On person-affecting views in population ethics, the moral import of a person’s welfare depends on that person’s temporal or modal status. These views typically imply that – all else equal – we’re never required to create extra people, or to act in ways that increase the probability of extra people coming into existence. -/- In this paper, I use Parfit-style fission cases to construct a dilemma for person-affecting views: either they forfeit their seeming-advantages and face fission analogues of (...) the problems faced by their rival impersonal views, or else they turn out to be not so person-affecting after all. In light of this dilemma, the attractions of person-affecting views largely evaporate. What remains are the problems unique to them. (shrink)

Consider a specific type of fission where psychological continuity takes a branching form, and one of the offshoots comes into being later than the other offshoot. Let us say that the earlier offshoot comes into being in the left branch at t, and the later offshoot comes into being in the right branch at t+1. With regard to the question how many persons are involved in this case, three answers are worth considering: (i) The original subject persists up to (...) t; a distinct person comes into being immediately after t and continues to exist in the left branch; and the third person comes into being in the right branch at t+1. (ii) The original subject persists up to the moment immediately before t+1; a distinct person comes into being at t+1 and continues to exist in the left branch; and the third person comes into being in the right branch at t+1. (iii) The original subject continues to exist in the left branch; a distinct person comes into being in the right branch at t+1. For those who hold that personal identity consists in psychological continuity of some sort, the aforementioned three options exhaust the sensible ways of understanding how one persists in delayed fission. However, I argue that complications arise for each answer. Hence, delayed fission poses a challenge for the psychological approach to personal identity. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to provide a proof-theoretic characterization of relevant logics including fusion and fission connectives, as well as Ackermann’s truth constant. We achieve this by employing the well-established methodology of labelled sequent calculi. After having introduced several systems, we will conduct a detailed proof-theoretic analysis, show a cut-admissibility theorem, and establish soundness and completeness. The paper ends with a discussion that contextualizes our current work within the broader landscape of the proof theory of relevant logics.

In “The Argument for Subject Body Dualism from Transtemporal Identity Defended” (PPR 2013), Martine Nida-Rümelin (NR) responded to my (PPR 2013) criticism of her (2010) argument for subject-body dualism. The crucial premise of her (2010) argument was that there is a factual difference between the claims that in a fission case the original person is identical with one, or the other, of the successors. I argued that, on the three most plausible interpretations of ‘factual difference’, the argument fails. NR (...) responds that I missed the intended, fourth interpretation, and that, in any case, with an additional assumption, the argument on the third interpretation goes through. I argue that the fourth interpretation, while insufficient as stated, reveals an assumption that provides an independent argument, namely, that in first person thought about future properties we have a positive conception of the self that rules out having empirical criteria of transtemporal identity. I argue that the considerations offered for this thesis fail to establish it, and that we do not bring ourselves under any positive conception in first person thought. I argue also that on the third interpretation, the first premise of the argument is inconsistent with the necessity of identity. (shrink)

This philosophical treatise proposes a novel metaphysical framework for understanding the nature of temporal experience, which I term "Temporal Fission Theory." Drawing an extended analogy from nuclear physics, I argue that the phenomenological present—what we experience as "now"—emerges through a dynamic process analogous to nuclear fission, wherein the ontological pressures of past and future converge upon consciousness to generate the experiential present. This theory attempts to reconcile tensions between presentism and eternalism by positing that the present is neither (...) a privileged ontological moment nor merely an indexical reference point, but rather an emergent phenomenon arising from the collision of temporal potentialities. Furthermore, I explore how this framework addresses the relativity of simultaneity while preserving the phenomenological reality of temporal experience across multiple observers who share what I call "perspectival synchronicity" within spacetime. (shrink)

(No abstract is available for this citation).

According to a traditional conception, romantic love is both constant - if someone loves another, they continue to love them - and exclusive - if someone loves another, they love only the other. In this paper, we argue that the essentiality of constancy and exclusivity is incompatible with the possibilities of fission - roughly speaking, of one person becoming two - and fusion - roughly speaking, of two people becoming one. Moreover, if fission or fusion are possible, then (...) constancy and exclusivity are obligatory features of love only if there are moral dilemmas. We conclude by suggesting this casts doubt on the constancy and especially the exclusivity of love. (shrink)

In cases of fission a thing or person splits into two things or persons. It is often thought that in cases of fission the thing or person which fissions could not be numerically identical with one result of fission rather than the other, on the grounds that it would be objectionably arbitrary for the thing or person to end up as one result of fission rather than the other. I show that this sort of argument fails. (...) Two fission cases which receive special attention are split-brain transplants (where each brain hemisphere is transplanted into a different body) and monozygotic twinning. (shrink)

