values are those
of our desires that we desire to have. Briefly, here are two arguments against
Frankfurt’s view (I omit arguments showing that Frankfurt fails to solve the
problem of free will that originally motivated his account):
(1) Frankfurt’s hierarchical view of desires involves an
infinite regress. Although this objection has been couched in terms of a
regress involving the condition for responsibility for acting on a first-order
desire, it will work just as well if we state it terms of making a desire into
a value, since both require identifying with the desire. The objection is that,
on a hierarchical view like Frankfurt’s, for a first order desire to be a value
it must be endorsed by a second-order volition. Suppose one does not have a
third-order volition that one act in accordance with the second-order volition.
In that case one has not identified with the second-order volition, leaving the
second-order volition incapable of identifying the person with the first-order
desire. One may even have a third-order desire that repudiates the second-order
volition; this would also prevent the second-order volition from constituting
an identification. Apparently, on hierarchical views, for one to identify with
(be responsible for, validate as a value) a first-order desire that moves one
to action, that desire must be endorsed at every level by a still higher-order
volition.
An attempt might be made to avoid this difficulty by
giving this condition for a desire to be a value: P’s first-order desire D is
one of P’s values iff P has a second-order desire to have D and no third or higher-order desire not
to have D. This formally removes the threat of infinite regress. It does so,
however, only by removing much of the initial appeal of Frankfurt’s approach.
The first-order desire can now count as a value even though it has not been
endorsed in any strong sense. The first-order desire has been endorsed by
another desire, but the second-order desire itself may be trivial or, more
importantly, may stand in isolation from the person’s other desires. For a
desire to be a value requires more than it being supported by one other desire.
This account would allow a person to have many values, none of which supported
or cohered with one another. The resort to higher-order desires does not
adequately explain identification; we are still owed an explanation of what
does.
(2) In general our higher-order desires will be closer to
our true desires or values—closer to being desires with which we identify. This
is plausible because a second-order desire is less likely to be unreflectively
given. However, it is perfectly possible for a second-order volition to be as
estranged from our personality as a first-order desire. As White states, “Take
the second-order desire not to have or act on desires that were formed during a
period of one’s life from which one is now alienated (say because one held
religious views which one now repudiates), even when those desires would cohere
perfectly with one’s present desires. This is a desire that one might struggle
as hard to overcome as any of the first-order desires with which one fails to
identify.” [231] Another example would be a superstitious second-order desire
to refrain from making any decisions or take any chances after seeing a “bad
omen.” Though second-order, this desire may be experienced as alien (one may
have formed it in the past), having more in common with a compulsion or reflex
than with a value.
What alternative is there to a hierarchical view of
identification? How can we
distinguish values from other desires? Stephen White provides an account that I
find more convincing than Frankfurt’s (or that of Charles Taylor). I will
therefore present and adopt White’s approach, modified by two reservations
regarding the details of his account. According to White, values are those of
our desires with which we identify, i.e., those desires that would survive in
“ideal reflective equilibrium” (IRE)—desires having many connections to other
desires, plus our unconditional desires (commitments). Having stated his
conclusion, let me begin an explanation with this quotation:
Suppose one had
complete control over one’s own noninstrumental desires. Suppose, for example,
one had a pill that allowed one to eliminate noninstrumental desires that one
preferred not to have, to add such desires that one wanted to have but lacked,
and to increase or decrease the strengths of the desires in the resulting
set... [L]et us call the set of desires that would emerge, given that one was
aware of the basic facts of one’s motivational makeup, one’s ideal reflective equilibrium (IRE)...
Let us say that the combination of access to the pill described and an
awareness of the basic facts of one’s emotional makeup constitute conditions of IRE. And when a desire is
in some subject’s IRE, I shall say that the desire is in IRE for that subject. [239]
It could only be one’s other desires that could motivate
one to add or subtract desires, or to alter their strengths. One could not
distance oneself from all of one’s desires and then make the decisions about
which to keep, for then one would have no motivation of any kind, no basis on
which to make any choices. Decisions about which desires to retain or eliminate
would be based on relations of support or conflict between desires (just as
some beliefs rationally are accepted or rejected as a result of their relations
of support with one another). When desires conflict they will each provide motivation
for the rejection of the other. A desire will be eliminated if it conflicts
with too many other desires while lacking sufficient support from other desires
for its retention.
It is not the strength of a desire that determines
whether it is eliminated or retained. Someone’s desire for alcohol might be
their single strongest desire in that it most strongly determined their actions
and dominated all other desires whenever they came into conflict, yet if it
conflicted with many other desires (such as desires to be healthy, retain a
job, sustain rewarding relationships) they would eliminate it. White
distinguishes motivational strength
from evaluational strength. In this
case, the desire for alcohol would have high motivational but low evaluational
strength. Not only is motivational strength irrelevant to the elimination or
retention of a desire in IRE, but so is whether the desire is of first or
higher order. Since support is a matter of coherence, there is nothing to
prevent first-order desires from eliminating second-order desires. Consider
again the superstitious second-order desire not to make decisions or take any
risks after seeing a supposedly bad omen. This second-order desire may conflict
with an enormous number of first-order desires and so be eliminated. This
coherentist account is far more plausible than supposing that in IRE we would
retain the second-order desire simply because it has other desires as its
objects.
We identify with those of our desires that are in IRE,
that is, those of our desires from which we are not alienated. The desires with
which we identify are then those which have high evaluational support. This
account, so far, avoids the problems faced by hierarchical accounts, but needs
refinement before it can adequately make the distinction between desires and
values. Instances of desires that would exist in IRE yet which are not desires
for things we value are easy to find. Consider preferences for one taste over
another. As White states, “These are trivial desires in large part because they
are not connected by relations of support to a significant number of other
desires.” [244] One’s tastes would acquire a different status if they were tied
into a network of mutually supporting desires. “Imagine, for example, that a
taste for sweets, a preference for happy endings in fiction, and desires that
made one prone to sentimentality were all connected by strong relations of
mutual support. In this case it would be plausible to hold that a desire for
sweets, if it were part of some agent’s IRE and supported by desires of the
kind suggested, represented one of the agent’s values… Of course, this is
plausible because we think of desires that make one prone to sentimentality as
raising issues that engage our values.” [244]
In order to add a further refinement to his account,
White introduces a distinction between conditional and unconditional desires by
comparing a desire to pursue acting as a career with a desire to maintain one’s
artistic integrity. Imagine a person with a present desire to pursue an acting
career but who also believes that over most of the course of their life they
are likely to prefer a less risky career teaching. That person would be likely
be ready to change from acting to teaching at the point when her preference changed.
In the case of a desire for artistic integrity, by contrast, a person might
attach little importance to the belief that he might be made happier by money
and fame throughout most of his life, and he might even take steps to bind
himself from changing his mind in future. (White’s example brings to mind
Parfit’s case of the liberal young nobleman who takes steps to ensure that he
gives away his land to the peasants even if he should later become
conservative.) Artistic integrity in this example is an unconditional desire,
that is, a desire that some end be realized whether or not the desire persists.
Unconditional desires introduce a foundationalist element
in the otherwise coherentist system. In eliminating a conditional desire, the
fact that one will no longer feel the desire fully compensates for the fact
that the desire will not be satisfied. But, according to White, this is no
compensation if the desire we eliminate is an unconditional one. Eliminating an
unconditional desire, though one will feel no loss after the elimination, will
frustrate that desire (and supporting desires) since it was a desire that the
state of affairs that is its object obtain in the future regardless of the
existence of the desire. White concludes this means that in IRE conditional
desires will always be eliminated in favor of unconditional desires, producing
a two-tier system in which unconditional desires (commitments) can be thought of as foundational elements. “Within
each tier, a desire’s evaluational strength is a function of its holistic
support. But in cases of conflict between tiers, conditional desires are always
adjusted to support unconditional desires and not vice versa.” [246] White
refers to the unconditional desires in IRE as one’s conative core.
Our values, then consist of (a) those of our conditional,
non-instrumental desires connected to many other desires in a mutually
supportive network, and (b) our unconditional desires or commitments. I largely
agree with this picture, with a couple of reservations. My first reservation
concerns the conceptual device of ideal reflective equilibrium, especially
given White’s description of its conditions involving fantastic pills capable
of bestowing upon us perfect psychological self-constitution. If our values are
those of our desires that would exist in IRE, and IRE is a purely hypothetical
situation, how are we to discover our values in the real world? Do we really
want to demarcate our values by means of a device that is not available to us?
A slight reinterpretation of White’s use of IRE alleviates this concern. We can
regard IRE as an idealization of our actual value-forming and validation
processes, and allow that we can discover our values, with reasonable
reliability, without ever achieving IRE. Every actual human being falls
somewhere along a spectrum that stretches from IRE at one end to a totally
unreflective, schizophrenically unintegrated state at the other. People close
to the unintegrated extreme can be described as having many desires but few
real values. The most introspective and self-constituting persons will have
formed an extensive array of confidently held values, though they will always
be capable of adjusting their desires both as they acquire superior
self-knowledge through experience and as they form new desires needing to be
placed into their economy of preferences.
My second reservation arises from doubts concerning the
defensibility of the clean, two-tiered system of conditional and unconditional
desires. Again, this seems to be an idealization of actual circumstances, in
this case generated by focusing on instances close to opposite ends of a
spectrum of conditionality. Is there really a sharp line between conditional
and unconditional desires? According to White’s description a desire either is
or is not unconditional; but are there any genuinely unconditional desires? And
if we do have unconditional desires, should that protect them from elimination?
Consider a commitment to never lie to my friends. When I
formed that desire I may have conceived of it as unconditional: I wanted to
always stick to that commitment regardless of whether I later wanted to take
the advantages of such lies. But now, reflecting on the desire in order to
bring about IRE, I may see that it conflicts with too many other desires
(including desires such as not to hurt my friend’s feelings through excessive
truthfulness[6])
and so may eliminate (or more likely modify) the desire. Surely most of our
commitments are like this: Much less susceptible to modification or elimination
than other desires, but not completely immune. In general, further reflection
on one’s commitments can reveal them to be mistaken or oversimplified. Just as
a rational person will hold no belief as absolutely unrevisable,[7]
there should (in IRE) be no absolutely unshakable commitments. When we first
form a desire that seems to be unconditional, it may be because at that time we
do not believe we could ever have a reason to question or reject that
commitment. If we have a strong commitment to rationality, then all commitments
will be conditional since they are open to changed conditions; they are
conditional on being reasonable. Our most unconditional commitments will be
those that we cannot imagine ever having good reason to abandon. If
conditionality is a matter of degree, we may hold onto our more conditional
desires at the expense of less conditional desires if the former turn out to be
better supported by our system of desires as a whole.
If unconditionality is not a matter of degree, it won’t always be true that conditional
desires will be adjusted to accommodate unconditional desires regardless of
their relative degrees of systemic support. We may think of a desire as
unconditional when we form it, but later eliminate it in favor of conditional
desires when we come to see that the unconditional desire was based on
misunderstanding or conflicts with what we now want. Given this adjustment to
White’s picture, I will adopt the account as a plausible explanation of the
distinction between values and other desires. Knowing what should count as
values will be important in measuring connectedness, both because of the
central importance of our values in our psychology and because of their role in
the formation of personal projects.