I introduce a new approach to fission puzzles called the Diversified Approach that proceeds by distinguishing different kinds of fission and assimilating each kind to a different ordinary phenomenon, such as breaking apart, replication, or part loss. To illustrate this approach, I apply it to the case of amoebic fission. The upshot is a novel account of amoebic fission according to which the dividing amoeba ceases to exist because it breaks apart. After developing this solution and (...) highlighting some of its advantages, I discuss briefly how the Diversified Approach can be extended to other varieties of fission. (shrink)

Abstract: Those who endorse the Psychological Continuity Approach (PCA) to analyzing personal identity need to impose a non-branching constraint to get the intuitively correct result that in the case of fission, one person becomes two. With the help of Brueckner's (2005) discussion, it is shown here that the sort of non-branching clause that allows proponents of PCA to provide sufficient conditions for being the same person actually runs contrary to the very spirit of their theory. The problem is first (...) presented in connection with perdurantist versions of PCA. The difficulty is then shown to apply to endurantist versions as well. -/- . (shrink)

One of the standard approaches to the metaphysics of personal identity has some counter-intuitive ethical consequences when combined with maximising consequentialism and a plausible doctrine about aggregation of consequences. This metaphysical doctrine is the so-called ‘multiple occupancy’ approach to puzzles about fission and fusion. It gives rise to a new version of the ‘utility monster’ problem, particularly difficult problems about infinite utility, and a new version of a Parfit-style ‘repugnant conclusion’. While the article focuses on maximising consequentialism for simplicity, (...) the problems demonstrated apply more widely to a range of ethical views, especially flavours of consequentialism. This article demonstrates how these problems arise, and discusses a number of options available in the light of these problems for a consequentialist tempted by a multiple occupancy metaphysics. (shrink)

Dr Miranda Anderson is an Honorary Fellow in History, Classics and Archaeology at the University of Edinburgh and an Associate Lecturer at the Open University. She has held several prestigious fellowships and was principal investigator of an AHRC-funded project, titled ‘The Art of Distributed Cognition’, which involved collaboration with the Talbot Rice Gallery. Her work has investigated the relations between cognition and culture, particularly literary works, challenging the boundaries between disciplines and engaging with numerous contemporary science, technology and society (STS) (...) questions. In this perspective article, she evokes the ‘fission-fusion’ concept on which she has been working for some years now – a concept that contributes to debates surrounding the issue of identity by drawing on the arts, humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. (shrink)

Those who endorse the Psychological Continuity Approach (PCA) to analyzing personal identity need to impose a non-branching constraint to get the intuitively correct result that in the case of fission, one person becomes two. With the help of Brueckner's (2005) discussion, it is shown here that the sort of non-branching clause that allows proponents of PCA to provide sufficient conditions for being the same person actually runs contrary to the very spirit of their theory. The problem is first presented (...) in connection with perdurantist versions of PCA. The difficulty is then shown to apply to endurantist versions as well. (shrink)

The question of when human life begins is critical in debates related to life issues. While there are a variety of proposals as to how an organism should be defined, many biologists and ethicists, particularly Catholics, have approached this issue by arguing that fertilization defines the beginning of a new organism. Examining the processes of fission and fusion, which take place before gastrulation, provides strong evidence for when human life beings and therefore how it should be defined. Among the (...) four dominant theories, regulative fission and fusion are the best explanations in terms of being the most consistent with the biological data. This explanation of twinning provides compelling evidence that fertilization is not a necessary condition for human generation, although it may be a sufficient condition. While fertilization generates the vast majority of human beings, additional human beings may rarely be generated during fission events. (shrink)

Extreme cases such as fission, duplication, and uploading have long shaped debates about personal identity. These cases are commonly taken to motivate either revisionary accounts of identity or the conclusion that identity is not what fundamentally matters. This paper argues for a different response. Rather than revising or dismissing identity, it proposes that such cases reveal a boundary of its applicability. -/- The central claim is that identity applies only where there exists a single, ongoing, non-branching generative process underlying (...) a person’s persistence. When this condition fails—as in cases of fission or perfect duplication—identity does not become vague, indeterminate, or unimportant. Instead, it ceases to be applicable. -/- By distinguishing identity from roles, functional organization, and psychological continuity, the paper explains why certain extreme cases systematically resist identity-based resolution while preserving the conceptual integrity of identity within its proper domain. The result is not a revision of identity, but a clarification of the conditions under which identity claims are well-formed. (shrink)