Projects: Projects
play a leading role in my account of psychological connectedness and
continuity. In addition to this section, I will discuss projects further
throughout the rest of the chapter, examining how they interrelate with our
ideal self, our life plans, our values, and our sense of significance or
meaning. We can begin to understand the nature and importance of projects by
starting with the following definition offered by Loren Lomasky (in the context
of developing a theory of the grounding of rights):
Some ends are not once-and-for-all acknowledged and then
realized through the successful completion of one particular action. Rather,
they persist throughout large stretches of an individual’s life and continue to
elicit actions that establish a pattern coherent in views of the ends
subserved. Those which reach indefinitely into the future, play a central role
within the ongoing endeavors of the individual, and provide a significant
degree of structural stability to an individual’s life, I call projects.[8]
Lomasky describes an “Indiscriminate Evaluator” as
someone who is open to motivation from one source at T1 and from a wildly disparate source at T2. “Various
short stretches of his life, taken individually, would exhibit purposive
activity, but the life as a whole would exhibit no coherence of practical
activity... Being an Indiscriminate Evaluator would be like a heightened and
interminable adolescence.” [32] The possession of personal, life-shaping
projects is not a given feature of personal identity, unlike the possession of
desires, memories, or somatic dispositions, for instance. It is perfectly
possible to be an Indiscriminate Evaluator and, indeed, something very close to
this is a good description of most children and many adolescents. Whereas we
all have desires, memories, and various dispositions, being a purposive project
pursuer requires periods of reflection in which values are adopted and
means-ends reasoning undertaken. Just how far anyone goes in becoming a
purposive project pursuer is up to them; the spectrum ranges from the
diachronically chaotic behavior of the Indiscriminate Evaluator to the highly
structured life of one who holds unswervingly to projects, never forgetting her
plans nor acting inconsistently.
The project pursuer’s preferences not only reflect responses
to particular situations as they arise, but also the different kinds of lives
possible for her.[9] Because of our ability to conceive of our
existence over time, we are able to form preferences with a far wider scope
than can be satisfied by particular actions in individual situations. The
preferences with the broadest scope will be those for one sort of life over
another. For one who has formed projects, it will be impossible to explain much
of her behavior without first understanding her projects. Coming to understand
her projects will enable us to discover the order supervening on her actions
over time. Note the order of priority here in explaining a person’s behavior:
Projects are explanatorily prior to individual actions. We may be unable to fathom
the significance of a particular action to the agent until we discern the
project that motivated it. We can explain specific actions by referring to
projects, but we cannot understand someone’s projects simply by pointing to her
actions one at a time.
What is the relationship between projects and values, as
I presented the latter in the previous section? Projects are plans that
structure activities taking place over stretches of time as long as a lifetime.
They consist of an interrelated and integrated cluster of desires and beliefs
concerned with effective means to the intermediate and final ends embodied in
the project. Given the characterization of values as desires that are
commitments or that have many relations of mutual support with other desires,
it will be clear that the connection between values and projects is an intimate
one. Other than for the simplest of projects (consisting of a minimal number of
desires), the nature of projects as clusters of integrated desires and beliefs
will suffice to ensure the desires involved will count as values. Projects of
any ambition require reflection and planning to construct,[10]
necessitating both research and adjustment of desires to accommodate the
project. This kind of reflection and adjustment of desires is one of the
essential ways in which desires acquire the status of values. Some projects,
such as learning to juggle, may not involve commitments or values. Our more
significant projects (those I am concerned with here) typically will embody
those relatively unconditional desires that, following White, I am calling
commitments, or at least a well-integrated complex of values, desires, and
beliefs. Consider, for example, a person who organizes and encourages support
for private efforts to develop and construct space launch and habitation
systems. In addition to practical reasoning regarding how to excite more people
about the idea, how to generate funding, and which research to focus on, her
project may embody commitments to values such as political independence and
individual involvement, expansion of the human race beyond the confines of one
planet, exploration of new frontiers, and optimism.
In terms of their contributions to personal continuity,
are values primary and projects secondary, or vice versa? From one point of
view values appear to be primary in that projects are formed in order to put
values (especially commitments) to work. From this perspective, projects and
the activities they enjoin are explainable in terms of their constituent
values, giving values the greater significance in determining how a person
lives her life. However, the structuring of clusters of values to form projects
generates a supervenient order. (In the section focusing on life plans, I will
explore how this supervenient order adds “meaningfulness” to a person’s life.)
The economy of values essential to the formation of projects contributes
substantial purpose and direction to a life, shaping behavior over time in ways
that could not be explained by the individual values alone. Furthermore, once a
project has been formed and implemented, it can generate new desires and
values. New desires given birth by living the project may initially be
instrumental desires, but some will come to acquire intrinsic aspects. For
instance, someone whose project involves great physical effort may realize that
a stoic attitude towards discomfort and pain will advance her goals; once she
has internalized this realization, altering her self-conception, she may come
to regard stoic fortitude as a personal commitment, something intrinsically
valued.
Finally, I will make the obvious point that not all
projects are reasonable in the sense of being well-considered. Some, especially
weakly formed projects close to being mere fantasies or day-dreams, will consist
of a cluster of desires some number of which would not survive in IRE (or even
a little serious reflection). Such projects involve false beliefs and desires
that would be eliminated once their implications were understood. (A Monty
Python skit comes to mind, in which a mild-mannered accountant tells a
job-placement clerk, with great enthusiasm, “I want to be a lion-tamer!” When flashed a frightening image of an actual
lion, he recoils and abandons his wish. His delusion about the nature of lions
reveals his project to require unexpected courage in addition to the desired
excitement.) Even these unreasonable projects can play an important role in
shaping a person’s life, though we should expect projects whose constituent
desires (and beliefs) would survive in IRE (or extensive deliberation) to be
more enduring and less frustrated by conflicts (both internal and external to
the cluster), thereby having a more profound impact over the long term.
This completes my survey of the components of
connectedness. The preceding survey of the nature and relative importance of
the psychological components reveals that some kinds of connections are more
significant than others. I have isolated various aspects of personality to
determine their relative contribution to overall connectedness, but want to
note again here that, while conceptually distinguishable, in practice some
components will be hard to separate out. This interdependence and internal
relatedness was exemplified by values and projects, where the latter depends on
the former. We can count the weighting for projects to be their contribution to
continuity minus that of values, so long as we bear in mind that projects
cannot exist independently of values. In this section I have examined the
relative importance of the different types
of psychological attribute. A little way into the next section, I will look at
several ways of assessing the centrality of particular attributes within each
category.
INTRODUCTION
Up
to this point, in this chapter I have filled in Parfit’s account of
psychological connectedness by examining the relative importance of the various
components of connectedness and how they relate to one another. So far I have
supplemented and deepened Parfit’s metaphysical view rather than questioned it.
For the rest of the chapter I will make use of the elements of this expanded
metaphysical account to argue that Parfit draws mistaken normative conclusions
from his metaphysical account. I begin by questioning Parfit’s claim that once
we accept reductionism we will see that our lives are less “deep” or
significant. Then I define and argue for a view I call Transformationism.
Transformationism is not a version of psychological reductionism; it is an
account of the normative consequences of psychological reductionism.
Transformation diverges from many of the normative consequences Parfit draws
from the metaphysical view I share with him.
Parfit
makes some striking claims about the psychological consequences of believing
reductionism to be true. In the present section, I want to address the claim
that personal identity is seen to be “less deep” when reductionism is accepted.
According to this view, it follows from this that death is less bad and so we
rationally should care about it less. I deny that these consequences follow, or
need follow, from accepting reductionism. Death will normally be regarded as no
less an evil, and lives need be no less deep. Parfit explains that, in coming
to accept reductionism, he came to see death as less bad because his life is
less “deep.” Parfit presents this view as his personal response to
reductionism. He says that others may have a different response and he does not
say this his response is rationally required, or even rationally defensible.
Here are two versions of this view, with Parfit apparently holding the second,
weaker version.
(a)
Reductionism reveals that my life is less “deep” or significant, and rationally
requires me to see my death as mattering less.
(b)
Reductionism reveals that my life is less “deep” or significant, so that it is
rationally acceptable to see my death as mattering less.
By
contrast, I will argue that (a) is false, and (b) is highly questionable. My
view is that:
(*)
Changing from a belief in Non-Reductionism (or essentialism) to a belief in
Reductionism should not lead me to believe that my life is less deep and should
not lead me to feel that my death is less bad than I had thought.
Parfit
sets out his view in the following selections:
On the Reductionist View, my continued existence just involves
physical and psychological continuity. On the Non-Reductionist View, it
involves a further fact. It is natural to believe in this further fact, and to
believe that, compared with the continuities, it is a deep fact, and is the fact that really matters. When I fear that,
in Teletransportation, I shall not
get to Mars, my fear is that the abnormal cause may fail to produce this
further fact. As I have argued, there is no such fact. What I fear will not
happen, never happens. I want the
person on Mars to be me in a specially intimate way in which no future person
will ever be me. My continued existence never involves this deep further fact.
What I fear will be missing is always
missing.... When I come to see that my continued existence does not involve
this further fact, I lose my reason for preferring a space-ship journey. But,
judged from the standpoint of my earlier belief, this is not because
Teletransportation is about as good as ordinary survival. It is because
ordinary survival is about as bad as, or little better than,
Teletransportation. Ordinary survival is about as bad as being destroyed and
Replicated. [279-80]
When
I believed the Non-Reductionist View, I also cared more about my inevitable
death. After my death, there will be no one living who will be me. I can now
redescribe this fact. Though there will later be many experiences, none of
these experiences will be connected to my present experiences by chains of such
direct connections as those involved in experience-memory, or in the carrying
out of an earlier intention. Some of these future experiences may be related to
my present experiences in less direct ways. There will later be some memories
about my life. And there may later be thoughts that are influenced by mine, or
things done as a result of my advice. My death will break the more direct
relations between my present experiences and future experiences, but it will
not break various other relations. This is all there is to the fact that there
will be no one living who will be me. Now that I have seen this, my death seems
to me less bad.
Instead of saying, “I shall be dead”, I should say, “There
will be no future experiences that will be related, in certain ways, to these
present experiences.” Because it reminds me what this fact involves, this
redescription makes this fact less depressing. [281]
Parfit
argues that when we fear that it will not be us who gets to Mars by Teletransportation, we are fearing the
absence of a deep further fact. When we come to accept, or remind ourselves of,
the truth of psychological reductionism, we see that our ordinary existence
never involves such a further fact. This removes any reason for preferring a
long spaceship journey over Teletransportation. However, it also means, Parfit
claims, that ordinary survival is about as bad as been destroyed and recreated.
I think this conclusion is mistaken. Coming to believe Reductionism does not
and should not diminish the importance of my life continuing, nor reduce the
badness of death. This is primarily because it seems to me that our concern for
our lives is not tied to particular metaphysical beliefs about personal
identity in the way Parfit’s argument requires. I will be brief here, since I will
focus on this point in a later section.
Parfit’s hypothetical traveler to
Mars, upon realizing the truth of Reductionism, comes to devalue their ordinary
existence. Placing myself in that position, I find my response would differ:
Upon accepting, or reminding myself of the truth of Reductionism, I would
understand that I was mistaken to fear Teletransportation—in fact, having grown
up watching Star Trek, I find that I
have no fear of Teletransportation (except for the possibility of malfunction,
a danger that applies just as much to the lengthier spaceship voyage). Also, I
have found that, having accepted Reductionism and having thought about it for
many hundreds of hours, I value my existence and its continuation no less than
before. The appropriate response to realizing the falsity of Non-Reductionism
is not to devalue our existence but to realize that we had false metaphysical
beliefs about what our identity depended on. In the past, no one had much idea
of why children acquired many of the somatic and psychological characteristics
of their parents. Perhaps some thought it was due to God’s will, or to the
passage of a spiritual essence from parents to offspring. Now we explain these
similarities in terms of genetic transmission. What matters to parents is that
their children are offspring of them, not the particular underlying
metaphysical mechanism responsible. Or consider that it was once believed that
living creatures differed from the non-living by possessing a vital force. Now
we know there is no reason to believe in a vital force; life is explicable in
terms of self-regulating biochemical processes and systems. We did not conclude
that we were not really alive; we reinterpreted what it was to be alive, but
continued to find the important difference in the functional differences
between life and non-life. Similarly, in coming to accept Reductionism, we
should not devalue our existence nor see death as any less an evil. We are
concerned primarily with living and not with whether we are reducible rather
than irreducible.
Perhaps these analogies will stir
objections that personal identity is different from the value of children or
the nature of life. In the case of having children, changing our beliefs in the
underlying mechanism that produces children does not affect our attitudes
towards our children because what we care about is the characteristics of our
children and our relationships with them. These are not affected by the
discovery of an unexpected mechanism. But, the objection might go, a discovery
that our identity is not some further fact but is reducible to psychological
connectedness and continuity does matter because we have discovered that we are
not what we thought we were. In the children case, what mattered to us was
unaffected by the change in beliefs. In the identity case, what mattered most
to us (identity) turns out to be unlike what we had thought. Though the
children analogy might diverge in this way, it seems that the vitalism analogy
remains. For the objection to work it must have been rational to believe that
what really mattered was the unchanging ego or soul or self. Once we understand
the person as reducible to psychological connectedness and continuity we see
that what really mattered to us does not exist. Our lives now seem less
significant and death less bad.
This view strikes me as untenable.
Some changes of belief about ourselves will have normative implications, but
this one should not have the suggested consequences. What we really care about
in being who we are consists in our having a set of interests, desires, values,
beliefs, and goals. If these are thought to reside in and depend on a
nonmaterial essence, as in the Non-Reductionist view, then we can reasonably
attribute significance to this essence. If these elements of our existence are
actually separable from our essence, why would be attribute significance to the
essence? John Locke, who divided the person into three parts, body,
personality, and soul, understood this. He believed that if the three could be
separated we would be concerned with the personality rather than the vehicle of
the soul or essence. So if, as Non-Reductionists, we believed that the
nonmaterial essence was what gave life significance, we would be mistaken.
Perhaps we acquired the idea under the influence of a religion. When we become
Reductionists and we see that what really mattered to us all along was our
personal attributes, we will see that life has not lost significance nor has
death become less of an evil. How could it make sense to believe that what was
important in our survival was the existence of a nonmaterial essence unrelated
to our personalities, to our desires, values, and concerns?
Parfit claims that “Even if we are
not aware of this, most of are Non-Reductionists. If we considered my imagined
cases, we would be strongly inclined to believe that our continued existence is
a deep further fact, distinct from physical and psychological continuity, and a
fact that must be all-or-nothing.” Although he does not explicitly say so, it
seems that this purported fact may be used to argue for the rationality of most
people responding to Reductionism by devaluing their lives and seeing death as
less of an evil. I believe that, to the extent that Parfit is right that most
of us are unreflectively Non-Reductionists, this supports my thesis that for
most people it is not rational to
devalue life and minimize the badness of death. Most people are inclined to
believe that they persist through imagined changes not because they believe
they are a thing entirely distinct from their personalities, but because they
do not cling to their current phase. In our unreflective way, most of us
believe we survive over the long term because we place high value on the
process of which we-now are a phase. That is, we value continuity more than
connectedness. When we come to understand and accept Reductionism, we realize
there is no further fact about our identity, but we also recognize that it
makes no sense to be concerned with the existence of such a further fact. What
most of us care about is living, not being all-or-nothing. Thus, becoming a
Reductionist does not, for most people, motivate a devaluation of our lives nor
a diminution in the badness of death. Coming to accept Reductionism will, of
course, have some effect on our concerns. If we believed that we survived the
death of our body, then we may now be more
concerned about death. While the loss of a belief in an after-life can
rationally motivate a change in our concerns about death (and the significance
of life), I do not see how we could reasonably be less concerned about death
simply because we now believe we are not an irreducible, unchanging entity.
So, on becoming a Reductionist,
devaluing our lives and seeing death as less bad is not rationally required (as
Parfit seems to agree) and, if I am correct about the way most people see
themselves, most people will not have reason to respond in the way Parfit says
he responded to Reductionism. If this response is not rationally required, and
is not rationally motivated for most people, is it rational for anyone? Should
we say that Parfit’s response is a perfectly rational (but not required)
response to a new apprehension of the metaphysical facts, or should we take the
stronger line that this new apprehension cannot rationally motivate anyone to respond this way? I believe
that a good case can be made for the stronger line, but doing so would require
an extensive detour into ethics and metaethics. Rather than trying to establish
the strong position here, I will suggest what it depends on, state my view
about that, then let the matter rest.
Parfit focuses on connectedness more
than continuity, and I the reverse. This is why he thinks the discovery that
there is no all-or-nothing, irreducible essence of self diminishes us and makes
death less bad. In caring about his self-stages to the extent that they are
connected, he expresses a overriding, highly conservative value. He is saying
that it would have better[11]
to have turned out to be an irreducible, unchanging entity. The question of
whether Parfit’s response to reductionism is rational then comes down to the
question of the reasonableness of valuing stasis and metaphysical
irreducibility. If we have no reason to place our concern in such an entity,
then we cannot feel we have lost anything when we discover we are not such an
irreducible, static entity. The strong version of the view—(a) above—must claim
that this is the only rational value; thus the discovery that stasis and
irreducibility do not constitute us should lead us to see our lives as less
significant and death as less bad. The strong view requires that it is irrational to value development, growth,
progress, and new experiences. This should be sufficient to dispose of the
strong view. I do believe that rationality requires
these pro-developmental, dynamic values as opposed to the anti-change values
implied by Parfit’s view. That would mean that is not rational to see death as less bad and life as less deep in
coming to accept Reductionism. As I said, I will not take the long side-track
necessary to argue that pro-developmental, pro-transformation values are
rational whereas as pro-stasis, pro-irreducibility values are irrational. I
will not assert that Parfit’s view—view (b)—is wrong. I claim that (a) is definitely
wrong, and that (b) is questionable.
Parfit, and others who share his
reaction to Reductionism, may cease to make long-term plans, engage in
long-term projects, and give up a conception of their life as a whole when they
come to accept Reductionism. If they choose to focus on their current phase
they will indeed care less about death and see their lives as less significant.
But they could have adopted this pattern of concern just as easily while still
Non-Reductionists. As Non-Reductionists we see ourselves as entirely distinct
from our values, desires, beliefs, etc. (not just distinct from our current characteristics). There seems to
be nothing in this belief that prevents anyone from being concerned with the
present rather than with their life as a whole. If a move from Non-Reductionism
to Reductionism does in fact sometimes lead to a devaluation of life and a
diminution in the perceived badness of death, it may be due to other changes in
belief (not necessarily rational changes) that accompany this one. For
instance, when we are Non-Reductionists we may also believe we have a place in
a divine plan and this imbues our life with significance. When we accept
Reductionism we may abandon this and other beliefs, reacting with
disappointment. We may not immediately (or ever) come to form an alternative
framework within which our lives continue to be as significant (or more
significant now that we are no longer mere tools of a cosmic plan). All the
reasons and factors explored in the next section, regarding concern for life as
a whole, or long stretches of a life, I believe rationally ground concern for
our life regardless of adoption of Reductionism.
Transformationism: Connectedness
vs. Continuity
When we consider our
future self-phases, when we consider how much of our current rewards and
opportunities to sacrifice for greater rewards and opportunities in the future,
on what basis are we to decide? Should our concern for our future self-phases
be proportionate to the degree of psychological connectedness between our
current and future phases? Are some connections more important to us than
others? Should we give weight to the fact of psychological continuity even when
we have few or no direct psychological connections to a distant future self? Or
should we, like Stephen Darwall and Parfit’s S-Theorists, give equal weight to
all of our future phases, regardless of connectedness? One might plausibly hold
any of the following four positions:
(a) A’s concern for (later phase) B
ought to vary directly according to the extent to which A and B are
psychologically connected (i.e., to the extent that A “survives in” B).
(b) A’s concern for (later phase) B
defensibly may be greater than the degree of psychological connectedness
between them so long as A and B are continuous, i.e., connected by a chain of
self-stages, adjacent pairs of which are strongly connected.
(c)
A’s concern for any (later phase) B (with whom A is psychologically continuous)
ought to be unaffected by the degree of connectedness between them.
Parfit holds a position close to that of (a). He thinks
both connectedness and continuity matter, and says (p301) that he knows of no
argument to show that one is more important than the other: “I shall assume
that neither relation matters more than the other. This is not the assumption
that their importance is exactly equal. To a question like this there could not
be an exact answer.” [301] However, throughout his discussions and arguments
Parfit seems to put far more stress on connectedness than on continuity. He
cares less about his more distant self-stages and, more revealingly, cares no
more for a future self-stage with whom he is not directly connected than he
cares for another person. I will take this strong view as my foil, though
Parfit may hold the following weaker view:
(a*)
A’s concern for (later phase) B defensibly may vary directly according to the
extent to which A and B are psychologically connected (i.e., to the extent that
A “survives in” B).
I agree with Parfit in rejecting a position like (c),
according to which only psychological continuity matters, and loss of
connectedness matters not at all. As Parfit notes, “some reductions in
connectedness might be welcome, or be improvements. But we cannot plausibly
claim that it would not matter if there was no psychological connectedness.”
[301] Most of us would regret losing all our current memories, even if
continuity were maintained (two days from now I will remember only the
experiences I will have tomorrow). We would regret losing some of our desires,
intentions, and characteristics. So connectedness does matter apart from
continuity. Since Parfit does, at least in principle, allow that continuity
matters in itself, he could hold position (b), though his stress on
connectedness puts him closer to (a). If he holds (a*) he might hold (b),
though without emphasizing it.
Position (b) brings out the distinction between the
conditions necessary for a person to survive, i.e., for personal continuity,
and the conditions necessary for a person’s future self-phase to matter to them. Parfit’s own usage of
“what matters” suffers from an ambiguity: We could mean “what matters for us to
have survived or continued”, or “whether our survival matters to us.” Continuity suffices for us to say that
logically or numerically the same person has continued to exist through time.
But a person reasonably may not be concerned about a future self-stage if they
were to believe that their current and future stages would be completely
unconnected, or if they thought they would become someone very different from
their current phase – someone with conflicting and repulsive values. Consider
Parfit’s own example of the radical, revolutionary youth who fears he will
become corrupted into being a satisfied supporter of the status quo. The youth
might agree that he would have become
that later person because continuity would be maintained by a process of
gradual transformation, but his later phase would not have the qualities that
matter in the youthful radical’s survival.
The position expressed by (b) comes closest to my view.