Derek Parfit argues that fission is prudentially better for you than ordinary death. But is having more fission products with good lives prudentially better for you than having just one? In this paper, we argue that it is. We argue that, if your brain is split and the halves are transplanted into two recipients (who both have good lives), then it is prudentially better for you if both transplants succeed than if only one of them does (other things (...) being equal). This upshot rules out, among other things, that the prudential value of standing in the relation that matters in survival to multiple people is equal to their average well-being. (shrink)

The Problem of Too Many Thinkers is the result, implied by several “permissive” ontologies, that we spatiotemporally overlap with a number of intrinsically person-like entities. The problem, as usually formulated, leaves open a much-neglected question: do we literally share our mental lives, i.e. each of our mental states, with these person-like entities, or do we instead enjoy mental lives that are qualitatively indistinguishable but numerically distinct from theirs? The latter option raises the worry that there is an additional Problem of (...) Too Many Mental Tokens. This paper argues that there is indeed such a problem, at least in fission cases. In the course of articulating this problem, we will make a number of surprising discoveries about the relationship between personal persistence and the metaphysics of mental entities. We will also see that the Problem of Too Many Mental Tokens has significant epistemological and ethical implications, which will haunt us even once we have addressed the Problem of Too Many Thinkers. (shrink)

When persons can branch by symmetric copying, a structural problem emerges for rights and responsibilities that presuppose a unique diachronic bearer. These include, inter alia, voting, property, and criminal liability. I show that three appealing commitments are jointly unsatisfiable in symmetric fission. They are Nonproliferation (copying should not multiply exclusive entitlements), Non-Arbitrariness (like cases must not be treated unalike absent person-relevant justification), and Preservation (pre-copy entitlements persist to exactly one continuer). I develop three response paths, ranging from explicit legal (...) stipulation to treating fission as the death of the original person. Much digital rights discourse inherits frameworks from debates about animal personhood, but heretofore unremarked upon is the salient distinction, which is not human versus non-human, but copyable versus non-copyable. Unlike biological organisms, copyable persons break the architecture of diachronic recognition. The familiar rights structure must be rebuilt on new foundations or abandoned where branching is possible. -/- Keywords: personal identity; symmetric fission; copyable persons; digital minds; recognition; AI personhood; political equality; non-arbitrariness. (shrink)

This paper distinguishes bruteness from fundamentality by developing a theory of stochastic grounding that makes room for non-fundamental bruteness. Stochastic grounding relations, which only underwrite incomplete explanations, arise when the fundamental level underdetermines derivative levels. The framework is applied to fission cases, showing how one can break symmetries and mitigate bruteness whilst avoiding arbitrariness and hypersensitivity.

This paper constructs a general framework for identity that dissolves some classical paradoxes by treating identity as an exercise in conceptual engineering rather than metaphysical discovery. It posits two core definitions: (1) Synchronic Identity is identical to a complete structural configuration of a system at time t; (2) Diachronic Persistence is a defined relation of causal succession between such configurations. From these definitions, the classical paradoxes of personal identity (fission, fusion, teletransportation, and gradual replacement) dissolve into determinate state transitions. (...) The framework also resolves the associated probability paradox, showing that survival is a causal guarantee, not a matter of chance. The result is a minimalist, substrate-neutral theory of identity applicable to any bounded system, whether biological, artificial, or purely abstract. (shrink)

Martine Nida-Rümelin has argued recently for subject-body dualism on the basis of reflections on the possibility of survival in fission cases from the literature on personal identity. The argument focuses on the claim that there is a factual difference between the claims that one or the other of two equally good continuers of a person in a fission case is identical with her. I consider three interpretations of the notion of a factual difference that the argument employs, and (...) I argue that on each of them the argument either begs the question or is unsound. (shrink)

The cohabitation theory is a popular solution to the problem of personal fission. It affirms that all the people who result from fission were there cohabiting the pre-fission body all along. Adopting this solution is an uncontroversial move for four-dimensionalists, but is it open to three-dimensionalists too? Some have thought so, but Katherine Hawley, Mark Johnston, and Eric Olson have argued to the contrary. They claim three-dimensionalists simply cannot be cohabitation theorists. In this paper, I explain how (...) they can. (shrink)

The central claim of the Parfitian psychological approach to personal identity is that the fact about personal identity is underpinned by a non-branching psychological continuity relation. Hence, for the advocates of the Parfitian view, it is important to understand what it is for a relation to take or not take a branching form. Nonetheless, very few attempts have been made in the literature of personal identity to define the non-branching clause. This paper undertakes this task. Drawing upon a recent debate (...) between Anthony Brueckner and Harold Noonan on the issue, I present three candidates for the non-branching clause. (shrink)