According to (b), your degree of concern for your future self-phase need not be
tied to the degree of overall connectedness between phases and may greatly
exceed it. Going a little further: Depending on our values, many of us will
have positive reasons to have future-concern more than proportional to degree
of connectedness. I will call my account of the normative consequences of
Reductionism Transformationism. To
define this view more clearly, I will say I want Transformationism to express:
Earlier
stage A may reasonably care about later stage B more than proportionally to the
degree of connectedness between them; i.e., continuity is significant, not just
connectedness. This is because:
(i) the person may value their life as a
whole (or long stretches of their life).
(ii) B may be closer to A’s conception of
an ideal self.
(iii)
the person may hold self-transformation as a central goal.
If connectedness is all
that matters to me then, so long as a high percentage of my current
characteristics exist in my future self-stage, I am not concerned if they
constitute a tiny proportion of that future self-stage. In fact, the longer I
want to live, and the more I want to grow, the smaller I will want the
proportion of my later phase constituted by my current self. My later
self-phase will continue to contain the characteristics of the earlier phase
but will add more and more new characteristics and abilities. So, I want
connectedness to be high, while being unconcerned about my future phase
possessing many qualities I now do not possess.
On the other hand, if continuity were all that mattered
(or all that need matter), I would not care if connectedness moved towards
zero, so long as this reduction happened gradually and was not because my later
phase was degenerating or fading away. (This is not the only condition. In the
next chapter I will examine the importance of the source and degree of
integration of changes in connectedness. A series of changes in personality
forced upon someone has a different significance than a series of
transformations initiated or at least integrated by that person.) While
continuity alone may suffice for persistence of an individual, it will matter
to us that at least some of our current personality be exhibited by any later
phase (assuming we do not totally loathe ourselves!).
In fact, both
connectedness and continuity matter to me: I want as much of my current phase
to survive in later phases as is compatible with my progress. Though I will survive
if connectedness eventually falls to zero so long as continuity is maintained,
I would prefer some connectedness since I value many of my current
characteristics. If I liked everything about my current self-phase, the ideal
prospect would be where connectedness remains 100% yet my current
characteristics constitute a small part of my later phase because my later
phase is magnificently grander than me-now: My future phase has more memories,
additional experiences, greater wisdom, a wider range of abilities, stronger
virtues, and so on. Since there are aspects of myself I’d like to trim away,
I’d actually prefer connectedness to drop below 100%, but not much below. So
only continuity is necessary for me
to continue existing, but connectedness is desirable too.
Disproportionality of
Connectedness and Concern
Before
arguing for the Transformationist normative claims, I will expand on the
metaphysics of Reductionism in a way that will affect the normative conclusions
we may draw. My claim is:
Connectedness
often is higher than at first apparent (higher than Parfit’s view suggests)
because:
(i) some psychological connections are
more important than others.
(ii)
some connections are instrumental to others, and behavior, being instrumental
to the satisfaction of intrinsic desires, beliefs, and projects, can change
enormously without much impact on connectedness.
According to this claim,
connectedness often is higher than at first apparent. (So, to the extent that
degree of concern tracks connectedness, concern for future phases will be
higher than we might think prior to recognizing these points.) If we compared
earlier and later stages of a person, counting connections simply, we may
conclude that the stages are only weakly connected. The later stage, it may
appear, exhibits only a few attributes of the earlier stage. Two factors may
lead us to change our assessment of the extent of connectedness. The first
factor – one already familiar from earlier in this chapter – suggests we adjust
estimates of connectedness by weighting
the attributes being counted. The idea of weighting attributes incorporates
several adjustments: Some psychological features are experienced more intensely
than others; some types of attribute are more important than others, and within
any type some characteristics will be more central to behavior than others.
I will not spend much time explicating these three ways
of weighting connections since I have already covered them, except for
intensity. The intensity of an attribute obviously contributes something to the
attribute’s effect on personality. Intensity seems nevertheless to count for
relatively little of an attribute’s weighting. More important is whether a
characteristic persists over time (as I wrote earlier in the chapter). Under special
circumstances, we might argue, an
intense but short-lived desire might have a major impact on us. For instance,
if we acted on a fleeting impulse of anger, lashed out and harmed someone, the
consequent chain of events (guilt, unpopularity, imprisonment) could lead us to
develop quite differently than in an alternate future. Even such a case fails
to show that the intensity of the desire itself constituted a substantial part
of the individual’s personality. The psychological direction in which the perpetrator
develops as the consequences unfold will tell us far more about his other
attributes (dispositions, values, beliefs) and the choices they lead him to
than about the importance of the troublemaking desire.
The intensity of a belief will typically also show less
significance than the nature of the belief: A strongly held belief whose
subject matter is uncontroversial (e.g., a belief that air is predominantly
nitrogen) will typically have less effect on behavior and personality than a
personal and controversial belief (e.g., a belief that one’s duty is to
overthrow the government).
Another way of weighting attributes involves adjusting
for the fact that some kinds are more
influential on a personality than others. Since I’ve already examined this in
the section “Measuring Psychological Connectedness” I won’t be detained by the
question here. I will simply restate my conclusions that memories and simple
beliefs as two classes of personal attribute will produce a less important
effect on a personality over time than will attributes in the class of values
and projects. Overall connectedness may be larger or small than we would
estimate if we counted each type of connection equally. If all a person’s
specific memories were lost in an accident, but all of his values, projects,
and basic dispositions were intact, we would far more easily recognize him as
the same person than if the latter attributes were destroyed while his
memories, simple beliefs, and standard desires were retained.
Even after adjusting our weighting to allow some types of
attribute to count more than others, we still need to allow for the completely
individual variations in the relative importance or centrality of specific
attributes within each category.
Obviously some desires, dispositions, and abilities contribute more to an
individual’s personality than others; some are more central than others. We get total connectedness by weighting each
type of attribute, then summing them. We can think of a similar process
resulting in each type of component. We can examine all the particular
psychological features for each component type (e.g., all the particular
abilities), assign each a weighting depending on its centrality to personality,
then sum them. On what basis can we assess a trait’s degree of centrality to a
person’s personality?
No single standard of centrality of attributes will
suffice to guide us accurately. Five complementary standards come to mind:[12]
(1) The extent of its effects on other traits; the extent
to which dispositions, beliefs, desires, habits, attitudes, and actions are
dependent on it.
(2) The extent of its contextual effects, that is, the
extent to which a trait is operative in various spheres of life (such as work
and leisure, public and private life) and in differing kinds of relationship.
(3) Persistence: The degree to which it is ingrained in a
person’s character and resistant to change.
(4) The extent to which it dominates other traits when
they come into conflict.
(5) Subjective or personal significance: The extent to
which the person regards herself as fundamentally changed if the trait ceases
or alters greatly. The person need not have succeeded in acting from it
habitually. The trait may seen as central despite such lack of success so long
as she struggles to develop the trait and she commits herself to changing into
someone for whom the trait is integral to action. These subjectively
significant traits frequently act as the basis for self-evaluation and
concomitant self-esteem.
These measures of centrality of a trait will frequently
correlate, though this correlation is not essential. A trait may appear central
in one dimension but peripheral in another. A trait might have effects on many
other traits yet always yield to other traits when they conflict. It may
operate in many spheres of life and dominate when in conflict and yet be
regarded as unimportant by the person. This last type of centrality—subjective
or personal significance—stands apart from the rest in that the others may be
objectively assessed, at least in principle.
Some examples of how attributes differ in various ways in
their degree of centrality: A memory of triumphing over an enduring barrier may
be more central than a memory of a visit to the beach. The ability to compose
music may be more central in its effects on our personality than an ability to
stand on one leg for a long time. A disposition to critically analyze one’s
behavior and personality will have far more widely ramifying effects than a
disposition with a more narrowly bounded object. A value of doing good work in
return for the pay may be an important value yet be less significant than a
value that applies in a broader range of contexts, such as a value of honesty
and openness. Projects of narrow scope, such as cataloguing a book collection,
will involve fewer abilities, desires, and values and have far less significant
effects than a project involving the writing of a book or planning on entering
a new career.
After weighting attributes in these ways, we still need
to take into account the second factor affecting estimates of connectedness.
This involves distinguishing between features of a person that are intrinsic
and those that are instrumental. The intrinsic/instrumental distinction can
influence in two ways our estimate of the actual rather than superficially
apparent extent of connectedness. First, our intrinsic attributes (desires,
beliefs, values, etc.) lead us to take various actions when we believe them to
be instrumentally effective in expressing the attribute. These instrumental
behaviors may change, perhaps drastically, while the motivating attributes
behind the scenes persist largely unchanged. Second, some of our values,
beliefs, and projects may form part of us only tentatively, in so far as they
further other, intrinsically significant, attributes. This means that a
substantial proportion of a person’s attributes might change without a
resulting significant reduction in connectedness, if change is limited to the
instrumental attributes.
According to the first point, a large change in behavior
does not necessarily indicate notable change in connectedness. As we change our
beliefs about which actions, habits, and practices effectively move us toward
our goals, our behavior will change. Observed changes in behavior of apparently
similar scope can indicate different actual changes in connectedness. Suppose
Bill leaves his job as a computer analyst for the CIA and takes a job lobbying
Congress for changes in the educational system. Bill’s daily activities will
now be quite different. He will make many phone calls and write letters rather
than being hunched over his keyboard. He may dress more smartly. He may travel
more, sleep different hours, and talk about improving education rather than
about how his software will track down foreign infiltrators and “unAmerican”
citizens. We might interpret these changes in behavior to indicate a
substantial reduction in connectedness between his CIA-phase and his
lobbyist-phase. A superficial assessment of the degree of connectedness between
these phases, an assessment that assumes behavioral change must be proportional
to underlying change in attributes, could turn out far from the truth. If we
understand Bob better we might reach different conclusions: Both Bob the
CIA-analyst and Bob the lobbyist display an abiding and deeply felt fear of the
corruption of some ideal conception they have of American society. As a CIA
analyst, Bob thought he was in a good position to help crush activities he
believed to threaten the established order. Later, he came to doubt the
effectiveness of his work, perhaps because he found his tasks too difficult to
complete, or because of bureaucratic barriers to the implementation of his
work. After much thought, with no diminution in the depth or intensity of his
values, dispositions, and ideology, he concludes that he can better promote his
goals if he can change the ideas inculcated in state schools.
According to the second point, a substantial proportion
of a person’s attributes (not merely their behavior) might change without a
resulting significant reduction in connectedness, if change is limited to the
instrumental attributes. Suppose that Susan, throughout the first 25 years of
her life, holds honesty to others as a value. Suppose she not only claims she
holds honesty as a value but also acts on it with admirable consistency.
Observing her at the age of 26 or 27 we might find her lying, distorting truth,
and covering up on quite a few occasions. It could be that her intrinsic values have changed. She might have
held honesty as an intrinsic value until she was 25 but abandoned it after
that. Still, we cannot infer such a change in intrinsic attributes simply from
her changed behavior. Perhaps Susan never valued honesty in itself. She may
have previously professed and practiced honesty because she thought honesty was
an effective way to show her benevolence, and because she believed that her
desires that others like her and give her breaks for her shortcomings were more
likely to be fulfilled with this policy. She might later have decided that
cautious deceit brought benefits overweighing the risks and that the nature of
her job (giving care to the terminally ill, for instance) required judicious
deceit if she were act benevolently.
The foregoing example involved instrumental values. Since
values form a subset of desires, we can expect that desires generally may be
held instrumentally. If we give up an instrumental desire but retain the
intrinsic desire which motivated it, again we may discount the reduction in
connectedness. Some projects may be instrumental to the achievement of
intrinsic desires, values, and other broader, deeper projects. Even some
beliefs may be held instrumentally. A change in belief may not, in itself,
indicate any significant change in psychology. It seems that holding a belief
in order to achieve some other intrinsically desired end or to maintain some
other important belief has to happen largely unconsciously: It would be hard to
maintain belief in something when you are fully aware that you believe it only
because you find it useful. Yet instances of this suggest themselves readily. A
devout Christian, who tenaciously values faith and obedience to religious
authorities, might adopt a belief (perhaps concerning the age of the Earth or
the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin) because it supported or was required
by her central religious beliefs. The Eurocommunist Marxists of the Stalin era[13]
under orders from the Soviet Union frequently made themselves believe the
contrary of what they had been told to believe before. A tricky doublethink
allowed them to believe whatever they believed it their duty to believe,
whatever would bring on the revolution.
Accurate assessments, then, of changes in connectedness,
require us to allow for differential weighting of attributes, and to
distinguish the intrinsic from the instrumental features of a person. These
observations mesh with what I have previously written and have yet to write
concerning the primary importance of projects, commitments, and basic enduring
values in unifying a self. I will note here that sometimes we hold actions and
personal attributes to be of symbolic significance. These seem to fit into the
intrinsic/instrumental distinction rather uncomfortably. We could say symbolic actions
have instrumental importance because they are means of expressing and affirming
particular values and beliefs. Yet such actions often come to acquire intrinsic
importance after a long association with the thing symbolized.
Transformationism
My account of the
normative consequences of psychological reductionism—Transformationism—states:
Earlier stage A may reasonably
care about later stage B more than proportionally to the degree of
connectedness between them. This is because:
(i)
the person may value their life as a whole (or long stretches of their life),
that is, they may value continuity as much as or more than connectedness. (They
value being a person and not just being a person-phase.)
(ii)
B may be closer to A’s conception of an ideal self.
(iii)
the person may hold transformation (development, growth), as a central goal.
On the first part of
this view, I will argue that we have practical reasons for concerning ourselves
with our life as a whole: The Self-Interest Theory (S), at least as Parfit
defines it, contends that it would be irrational for me to care less about my
more temporally distant (and so less connected) self-phase. I side with Parfit
in rejecting this view. S holds that continuity is everything and connectedness
nothing in a rational determination of our future-concern. From all of the
preceding discussion it will be clear that I agree with Parfit in holding that
it can be perfectly rational to care less about those future self-phases
sufficiently differing from our current phase.
However, I concur with Adams[14]
when he claims that we can reasonably have a pattern of concern in which we
care about our farther future phases just as much (or nearly as much) as our nearer future phases. That is, our degree
of interest in and concern for our future stages need not vary according to the
degree of connectedness, within the normal variations that occur in human life.
Such a pattern of concern, partially uncoupled from variations in
connectedness, need not depend in any way on nonreductionist beliefs. The
position I support, then, disagrees not only with S, but also with the view
that it is irrational to care more than proportionally to connectedness. This
latter position may be Parfit’s, though it seems more likely that his position
is the weaker one that: it is rationally defensible to care only in proportion
to connectedness. I will take the stronger position as my foil.
This result comes about partly because variations in
connectedness over a life may be less than supposed once we allow for the lower
weighting and instrumental status of many attributes. Even after adjusting for
these factors, we can rationally hold concern for our future phases more than
proportionally to the degree of connectedness. We can reasonably concern
ourselves with our future without close attention to the extent of
connectedness (though an anticipated massive break in connectedness might make
it impossible for us to relate to our future). In fact practically everyone
does this. In practice, we do not know how we will turn out, or what might
happen to us to alter our direction. Regardless, most adult persons (at least
some of the time) show strong concern for their future. Without this, no one
would buy life insurance nor plan their finances for the further future,
including preparing for retirement.
Pointing out how people actually act, a critic might
respond, cannot establish the reasonableness of such action. After all, most
people also believe in astrology, gods, and other superstitions. Most people
have not read Parfit and probably have never considered the rationality of
their pattern of future-concern. This response, perhaps controversially, puts
the burden of establishing rationality on the defender of the standard
practice. We might reply that the burden of proof lies on those who claim the
irrationality of an almost universal practice. But we can do better than this;
we can adduce positive considerations in favor of concern with life as a whole.
This will allow us to proclaim the reasonableness of this pattern of concern
until and unless the critic can refute these considerations.
To some extent we have to take as given the things that
we care about in a human life. Much of what matters to us about our lives
cannot be found in any single experience nor in a short phase of a life.
Parfit’s view implies that we should care less about persons or lives as such
and more about experiences. It is the nature of the experience that Parfit
stresses, not the life within which it occurs. Susan Wolf suggests that “If the reason
we care about persons is that persons are able to live interesting, admirable,
and rewarding lives,” Wolf argues, “we may answer that time slices of persons,
much less experiences of time slices, are incapable of living lives at all.”
Apart from the experiences we are having right now, it seems that most of our
interest in the quality of experiences is due to our interest in the persons
whose experiences they are or will be. Implicit in Parfit’s arguments appears
to be the belief that we would or rationally should lose no interest in the
quality of experiences if we lost interest in lives as wholes.
We have practical reasons to concern ourselves with our
lives as a whole (or long stretches of them) rather than with the experiences
of our current phase (and phases closely connected with it). Adopting my life
as a whole as a project allows me to engage in activities and achieve rewarding
results that would otherwise be closed to me. If I concern myself with my life
as a whole I will be able to commit myself to a scholarly or commercial
enterprise that may take many years to complete. If I do not regard the person
who will complete the enterprise as me, I will be unable to take satisfaction
in my tasks since they will lack the significance of being an integral part of
the grand scheme. By focusing on myself as a person rather than myself as a
phase, I gain satisfaction from knowing that I will complete the project and
enjoy the rewards, even though my current phase will not. Similarly, having
taken my life as my project I am able to take on the responsibility of
long-term commitments such as marriage, raising children, and long-term loans.
I can also commit myself to personal growth and development even in directions
I cannot foresee, and I can take an interest in the congruence and meaning of
my life as a whole. I can choose and evaluate my actions in terms of their
place in my life in addition to their effects on the way I feel right now. The
significance of self-concern (rather than self-phase or experience-concern)
will emerge further in the subsection Structuring a Meaningful Life.
Might not Parfit reply that he does concern himself with life as a whole. He merely determines the
limits of a life differently, so that a
life is bounded by the limits of connectedness. This reply cannot work,
however. Parfit does understand identity as connectedness and continuity, so
that a life remains the life of one
person so long as there is psychological continuity. The bounds of a life, for
Parfit, are determined by continuity, while the extent of concern is determined
by connectedness. Parfit therefore concerns himself with person-phases rather
than with a person and their life as a whole.
For the sake of consistency, I should note here that
although I talk of concern with one’s life as a whole, in common with Wolf’s
mode of expression, I believe these considerations do not necessarily move us
all the way from concern with current experiences to concern with our entire
lives. Long stretches of a life (between the extremes of which there are few
psychological connections) can manifest qualities of consistency,
responsibility, virtue, vice, and significance. In the case of an expected life
of great longevity (especially if we find a cure for aging), it may make little
sense to try to value your life as a whole. You may be unable to conceive of
what you will become or want to achieve in the distant future, other than
perhaps continuing to hold certain open-ended values and tendencies like
self-transformation and self-improvement. In the case of lives of great
longevity, we can interpret “concern with a whole life” to actually mean
concern with the longest stretch of a life within our current experience as
humans.
Parfit[15]
criticizes Wolf’s argument from two angles: He doubts some of the undesirable
consequences (such as shallower relationships) would follow from caring about
psychological connections rather than persons. He also argues that it cannot be
rational to adopt a pattern of concern simply on the basis that it would have
good effects. From the foregoing it will be clear that I agree with much of
what Wolf claim about the benefits of relating to our own and other persons’
lives as a whole (or long stretches of lives). Nevertheless I accept some of
Parfit’s criticism of the supposed disadvantages
of caring about people as R-related beings. Concern for people tied to their
characteristics may lead to shorter relationships (if those involved change in
different directions) but this does not mean the relationships will be any
shallower while they exist. As Parfit says “Though such changes may remove the
causes of this love, they do not affect what these causes are.” Parfit goes too
far with this point, however. While relationships may not become shallower, we
can gain other kinds of rewards from the more enduring relationships not
strictly tied to connectedness. We may learn more about people and come to have
a broader concern for our fellow persons.
More significant is Parfit’s objection that, even if
caring about lives as a whole rather than about R-relatedness has desirable
effects, this cannot show such a pattern of concern to be rational: “It would
be irrational, for example, not to care about future Tuesdays. If something
will happen on a Tuesday, this is no reason for caring about it less. But, if
we shall have to endure weekly ordeals, and could schedule these for Tuesdays,
it might be better for us if we had this pattern of concern. This would give us
a reason to try to become in this respect irrational… On her [Wolf’s] view, the
rationality of this attitude depends entirely on its effects. I agree that, if
some attitude has good effects, we have a reason to try to have this attitude.
But Consequentialism is not the whole truth about rationality. Whatever the
effects, it would be irrational not to care about future Tuesdays.” [832-3]
I do not want to become mired in a lengthy analysis of
theoretical and practical rationality, nor do I think it necessary to defend
Wolf from Parfit. Since I take rationality to essentially involve a concern for
the truth, I accept Parfit’s comments about future Tuesdays. What I dispute is
his application of the idea. To make explicit my view of the relation between
theoretical and practical rationality I will affirm the following statement
from Nozick:[16]
“Two principles govern rational (even apparently purely theoretical) belief,
dissolving the dualism between the theoretical and the practical: do not
believe any statement less credible than some incompatible alternative—the
intellectual component—but then believe a statement only if the expected
utility of doing so is greater than that of not believing it—the practical
component.” It cannot be rational to
believe a false thing because it will make life better. In terms of the
rationality of concern and action, it cannot be rational to hold a pattern of
concern based on a falsity because it will make life better. Does Wolf’s view
require us to do this?
Wolf would fall afoul of the constraints of rationality
if, in order to produce beneficial effects, she were asking us to disbelieve
that the R-relation underlies persons. Fortunately, this is not her argument. What Wolf suggests is
that we care about ourselves seen as persons rather than R-related beings
because this will improve our lives. That is, we focus more on our continuity
with our more remotely-connected phases rather than predominantly on our
closely-connected phases. No denial of the R-relation is needed here. All that
is needed is a denial that rationality requires a pattern of concern directly
proportional to the degree of R-relatedness. Wolf holds that our pattern of
concern, rationally, does not depend on the metaphysical facts (within a broad
range).
In equating Wolf’s suggestion about
our pattern of concern with not caring about future Tuesdays, Parfit fails to
make a convincing argument. Someone who cares nothing about what will happen on
future Tuesdays seems clearly irrational: We can point out that a frustration,
an injury, a reward, or a pleasure on a future Tuesday will feel just as good
or bad as on any other day. If the person has motivations and concerns remotely
like those of other persons, our points will provide sound reasons for them not
to treat future Tuesdays differently. Continuing to treat future Tuesdays differently
simply because they are future Tuesdays will be irrational, because such a
pattern of concern would be completely insensitive to reasons (based in the
person’s own desires and beliefs). Concern for persons disproportional to
connectedness is not similarly irrational. Why is this?