David Lewis defends the following "non-circular definition of personhood": "something is a continuant person if and only if it is a maximal R-interrelated aggregate of person-stages. That is: if and only if it is an aggregate of person-stages, each of which is R-related to all the rest (and to itself), and it is a proper part of no other such aggregate." I give a counterexample, involving a person who is a part of another, much larger person, with a separate mental (...) life. I then offer an easy repair, which preserves the virtues of Lewis's definition without introducing any new vices. (shrink)

There is much to be said for a diachronic or interpersonal individuation of singular modes of presentation (MOPs) in terms of a criterion of epistemic transparency between thought tokens. This way of individuating MOPs has been discussed recently within the mental files framework, though the issues discussed here arise for all theories that individuate MOPs in terms of relations among tokens. All such theories face objections concerning apparent failures of the transitivity of the ‘same MOP’ relation. For mental files, these (...) transitivity failures most obviously occur because mental files can merge or undergo fission. In this paper I argue that this problem is easily resolved once mental files are properly construed as continuants, whose metaphysics is analogous to that of persons or physical objects. All continuants can undergo fission or fusion, leading to similar transitivity problems, but there are well-established theories of persistence that accommodate this. I suggest that, in particular, the stage theory best suits the purposes of a continuant theory of MOPs. (shrink)

It is possible to wholly exist at multiple spatial locations at the same time. At least, if time travel is possible and objects endure, then such must be the case. To accommodate this possibility requires the introduction of a spatial analog of either relativising properties to times—relativising properties to spatial locations—or of relativising the manner of instantiation to times—relativising the manner of instantiation to spatial locations. It has been suggested, however, that introducing irreducibly spatially relativised or spatially adverbialised properties presents (...) some difficulties for the endurantist. I will consider an objection according to which embracing such spatially relativised properties could lead us to reject mereology altogether in favour of a metaphysics according to which objects are wholly present at every space-time point at which they exist. I argue that although such a view is coherent, there are some good reasons to reject it. Moreover, I argue that the endurantist can introduce spatially relativised or adverbialised properties without conceding that objects lack spatial parts. Such a strategy has the additional advantage that it allows the endurantist not only to explain time travel, but also to reconcile our competing intuitions about cases of fission. (shrink)

Jason Bowers and Meg Wallace have recently argued that those who hold that every individual instantiates a ‘haecceity’ are caught up in a Euthyphro-style dilemma when confronted with familiar cases of fission and fusion. Key to Bowers and Wallace’s dilemma are certain assumptions about the nature of metaphysical explanation and the explanatory commitments of belief in haecceities. However, I argue that the dilemma only arises due to a failure to distinguish between providing a metaphysical explanation of why a fact (...) holds vs. a metaphysical explanation of what it is for a fact to hold. In the process, I also shed light on the explanatory commitments of belief in haecceities. (shrink)

In this paper, we argue for a novel three-dimensionalist solution to the problem of persistence, i.e. cross-temporal identity. We restrict the discussion of persistence to simple substances, which do not have other substances as their parts. The account of simple substances employed in the paper is a trope-nominalist strong nuclear theory, which develops Peter Simons' trope nominalism. Regarding the distinction between three dimensionalism and four dimensionalism, we follow Michael Della Rocca's formulation, in which 3D explains persistence in virtue of same (...) entities and 4D in virtue of distinct entities. SNT is a 3D'ist position because it accounts for the persistence of simple substances in virtue of diachronically identical ‘nuclear’ tropes. The nuclear tropes of a simple substance are necessary for it and mutually rigidly dependent but distinct. SNT explains qualitative change by tropes that are contingent to a simple substance. We show that it avoids the standard problems of 3D: temporal relativization of ontic predication, Bradley's regress and coincidence, fission and fusion cases. The temporal relativization is avoided because of the analysis of temporary parts that SNT gives in terms of temporal sub-location, which is atemporal part–whole relation. (shrink)

This paper argues that there are no people. If identity isn't what matters in survival, psychological connectedness isn't what matters either. Further, fissioning cases do not support the claim that connectedness is what matters. I consider Peter Unger's view that what matters is a continuous physical realization of a core psychology. I conclude that if identity isn't what matters in survival, nothing matters. This conclusion is deployed to argue that there are no people. Objections to Eliminativism are considered, especially that (...) morality cannot survive the loss of persons. (shrink)