Our patterns of concern are prima facie rational. We can choose, within broad limits, how to
apportion our concern given the metaphysical facts about personal identity.
Obviously apportioning one’s concern according to how closely a person’s face
resembles a dog’s face will (in the absence of a special story) be irrational.
Although desires are prima facie rational (or not irrational), this pattern of
concern could not stand up to criticism based on the other desires and beliefs
of the person. The pattern of concern defended by Wolf, and practiced by most
people to varying degrees, can stand
up to criticism, and can therefore be rational: It is difficult to see what
kind of serious criticism could be made of allotting concern more than
proportionally to connectedness. The critic might argue this pattern of concern
to be irrational on the grounds that we ought to care about our future stages
only to the extent that they are like our current stage; caring about out
interests means caring about the interests of ourselves as we are right now.
This attempted criticism, however, simply begs the question. In addition, there
are several positive reasons to maintain or form a disproportional pattern of
future-concern.
A reduction in R-relatedness often gives us some reason
to be less concerned about a future stage, but there are (or may be)
countervailing considerations that can more than outweigh this. I have already
covered some of these and will present another immediately below (in the
discussion of Whiting). To summarize some of these considerations:
(1) As
I will argue in the next section, we may care more about our less connected
future stage if we believe we will develop into a better person (according to
our present values).[17]
(Parfit briefly even grants this, but doesn’t dwell on it.)
(2) We
can choose to make our less-connected future phases a project of ours, i.e.,
make them of great concern to us. This especially makes sense when we realize
we-now have considerable influence on the way our future phase turns out.
Choosing this as a project cannot be irrational if it does not deny any truths.
(See below on this.)
(3) We
can rationally be concerned to grow and change. That implies that connectedness
will fall. We can rationally want to grow into a stage weakly connected with
our current stage. It cannot plausibly be argued that this desire is irrational
while a desire to remain the same (strongly connected) is rational.
Jennifer Whiting[18]
suggests a way in which we come rationally to be concerned with our future
stages more than proportionally to the initial degree of connectedness. By
coming to have this concern we increase the connectedness between our current
and future stages. Whiting suggests a parallel between making friends and
making future self-phases. We care about our future phases, and regard benefits
to them as compensating for burdens on us, in the same way as we care about
friends and benefits to them. When we meet someone and learn a little about
them, we often form primitive concerns that they do or experience something. We
may want them to succeed in writing their book or in resolving a dispute. In
the same way, we have primitive forms of self-concern. We want our future
self-phases to do or experience various things. We may be concerned about a
future phase because of psychological attributes that we believe we will have
in common, or simply because our current actions and decisions will affect the
situation and possibilities of that future stage. We do not really need any
reason at all to form such concerns, just as we do not need a reason to form
desires about other persons. Once some concerns for our future phase have been
formed, we may develop stronger, deeper, and broader concern for that phase,
without necessarily coming to believe that we are more connected with the phase
than we had thought. “We do not ordinarily come to have desires that others do
and experience certain things as a result of having a general concern for their
welfare. Usually it is the other way around; our general concern for a person
grows out of primitive concerns that she do and experience particular things…
My current suggestion is that general concern for my future selves can, in much
the same way, grow out of primitive concerns that they do and experience
particular things.” [Whiting: 565]
Part of what makes our future phase our phase is the intention-connectedness between it and our current
phase. Coming to hold primitive forms of self-concern which then expand to
become a more generalized concern increases that intention-connectedness. As in
the case of concern for friends, “we will think that concern for our future
selves is reasonable if we happen to have it, but not something we are
rationally required to have.” [573] So, while we may not be rationally required
to have concern for our lives as a whole, or for future phases, to the extent
that we have it we will be more connected over time. This result means a
revision in what I said above. As I said there, generally the metaphysical
facts about identity (i.e., the extent of connectedness) is one thing, and our
pattern of concern another. Within a broad range we can decide on our pattern
of concern in light of the facts. However, insofar as that part of our
connectedness constituted by intention-connectedness results from primitive
forms of self-concern and the more general concern that grows from it, the
distinction between the relationship between present and future phases on the
one hand, and our concern for them on the other, will wane.
The second element of Transformationism says that we may
reasonably care about our later phases more than proportionately to
connectedness when our later phase is closer to our conception of an ideal
self. The concept of an ideal self or ideal identity is itself an idealization.
Most of us have at least a few wishes about the kind of person we wish we were
or want to become. Fewer of us have a thoroughly developed idea of exactly
which current attributes we want to throw off, modify, or acquire. Practically
every thinking person has constructed at least a sketch of their ideal self.
This need not be any kind of moral ideal: While one person may seek to become
more empathic another may dream of becoming more destructive or intimidating.
Since “ideal identity” has recently been used in a sense
differing from mine in a recent paper by Rorty and Wong[19],
I will first clarify my meaning by contrasting it with an alternative. Rorty
and Wong note that “A person’s ideal
identity sets directions for the development of central traits. Sometimes this
involves imitating an idealized figure—an Eleanor Roosevelt or a Mahatma
Gandhi. Sometimes it is envisioned from the acceptance of moral principles or
ideology.” [23] So far our usage agrees, but then they write: “Of course, a
person can appropriate many different, sometimes conflicting ideals, she need
not always be aware of her operative ideal identifications, and need not always
approve of those that are actually functioning.” [24] According to this usage,
we may hold an ideal or be influenced by an ideal even though we do not or
would not evaluate that ideal positively. Ideal, in this sense, refers to an
effective template or model of behavior, a model that we may be unaware of and
may not have chosen. I have no objection to this usage but restrict my own use
of “ideal identity” to models of personality of which the individual approves.
(You need not be aware of how you acquired the ideal, and might even doubt or
relinquish the ideal if you were to realize how you absorbed it.)
Making use of a device from earlier in this chapter, we
might say that a person’s ideal identity or ideal self would have all and only
those desires that they would retain in Ideal Reflective Equilibrium—those
desires that are our values plus any other desires not conflicting with them.
In addition to these desires, an ideal self would have those additional
abilities and dispositions we desire. Our ideal identity affects the direction
of development of our central personality traits. An ideal self need be no more
than the sum of a person’s specific ideals. The ideal self is what that person
would be like if they were to realize each of their ideals. Such a person may
not explicitly have an overall conception of an ideal self, or regard the shaping
of an ideal self as a project. In this case, the ideal self is constructed from
the projects and other attributes one has, rather than the other way around.
Others may have an ideal self in a stronger sense.
Actualizing our ideal self may be one of our projects. The project of becoming
our ideal self will encompass more specific projects and other personal
characteristics. As a project in itself, it will act as a filter on what other
projects we pursue. The relationship between the ideal self-project and other
projects is not a simple superordinate/subordinate one, since the latter will
have a major role in determining the shape of the ideal self. However, an ideal
self as a project, rather than merely the sum of specific ideals, will have
some independent shaping power. It will at least tend to seek coherence and
congruence between our specific ideals. It may even lead to us creating or
realizing new ideals, or to modifying or abolishing existing ones. The project
of becoming our ideal self, in so far as we have such a project, contributes to
our interest in long stretches of our life. Becoming our ideal is likely to be
a project to occupy us over many years. In struggling to succeed in this
project our ideal identity will affect both the kinds of actions we perform and
the way in which we perform them.
Many people, having formed an image of an ideal self,
fantasize about it without seriously attempting to forge themselves into that
ideal. In these cases, the ideal self will have little or no effect on the
direction in which we change, nor on how much we change. Even if we commit
ourselves to transforming into our ideal we may find we are unable to fully
realize it because the attributes it requires cannot be integrated with the
rest of our character. The impossibility or great difficulty of making
ourselves into our ideal still leaves it as a powerful contributor to our
identity. Our sense of ourselves can still be strongly influenced by our
continual striving toward our ideal. An ideal of great wisdom, for example, can
show itself in efforts taken to learn from experience, to broaden experience,
to develop listening skills, and so on.
To whatever extent we have formed an
ideal self-conception, we will have another reason for apportioning our
future-concern disproportionally to the expected degree of psychological
connectedness. Tying concern tightly to connectedness would promote stagnation
and passivity. In Parfit’s thought experiments, the individuals facing
decisions about how much to sacrifice for their future phases seem always to be
passive subjects being acted on by other people. In actuality, an agent is not
just an integrated grouping of psychological features but an active chooser and
self-creator. Parfit, true to his utilitarian tendencies, appears much more
interested in an agent’s experiences rather than in their active aspect which
forms ideals and seeks change and growth. If we have some conception of an
ideal self and believe we shall move towards that ideal, we can reasonably more
than proportionally be concerned with our future, more ideal self-phases. The
reverse is also true:
Imagine two scenarios for your
future self of several decades in the future. In both cases let us say that you
have undergone many changes, maintaining 40% of your current attributes (after
weighting). In the first scenario, you improve greatly over the years, shedding
characteristics you find ignoble or incongruent while acquiring many of the
dispositions, abilities, and characteristics that you desire. In the second
scenario, you go into a decline, gradually losing much of your good nature,
many of your abilities atrophying through neglect, while developing qualities
the thought of which now makes you shudder. In both cases your current and
later stages share 40% of their attributes. Nevertheless, it seems clear that
you will feel far more willing to restrict current consumption and invest in
yourself if you believe the first scenario rather than the second will become
actual. So, depending on whether we believe ourselves to be getting stronger
and better, or weaker and more corrupt, we will be more or less concerned with
protecting the interests of our future selves than would be suggested by
concern proportional to connectedness.
To head off a possible misinterpretation
of my position I will clarify a point: Valuing attribute A and disvaluing
attribute B does not, in itself, make A’s continuation in me a greater
contributor to my connectedness. The degree of connectedness of my phases is an
objective matter. The future stage that you dislike is just as much a stage of
you as the one you like; the difference affects the degree to which you will
reasonably feel concern for a future stage, and not how connected your present
and future stages are. The disvalued trait still has its effects on my actions,
constraining or encouraging other attributes with which it interacts. Each of
my attributes contributes to me identity: those I approve of, those I
disapprove of, and those about which I am indifferent or unaware. Disvaluing B
does mean that I will care less about losing it than if I were to lose A. So,
while the extent to which I value or disvalue an attribute does not, in itself,
affect its contribution to connectedness, it does affect the extent to which I
see a given degree of reduction in connectedness as a loss or as reducing my
future-concern.
Despite this, there is a sense in which disvaluing an
attribute can reduce its contribution to connectedness. An attribute that I
disvalue will presumably conflict with many other characteristics of myself,
whereas an attribute that I favor will cohere with many other values and
beliefs. These desires, beliefs, and values may frequently be expressed
together in a mutually reinforcing complex. Thus the disvalued attribute, though
equal to a valued attribute in terms of intensity, may have less effect on my
life because its effects are damped by countervailing actions resulting from
opposing beliefs and values. These other beliefs, desires, and values may
motivate me to block actions based on the unwanted attribute, avoid situations
that encourage its manifestation, and search out ways of extirpating it. So
long as and to the extent that an unwanted attribute is part of my personality
it is an element of connectedness. We cannot discount that contribution simply
because we disvalue it, though our disapprobation will tend to motivate us to
reduce its effect on our personality over time.
A third way in which concern for future stages may be
more than proportional to connectedness arises when we hold transformation of
self as an ideal. Desiring self-transformation, or holding it as a project, can
allow us to undergo more extensive change while preserving what matters to us.