El embarazo es un tema relativamente novedoso en los debates filosóficos. Introducido fundamentalmente desde perspectivas feministas, plantea desafíos a las posiciones tradicionales. Consideramos que la exploración de estas cuestiones es especialmente para la filosofía de la biología, pues obliga a reconsiderar la naturaleza de la reproducción, así como la concepción convencional de la biología del embarazo, y a revisar cómo la literatura más reciente sobre su evolución obliga a cambiar el modelo. Este trabajo sostiene que el estudio filosófico del embarazo (...) tiene el potencial de transformar significativamente los debates actuales en la filosofía de la biología. En particular, puede reformular nuestra comprensión de los organismos y sus procesos, afectando conceptos clave como la individualidad, las relaciones inter-organísmicas, la temporalidad, la historicidad y la fisión. Pregnancy is a relatively new topic in philosophical debates. Introduced mainly by feminist perspectives, it raises issues that constitute challenges to traditional positions in philosophy. We examine some of these related to pregnancy, such as the subject and experience, ontologies, the problem of counting entities, and origin or birth. The discussion of these questions is relevant to the philosophy of biology. As such, it forces us to reconsider the problem of reproduction as well as the conventional conception of the biology of pregnancy, and to review how the more recent literature on its evolution forces us to change the model. On this basis, the main argument of this paper is that the question of pregnancy has an enormous potential to influence and suggest changes in current arguments in the philosophy of biology, mainly in the conceptions involved in the understanding of organisms and their processes, such as individuality, relationa-lity and temporality, historicity and fission. (shrink)

This paper introduces U236 Thinking, a novel theoretical framework that conceptualizes philosophical creativity through structural analogy with nuclear fission. The framework proposes that the generative philosophical mind operates through mechanisms parallel to the fission of uranium-236: a prepared cognitive state (U-235) absorbs an initiating stimulus (neutron), enters an unstable but intensely productive state (U-236), and generates cascading insights through chain-reaction dynamics. This generative state is formalized as Attention Focused Hyper Activity Natural Order (AFHANO)—a positive cognitive phenomenon characterized by (...) attentional intensity, cognitive hyperactivity, natural conceptual order, and energetic expenditure. The paper examines the neurochemical substrate of AFHANO through the complementary roles of dopamine (cognitive flexibility and motivation) and oxytocin (conceptual integration and openness), and develops the concept of the "moderator function" as essential for sustaining productive ideation. U236 Thinking offers philosophers, scientists, and educators a vocabulary for understanding generative cognition and practical strategies for its cultivation. (shrink)

This paper establishes that the occasional identity relation and the contingent identity relation are both non-transitive and as such are not properly classified as identity relations. This is achieved by appealing to cases where multiple fissions and fusions occur simultaneously. These cases show that the contingent and occasional identity relations do not even satisfy the time-indexed and world-indexed versions of the transitivity requirement and hence are non-transitive relations.

In some sense, survival seems to be an intrinsic matter. Whether or not you survive some event seems to depend on what goes on with you yourself —what happens in the environment shouldn’t make a difference. Likewise, being a person at a time seems intrinsic. The principle that survival seems intrinsic is one factor which makes personal fission puzzles so awkward. Fission scenarios present cases where if survival is an intrinsic matter, it appears that an individual could survive (...) twice over. But it’s well known that standard notions of “intrinsicality” won’t do to articulate the sense in which survival is intrinsic, since ‘personhood’ appears to be a maximal property. We formulate a sense in which survival and personhood (and perhaps other maximal properties) may be almost intrinsic—a sense that would suffice, for example, to ground fission arguments. It turns out that this notion of almost-intrinsicality allows us to formulate a new version of the problem of the many. (shrink)

The article summarizes the software tool on astrophysical analysis with multi-wavelength space telescope data. It recaps the evidence analysis conducted on the Kerr-Newman black hole (KNBH). It was written prior to the article Research on the Kerr-Newman Black Hole in M82 Confirms Black Hole and White Hole Juxtapose not soon after the experiment. The conducted analysis suggested Hawking radiation is caused by the movement of ergosurfaces of the BH and serves as the primal evidence for black hole and white hole (...) juxtapose. A later data exploration was conducted with the radiation trails in the multi-wavelength data. The evidences produced corroborates with Yale professor Priyamvada Natarajan's black hole seeds theory. It implies that the electromagnetic dynamic of fusion and fission temperature determines the pressure of surface tension on the macro particles, and the mass density of the BH is determined by the electromagnetic tension between the outer ergosurface and inner ergosurface. The ring singularity of the BH and the Penrose-Hawking singularity of the BH determine the spin and gravitational singularity of the BH. Inside the ergosurfaces, the BH singularities' backward inflow causes the vicinity's rate on feeding the BH. It makes the active galactic nuclei (AGN) a semi-closed system. The density pressure is released on threshold. During the mass exchange observed by energy momentum upon the AGN's open, the macroparticle composition of the BH changes with the galactic event. This causes the expansion rate of the galaxy and contraction rate of the BH. AGN types and their relative motions determine the expansion rate of the cosmic universe in a generalized quantitative thinking. The article concludes that BH spin is caused by the asymmetric motions of AGN in the BH system. A set of the nuclear resonance caused by BH and white hole (WH) oscillation is processed with the same set of data. (shrink)

Examining imagination, 4E cognition and the arts together expands our understanding of them all. 4E cognition is a framework that comprises the theories separately known as embodied, enactive, embedded, and extended cognition. This paper draws on research in cognitive science (including 4E and recent predictive processing approaches), ideas in phenomenology, and artworks from The Extended Mind exhibition (2019–20). The artworks offer diverse reflections on 4E cognition, as well as revealing personal, political and ethical benefits and issues predicated on a 4E (...) cognition perspective. This approach further provides a way of defending the epistemic value of the imagination and of unpacking the four key puzzles associated with its relationship with the arts regarding its production of emotional response, imaginative resistance, and moral persuasion, and the paradox of our attraction towards horror and tragedy. The arts are a valuable mode of inquiry into the nature of cognition and neglect of their relevance negatively impacts understandings of the mind. (shrink)

Humans coordinate their focus of attention with others, either by gaze following or prior agreement. Though the effects of joint attention on perceptual and cognitive processing tend to be examined in purely visual environments, they should also show in multisensory settings. According to a prevalent hypothesis, joint attention enhances visual information encoding and processing, over and above individual attention. If two individuals jointly attend to the visual components of an audiovisual event, this should affect the weighing of visual information during (...) multisensory integration. We tested this prediction in this preregistered study, using the well-documented sound-induced flash illusions, where the integration of an incongruent number of visual flashes and auditory beeps results in a single flash being seen as two (fission illusion) and two flashes as one (fusion illusion). Participants were asked to count flashes either alone or together, and expected to be less prone to both fission and fusion illusions when they jointly attended to the visual targets. However, illusions were as frequent when people attended to the flashes alone or with someone else, even though they responded faster during joint attention. Our results reveal the limitations of the theory that joint attention enhances visual processing as it does not affect temporal audiovisual integration. (shrink)

This paper poses a problem for traditional phylogenetics: The identity of organisms that reproduce through fission can be understood in several different ways. This prompts questions about how to differentiate parent organisms from their offspring, making vertical gene transfer unclear. Differentiating between parents and offspring stems from what I call the identity problem. How the problem is resolved has implications for phylogenetic groupings. If the identity of a particular asexual organism persists through fission, the vertical lineage on a (...) phylogenetic tree will split differently than if the identity of an organism does not survive the fission process. (shrink)

The problem of personal identity is a longstanding philosophical topic albeit without final consensus. In this article the somewhat similar problem of AI identity is discussed, which has not gained much traction yet, although this investigation is increasingly relevant for different fields, such as ownership issues, personhood of AI, AI welfare, brain–machine interfaces, the distinction between singletons and multi-agent systems as well as to potentially support finding a solution to the problem of personal identity. The AI identity problem analyses the (...) criteria for two AIs to be considered the same at different points in time. Two approaches to tackle the problem are proposed: One is based on the personal identity problem and the concept of computational irreducibility, while the other one applies multi-factor authentication to the AI identity problem. Also, a range of scenarios is examined regarding AI identity, such as replication, fission, fusion, switch off, resurrection, change of hardware, transition from non-sentient to sentient, journey to the past, offspring and identity change. (shrink)