Though positive self-transformation will move us towards our ideal identity,
the effects of valuing self-transformation go beyond those considered in my
discussion of ideal identity above. The major point about losing connectedness
as we move towards our ideal identity was that we may maintain a high degree of
concern for our weakly-connected, but more ideal, future phases. Perhaps we
have a definite view about the kind of person we will become. If we believe we
will come to develop specific desirable new traits, or strengthen desirable
existing traits, our future-concern will be affected little if at all by
recognizing the fairly weak connection between our current and future phases.
On the other hand, we may have little idea of the direction of our future
development. We may believe we will change in ways not now foreseeable, on the
basis of experiences new to us. Our projection of a more ideal self may lack
specifics and be based solely or primarily on our confidence that we will
continue to remedy our faults and weaknesses and seek out new and better ways
of being. In this case we are not maintaining our future-concern in the face of
reduced connectedness as a result of expecting to become the kind of person who
better exemplifies the values we now
hold. Rather, we value the process of self-transformation, partly tying our
concern to the process. We maintain strong concern for our future phases,
despite lack of knowledge or belief about their particular nature, because we
value a progressive pattern for our life as a whole and not just particular
attributes. We value (positively) transforming, not just becoming a particular
kind of person. The more strongly we value self-transformation compared to
valuing specific attributes, the more we are likely to maintain our
future-concern in the face of substantial anticipated reduction in
connectedness.
“Valuing self-transformation” might mean two things
which, though they overlap, will have different effects. We can take that
phrase to mean that we simply desire self-transformation; the prospect is
pleasing. Or we can take it to mean we hold self-transformation as a personal
project, a process we engage in, and whose effects ramify throughout our
activities. Merely desiring self-transformation passively will be sufficient
for us to hold strong concern for future phases which we believe will be more
developed.[20]
Such a desire will still promote change by making us more aware of alternative
behaviors and attributes. We will identify less with our current attitudes.
Adopting personal transformation as
a project goes well beyond this. It means not only looking forward to positive
change and being willing to recognize the desirability of new ways of being. It
means actively designing a plan of personal growth, actively seeking out
unknown and untried personal attributes, and exerting oneself to implement and
integrate these discoveries. Self-transformation will lead to more personal
change and so may cause a faster reduction in connectedness (if attributes are
being changed, not just supplemented). Of course, the project of self-transformation
itself is an element of connectedness, so its own existence will partly
compensate for the reduction in other connections it causes. However, it seems
reasonable to expect such a project to lead to a greater overall decline in
connectedness compared with a situation where self-transformation is not a
project for someone. The more heavily we weight self-transformation as a
value/project, the more its persistence will compensate for the weakening of
other connections it results in. We might begin to estimate
self-transformation’s contribution to connectedness by breaking it down into
its component attributes. Self-transformation as a value/project is composed of
other attributes, such as inquisitiveness, a disposition towards novelty, a
valuing of growth and improvement, a preference for progress over stagnation,
and a tolerance of uncertainty rather than a desire for the security of the
familiar. (Here I’m obviously only talking about self-transformation motivated
by constructive values. Self-transformation may also be motivated by
self-loathing and a desire to escape
from one’s current personality.)
Though connectedness between current and future phases
will be lower if self-transformation is held as a project (compared to having
it merely as a desire or not being interested in it at all), our concern for
our future stages, and interest in our lives as a whole, will be higher.
Holding self-transformation as a central project will lead us to assign a more
tentative importance to the persistence of most of our attributes. By this, I
do not mean we will necessarily think our current attributes less important or
real. Rather, we will be ready to reevaluate them and to relinquish or modify
them. Incorporating into our lives a commitment to positive self-transformation
means we will more readily recognize other valuable attributes we don’t yet
possess; we will seek out and welcome improvements in our character and
capabilities; we will tend to be more constructively critical in evaluating our
current attributes. This project, in making us more self-aware and
self-critical of our current phase, encourages us to apportion our concern less
according to our current constitution and more based on our life as a whole as
it exhibits the process of development, maturation, improvement, and
exploration. This leads me to a consideration of the relationships between how
we structure our lives over the long term with projects, principles, and
values, and how this structuring allows our lives to cohere as a meaningful whole,
rather than as a meaningless succession of experiences.
Life Plans
Earlier,
I addressed Parfit’s claim that Reductionism makes us see human lives as less
deep. His claim might be taken in another way: to imply that life is less
meaningful than on a Non-Reductionist view. Parfit believes our lives to have
less depth and death to be less bad according to Reductionism. If
meaningfulness were unaffected by Reductionism, we should expect life to retain
its depth and death its full measure of evil. In addressing the issue of
meaningfulness I am showing, in another way, how my interpretation of
Psychological Reductionism differs from Parfit’s. Another reason for looking at
the issue of meaning is that it illuminates further, according to
Transformationism, the relation between our choices, the structure of our
diachronic identity, and our pattern of concern for our selves over time. The
account of meaningfulness presented here will cohere effectively with my
emphasis on a more dynamic conception of the self than has typically been
suggested by Reductionists. Part of my account in this section owes a great
deal to Robert Nozick’s treatment in Philosophical
Explanations. I will begin with his summary of some conditions for a life
to be meaningful:
“This is recognizable
as what some have meant by a meaningful life (1) a life organized according to
a plan and hierarchy of goals that integrates and directs the life, (2) having
certain features of structure, pattern, and detail that the person intends his
life to have (3) and show forth; he lives transparently so others can see the
life plan his life is based upon (4) and thereby learn a lesson from his life,
(5) a lesson involving a positive evaluation of these weighty and intended features
in the life plan he transparently lives. In sum, the pattern he transparently
exemplifies provides a positive lesson.”[21]
[578]
The
first characteristic we are likely to expect to see in a meaningful life is
some kind of order, structure, or coherence. By this I intend a degree of order
or structure beyond the minimum sufficient to allow psychological continuity.
Consider a person with memories, desires, beliefs, and values, but no real
long-term projects, no conception of an ideal self, and little or no concern
for the future or for goals beyond the most narrowly personal. Such a person
might retain much the same personality throughout their life, or they might
gradually change in a way that preserves continuity. While sufficient for
continuity, such a life would lack much meaning or significance. This person
does not conceive of an ideal self or make its creation a project, and the
changes or lack of changes in their personality are accidental. They do not
organize their life or give it integrated form. They follow their desires in
the situations they face, without any plan or scheme. In terms of the shape of
their life and the directions they take, they are reacting to circumstances
rather than seeking out, choosing, channeling, and controlling change (or
stability).
Meaningful lives result, in part,
from a self-conscious ordering of ourselves and our activities. Some
philosophers have written of “unified
agency”,[22]
which they contrast with a mere bundle of individual desires or preferences.
Meaningfulness requires a reasonable degree of unified agency, though it may
not be as highly developed as expressed by Rawls’ conception of a rational life
plan. A unified agent is one who has been able to examine conflicting
individual preferences dispassionately and come to an all-things-considered
preference. The person who plans their life not only deliberates on various
considerations as they arise in particular situations, but also considers the
differing kinds of lives possible for them. As Darwall notes, “As beings who
can reflect on ourselves as perduring through time, we form preferences with
much wider scope than those we are likely to be able to satisfy by specific
actions in specific situations. In the limiting case we may prefer to lead one
kind of life rather than another. When such preferences are informed and
all-things-considered preferences, they provide a rational framework within
which we may pursue our lives in various situations as they arise.” [104]
As I noted, Rawls’ conception of a
rational life plan is an idealization, yet his view is an ideal form of the
process undergone by people with meaningful lives. (I will explain below why a
rational life plan is not sufficient
for meaningfulness.) Rawls conception of a rational life plan has two general
conditions: (1) A plan requires not only a preference ordering of the ends to
be achieved but also an idea of how those ends are to be achieved. Means and
ends must be rationally related so that one plan is preferred to another if it
achieves more ends, at less cost, more quickly. (2) A rational life plan is one
for which the person would have an informed, all-things-considered preference.
That is, a plan chosen bearing in mind relevant facts and considering
consequences so far as they are foreseeable. A rational life plan will mitigate
conflict between our preferences and foster preferences that are mutually
supporting and reinforcing. The plan will rule out intransitivity of
preferences as well avoiding inconsistencies such as when someone approves of
an activity because it embodies characteristic C while disapproving of another
activity embodying C.
Intrinsic preferences may cohere not
just by avoiding incoherence, but positively by complementing or mutually
supporting each other. One way for this to happen is when something is
preferred both intrinsically and instrumentally, such as when we work both
because of the pay and because we enjoy the activity. Darwall (p.109) suggests
another kind of mutual support: “two intrinsic preferences may support each
other if what one finds intrinsically desirable about both are the same or
similar aspects. One obvious case of this is when one thing is intrinsically
preferred because it has properties that specify more general aspects that one
finds intrinsically desirable. An example would be specific individual
preferences for distance running and cross-country skiing, both of which
specify and support a preference for moving through nature in an autonomous and
self-propelled way. The more specific and general preferences support each
other in the sense that finding the more specific activities intrinsically
desirable supports one’s sense that the general sort of activity is, and
conversely.”
It is worth noting, given the
perhaps rationalistic sound of this discussion, that life plans need not be
sensible or based on true or even rational beliefs in order to support a sense
of meaning in a life. Many people find their lives meaningful despite basing or
filtering much of their activity on a religious or otherwise delusive system.
Of course, grounding the meaning of one’s life on a belief that one is the
servant of Jehovah or Allah, or part of a cosmic process of a divine
reawakening, runs the risk that reality will intrude and demolish the
foundation of meaningfulness.
Reality-based or not, life plans
consist of an ordered group of projects, desires, principles, and actions. To
the extent we adopt such a plan we are actively considering ourselves less as
person-stages and more as enduring selves. Persisting memories, disposition,
desires, and beliefs may suffice for us to feel concern for our future
self-stages, but our future-concern will be stronger when we focus on the shape
of our life as a whole (or long stretches of our life). By developing a life
plan and ordering our activities according to it, we are partially creating the
structured self persisting over time. By focusing on the shape of our life we
not only come to be more concerned with our future stages but also create a
more structured relation between stages. Another way of adding structure to a
life, (perhaps as part of a plan) is to adopt principles.
Principles:
Adherence to principles
constitutes another way of structuring oneself over time. Principles provide a
means of defining ourselves, of being able to answer the question: “Who are
you?” We can answer: “I am a person who embodies forthrightness,
reasonableness, inventiveness, justice…” Principles, by marking boundaries,
serve an invaluable function if we want to be a certain kind of person. Situations
often admit of many possible responses, a range of which we may find
acceptable. Without principles we can easily slide, bit by bit, from acceptable
actions to unacceptable actions because there is no obvious stopping point.
Well-considered principles allow us to draw a line across the path of a gradual
slope of possible actions. Even if, prior to committing to a principle, there is an obvious stopping point, we may
believe ourselves unable to draw a line there. For instance, if we think it
impossible to never be late, we may
instead create a principle if I’m late on one occasion I’ll be early
the next time.
In this section I will mostly discuss principle as a
structuring factor independently of the other elements of a life plan. Clearly,
though, living by principles may be part of a life plan. Interwoven with and
partially shaping a person’s projects are principles of thought and action.
Principles can provide a framework around which to build a life plan, or a
filter for evaluating the acceptability of alternative life plans.