What happens when your mind is uploaded, your brain is perfectly duplicated, or your consciousness forks into parallel streams? The Pattern Identity and Parallel Branching Theory offers its most radical insight: consciousness is not singular; it is an emergent product of instantiated patterns. You are not a self—you are whichever pattern is currently active. -/- This paper defends a functionalist-realist theory of identity based on pattern instantiation. Its most provocative implication emerges in the analysis of dissociative identity disorder: each alter (...) is not a dysfunction, but a distinct, fully valid instantiation of a pattern sharing a biological substrate. When Alter A (with its unique pattern parameters) switches to Alter B (with a different set of parameters), what we observe is not "one broken person," but a witness to parallel branches constrained within a single body—different individuals taking turns controlling shared hardware in a temporal sequence. -/- Thus, the Pattern Identity and Parallel Branching Theory dissolves the philosophical puzzle of multiplicity: if perfect duplication creates two instances of the same person, then the presence of multiple distinct patterns within one brain simply means the creation of multiple distinct persons across time. This is not pathology but proof of concept—biological systems can, and sometimes do, instantiate multiple core patterns. The "host" and the "alters" are equally real persons; their tragedy lies not in ontology, but in the practical realm: they must compete for control over an indivisible physical resource. -/- This framework reframes both classic problems (the Ship of Theseus, fission cases) and future dilemmas (mind uploading, AGI consciousness). If a morally responsible pattern is duplicated, both instances bear responsibility. If one brain hosts multiple moral agents, each is responsible only for actions generated by its own pattern. Legal personhood must shift from organism-based to pattern-based attribution. The theory does not solve the puzzle of identity—it reveals that we have been asking the wrong question all along. The question is not "How many persons are here?" but "Which patterns are instantiated, and when?". (shrink)

The nuclear engineer emerged as a new form of recognised technical professional between 1940 and the early 1960s as nuclear fission, the chain reaction and their applications were explored. The institutionalization of nuclear engineering—channelled into new national laboratories and corporate design offices during the decade after the war, and hurried into academic venues thereafter—proved unusually dependent on government definition and support. This paper contrasts the distinct histories of the new discipline in the USA and UK (and, more briefly, Canada). (...) In the segregated and influential environments of institutional laboratories and factories, historical actors such as physicist Walter Zinn in the USA and industrial chemist Christopher Hinton in the UK proved influential in shaping the roles and perceptions of nuclear specialists. More broadly, I argue that the State-managed implantation of the new subject within further and higher education curricula was shaped strongly by distinct political and economic contexts in which secrecy, postwar prestige and differing industrial cultures were decisive factors. (shrink)

In reaching his narrative view of the self in Oneself as Another, Paul Ricoeur argues that, while literature offers revealing insights into the nature of the self, the sort of fictions involving brain transplants, fission, and so on, that philosophers often take seriously do not (and cannot). My paper is a response to Ricoeur's charge, contending that the arguments Ricoeur rejects are not flawed in the way he suggests, and that his own arguments are sometimes guilty of the very (...) charges he lays at the door of his opponents. (shrink)

This is a textbook/popular introduction to the metaphysics of identity. It is centred around 12 science fiction stories, each of which explores some facet of the personal identity debate; cases like amnesia, teleportation, time travel, brain fission and mental fusion. Accompanying each story is a commentary that summarises the philosophical arguments. While the arguments are presented in a balanced way, the author ends up supporting a broadly animalist account, according to which we are essentially autonomous animals. This means that (...) we persist so long as we maintain our animal bodies and its autonomous life-preservation distinct from other animals. We stop persisting if we are bodily fused with other animals, or if we lose our basic animal characteristics (for instance, if our bodies are gradually replaced by machine parts). Another point that the book makes is that thought experiments are essential for reasoning about the metaphysics of identity. Yet philosophers have often used thought experiments in an irresponsible way. For instance, philosophers such as Derek Parfit make appeals to brain transplants without thinking through their practical implications in any realistic detail. A collection of science fiction stories on these scenarios is thus important for getting us to think more carefully about these cases. Finally, the book has appendices which list science fiction stories and films relevant to personal identity, and a teacher's guide for a class centred around the metaphysics of identity. The attached file is a preprint version containing the contents list and introduction only. (shrink)

The article discusses the personality and legacy of Derek Parfit. he entered the history of modern metaphysics and moral philosophy as a proponent of radical neo-lockean view on the issues of personal identity. denying our basic metaphysical and moral intuitions (identity for the person and moral responsibility), the so-called «Oxford buddhist» was a tireless preacher of hyper-rational altruism. his original ideas and admirable arguments outlined only in few works were and remain at the center of philosophical discussions.

Could we transfer you from your biological substrate to an electronic hardware by simulating your brain on a computer? The answer to this question divides optimists and pessimists about mind uploading. Optimists believe that you can genuinely survive the transition; pessimists think that surviving mind uploading is impossible. An influential argument against uploading optimism is the multiplicity objection. In a nutshell, the objection is as follows: If uploading optimism were true, it should be possible to create not only one, but (...) multiple digital versions of you. However, you cannot literally become many. Hence, you cannot survive even a single instance of uploading, and optimism about uploading is misguided. In this paper, I will first spell out the multiplicity objection in detail and then provide a two-pronged defence against the objection. First, uploading pessimists cannot establish that uploading optimism has the contentious implication. Second, it is in fact plausible to think that we could become multiple distinct persons. Optimists’ hope for a digital afterlife is therefore not thwarted by the prospect of multiplicity. (shrink)

Derek Parfit’s argument against the platitude that identity is what matters in survival does not work given his intended reading of the platitude, namely, that what matters in survival to some future time is being identical with someone who is alive at that time. I develop Parfit’s argument so that it works against the platitude on this intended reading.