Principles both restrict the ways in which a project can
be implemented, and open up new avenues for project pursuit. On the restrictive
side, principles act as regulators or governors, ruling out certain ways of
tackling a goal or project. Suppose someone dedicates a stretch of their life
to promoting environmental responsibility. Some people, seeing this as a
supremely important goal, might tackle it by any means possible, including
exaggerating or lying about the magnitude of actual environmental challenges. A
more principled environmental activist will seek to increase environmental
awareness and responsibility without resorting to dishonesty or scare tactics.
This may make it appear that principles only restrict our
options, acting as a burden and adding barriers to the achievement of our
goals. However, by shaping our personality principles also enable us to do
things and enter relationships otherwise difficult or unavailable to us. For an
obvious example of this effect, consider someone who adheres to a policy of
truthfulness and honest disclosure. As others come to recognize this
characteristic in the person they will feel more secure in trusting them, in
relying on their word, and in making agreements to mutual benefit. An elegant
demonstration of the effectiveness of constraining one’s actions by
well-selected principles has been provided by Axelrod (1984) and subsequent
work. In a series of tournaments for computer programs embodying various
principles, Tit-For-Tat (or sometimes Tit-For-Two-Tats) persistently emerged
victorious. TFT adhered to principles of transparency and simplicity (its
actions were easily comprehensible), retaliation (it immediately retaliated
against players who “defected”), and niceness (it didn’t hold grudges). David
Gauthier’s work develops the idea of constrained maximization and the
advantages it produces for the agent over straight maximization.[23]
A further illustration of the enabling effect of adopting principles (rights in
this case) recently has been provided by John Tomasi:[24]
Instead of asserting
your claim against me, your right-claim entitles you to choose voluntarily and
knowingly not to assert it. If you
and I are friends, and you know that I am embarrassed by my continuing
financial difficulties, when we meet on Saturday you can use your right –
especially in light of my recognition that you do have such a right – to
express your concern for me by withholding
your claim. Rights provide opportunities for community members to act
virtuously toward one another. For one way that I can recognize that your
action toward me is, for example, “generous” is by first knowing what strict
observance of the principles of justice requires – that is, by knowing that
what you are sacrificing for me was in fact yours to sacrifice or claim.
[Tomasi, 1994]
Principles, then, by
binding us in some ways can multiply other options available to us. Principles
allow aspects of our selves to be revealed and developed in relationships and
activities that would not be possible without this self-binding.
Should we view principles as straightforwardly part of
our identity, or rather as external constraints on a separable identity? A
dualistic view would represent principles as constraints imposed on a separable
personality constituted by desires, beliefs, and goals. Principles, especially
moral principles, sometimes are presented as distinct, higher, purer restraints
on our base personalities. In contrast to that view, I suggest the following
account: Principles partially constitute our identity or personality just as
much as do our desires and goals. Indeed, given my earlier account of values as
a special kind of desire, and recognizing principles as formalized kinds of
values, we can see that principles should be regarded as part of us, not as
some kind of non-natural straightjacket on a separable self. At the same time
we can grant that principles may be more or less constitutive of a person. The
acceptance and integration of principles into our selves forms a spectrum from
peripheral to fully integrated. With regard to any principles, we may progress
along the spectrum or stop at any point. Initially when we claim to hold a
principle we may recognize it as a desirable way to be. It then becomes part of
our ideal identity, though it may initially have a minor effect on behavior. We
struggle to live by a new principle as we consider how to implement and apply
it while attempting to restrain or defeat conflicting desires. This early part
of the spectrum most closely resembles the dualist picture. We experience the
principle as a restraint, holding us back from actions and thoughts that have
come naturally to us. The picture at this stage resembles a Kantian view of the
moral law, where worth derives from adhering to principles in the face of our
impulses.
If we continue to move along the spectrum we see a more
Aristotelian picture: As we persist at living on principle, we gradually form
new habits, while weakening, extinguishing or avoiding the activation of
contrary desires. We adjust other beliefs, goals, and even relationships,
bringing them into line with the principle. Through this process, principles
become increasing constitutive rather than legislative. As we integrate
principles into our personality, living according to them starts to flow more
effortlessly. They will become “second nature.” Another way of putting it is to
say a principle will have become a virtue.
Why define oneself in terms of principles rather than
just in terms of goals? How does the acceptance and integration of principles
affect the meaningfulness of one’s life? The answers to these two questions are
closely related. Although goals, especially when grouped into projects, can
powerfully shape our lives, principles guide more generally than goals: Principles
help us select goals and subgoals and shape the manner in which we pursue them.
A principle of modesty may favor a career as an anonymous functionary over that
of actor or politician. By shaping the pursuit of a goal, principles partly
define goals. Someone might have a goal of
becoming a millionaire by age 35 and the ability to achieve this in a
variety of ways. If they hold a principle of giving value for money received,
they may select a specific goal of selling a product that fills an important
need no one else is filling adequately.
This is not to say that principles can be simply placed
ahead of goals in terms of significance in their contribution to personality.
Goals and projects can be powerfully life-shaping apart from principles, even
if usually in a more restricted domain. Goals and principles interact, mutually
influencing one another. While principles shape and select goals, our goals can
motivate us to accept or reject principles. When Gauguin left his family to
paint in Tahiti he may have rejected principles of primary responsibility to
his family because of his overriding goal. If we have a deeply desired goal in
life, we will tend to ignore principles that make the goal harder to achieve
and more likely to be aware of and receptive to principles that complement and
further it. Overall, though, principles—being more abstract than goals—will
apply over a broader range of our activities and relationships.
Meaning requires order and structure throughout a life,
both across different activities in any given period of a life, and across
periods of a life. Meaning requires a plan and an ordering of desires and
actions integrate a person. This ordering allows a life to have a point. If we
see this point or lesson or example as having value, we are able to perceive
our life as meaningful. Principles play a vital role in making a life
meaningful. They provide the strength and focus (in combination with major
goals and projects) to be steadfast in the pursuit of our life plans in the face
of distractions and difficulties. Being applicable to any number of situations
in numerous areas of life (far more so than goals), principles integrate the
diverse aspects of our life and personality. When principles are securely
integrated into our personalities, they imbue us with confidence as we approach
novel situations and relationships. Whereas desires can be frustrated, projects
can fall apart, and relationships can wither, principles form a solid core of
self, always being there to guide and sustain us.
In order to form a distinct personality or identity, we
need to be able to keep commitments and follow up on decisions. Without this
ability we will find ourselves pushed around by external pressures. Lacking a
strong inner direction we will find little coherence in our behavior over time
and so will tend to care less about our future self-stages. Adopting principles
provides us with a means of adhering to our planned course of action.
Principles do this by making some actions stand for others. Imagine the fabled
potential movie star who has the option of having sex with a big-name producer
in exchange for being cast in a major movie. In considering the situation and
the avenues open to him, the actor realizes a principle is at stake: “Success
in an artistic career should be sought only by appropriate means such as the
display of skills, and not by letting myself be used in irrelevant and
disrespectful ways.” Recognizing this principle, the actor may see this
instance of exchanging sex for career advancement as one instance of a general
principle conflicting with his integrity principle. Wanting the self-respect of
being the kind of person who adheres to the principle, he may gather the
strength to refuse the offer. Seeing an action on its own, without any relation
to principles, may make it easier to give up our integrity. Our actions will
then lack the significance attaching to ordered, chosen, consistent behavior
over time. When we hold something as a principle, we increase the costs of
behaving contrary to it and increase the rewards of adhering to it. By
affecting costs and benefits in this way principles encourage us to undertake
projects with more reassurance that we will keep with them until we have
achieved the desired end. As a result, our lives will be more ordered,
significant, and meaningful.
Living by principles, then, increases our long-term
personality coherence, enabling us to care more about our future self-stages.
If Reductionism is to provide a useful, accurate, and comprehensive account of
personal identity, and is accurately to inform our normative inferences about
future self-concern, it needs to incorporate these psychological
considerations.
Conclusion
High-level
projects, life plans, and transformations prompted by our pursuit of
meaningfulness give us a dynamic structure over time, generating reasonable
concerns for our future self-stages despite the likelihood of great change and
reduction in connectedness. These considerations show that psychological
reductionism need not lead to the view, found in Parfit, that we have no
particular reason to be concerned with our weakly-connected future self-stages.
The prospect of certain kinds of
change in our constitution will give
us grounds for thinking of future stages as distinct from us to the extent that
they might as well be another individual. In the final chapter I will examine
various changes in our basic constitution and consider whether we should regard
them as disruptive of our identity over time.
[1]In
the case of a declarative memory, I remember
that something happened; in the case of a procedural memory, I remember how to do something.
[2]Rorty
and Wong (1990), “Aspects of Identity and Agency” in Flanagan and Rorty (1990).
[3]I
do not intend a noncognitivist view of religious language. My view is that the
emotional response and the religious belief are sometimes inseparable in a
person’s psychology. Nevertheless, contrary to noncognitivism, we can
analytically separate the emotive and cognitive components, and evaluate the
beliefs according to evidence.
[4]Frankfurt
(1971). “Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person.”
[5]Stephen
L. White (1991). The Unity of the Self,
pp.230-31.
[6]Annette
C. Baier, in “Why Honesty is a Hard Virtue” in Flanagan and Rorty (1990),
provides a fascinating and illuminating analysis of why the virtue of veracity
does not require anything close to the Kantian extreme in truth-telling.
[7]Except,
perhaps, for the core rules of logic. A discussion of the revisability of logic
from a nonjustificationist epistemology of “pancritical rationalism” is
provided by W. W. Bartley, III in Appendix 5 of The Retreat to Commitment (1984).
[8]Lomasky
(1987), p.26.
[9]Stephen
L. Darwall, in the context of developing a theory of rational preference,
considers the choice of possible lives and how this is essential to the
formation of what Rawls terms a rational life plan. See Darwall (1983).
[10]This
is one way in which they differ from fantasies or dreams which can consist of
vague longings with little or no practical reasoning.
[11]Though
he would have more reason to see death as an evil.
[12]My
list draws on that of Rorty and Wong (1990) in Flanagan and Rorty (1990), p.20.
[13]As
told by Arthur Koestler in The Richard
Crossman Diaries, and as parodied by George Orwell in 1984.
[14]Adams
(1989), “Should Ethics be More Impersonal?”
[15]Parfit
(1986): 832-837.
[16]Nozick
(1993), 175-6.
[17]To
anticipate a question: As I argue later, that the expected direction of change
is positive does not in itself
increase connectedness. (If it did, then this factor would not provide a
rationale for concern for superior future stages more than proportional to
connectedness.)
[18]Whiting
(1986).
[19]Amelie
Oksenberg Rorty and David Wong (1990)
[20]By
“more developed” I mean more developed in terms of one’s current values—if we
are talking about one’s abilities and motivational tendencies are. The
situation with one’s values themselves is more complicated: I recognize that
some of my current values and desires may be based on a false or partial
understanding of the facts about the world or about myself. I may come to see
things differently and so relinquish or revise some of my existing values, and
form new ones. So, my values will be more developed in the sense that they will
evolve from my current values in conjunction with an improving understanding of
the world.
[21]Nozick
(1981), p.578.
[22]For
instance, Darwall (1983), Korsgaard (1989).
[23]Gauthier
(1986).
[24]Tomasi
(1991 & 1994).
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