Lynne Baker's concept of a first-person perspective is not as clear and straightforward as it might seem at first glance. There is a discrepancy between her argumentation that we have first-person perspectives and some characteristics she takes first-person perspectives to have, namely, that the instances of this capacity necessarily persist through time and are indivisible and unduplicable. Moreover, these characteristics cause serious problems concerning personal identity.

In der Diskussion um personale Identität nehmen die einflussreichen Arbeiten Derek Parfits eine Sonderstellung ein, insofern Parfit nicht bestrebt ist, eines der gängigen Identitätskriterien zu verteidigen, sondern vielmehr behauptet, dass unsere alltäglichen wie philosophischen Vorstellungen von personaler Identität unrettbar inkohärent sind und deshalb aufgegeben werden sollten. In seinem Beitrag beleuchtet Sascha Settegast die verschiedenen Argumente, die Parfit für diese provokante These vorbringt, und unternimmt insbesondere den Versuch einer systematischen Dekonstruktion der wichtigsten Gedankenexperimente Parfits, die zeigen soll, dass sich diese Gedankenexperimente (...) auf eine Weise auflösen lassen, die unsere alltäglichen Intuitionen über personale Identität intakt belässt. Settegast entwickelt dabei die Grundzüge einer Konzeption personaler Identität, die sich einerseits von den gängigen neo-lockeanischen und animalistischen Ansätzen abgrenzt und andererseits bewusst an den zeitgenössischen Neo-Aristotelismus in der Ethik anknüpft, wie er etwa bei Philippa Foot und Michael Thomp-son anzutreffen ist. Die diachrone numerische Identität menschlicher Personen gründet nach Settegasts Auffassung darin, dass der Verlauf ihres Lebens eine zeitliche Einheit aufweist, die dadurch bedingt ist, dass ihre Lebensführung die menschliche Lebensform auf eine individuell charakteristische Weise exemplifiziert. Insofern dies aber nur durch Kultivierung der Tugen-den zu erreichen ist, handelt es sich laut Settegast bei personaler Identität letztlich nicht um eine Tatsache, die einfach vorliegt oder nicht, sondern um eine Aufgabe, die uns als Menschen gegeben ist und wesentlich darin besteht, in bewusster Orientierung auf das gute Leben hin ein stabiles, sich zeitlich durchhaltendes Selbst allererst auszubilden. (shrink)

An extended example illustrating various theories of personal identity and imagining how duplicates would confront the argument that neither of them is identical with the original.

This paper presents a unified, ToM-centric framework for understanding the distinctive cognitive trajectory of the human lineage, grounded in active inference (Friston), evolutionary breakthroughs in intelligence (Bennett), scale-free multi-level agency (Levin), and cultural-evolutionary mechanisms (Henrich). We propose that recursive Theory of Mind (ToM)—the nested representation of mental states—serves as the core organizing principle. Successive applications of the same inferential mechanisms (boundary formation via Markov blankets, free-energy minimization, recursive prediction) generate scalable agency across phylogenetic, ontogenetic, and socio-cultural levels. Key novelties include: (...) - A single coherent model that integrates (1) phylogenetic emergence of full recursive ToM, (2) its extension to non-present/non-biological agents via Theory of Virtual Mind (ToVM), providing a mechanistic explanation for animism, personification, and the cognitive foundations of religious/mythological cognition, - An account of adult cognitive-affective development as ongoing, conscious refinement of recursive inference across four differentiated domains of agentivity (corporeal, mental, relational, instrumental), enabling self-directed adaptation in complex social niches through philosophy, spirituality, and contemplative practices, - The parallel elaboration of affect from basic drives → social emotions → virtual/spiritual emotions tied to long-horizon predictions involving inferred intentionality of abstract agents, - The scaling to collective intelligences (CIs) and the introduction of ToCI: higher-order collective reflexivity, encompassing both a CI’s meta-representational self-model and its recursive modeling of other CIs’ mindedness/agency. Rather than claiming universality or superiority, the framework descriptively illuminates one observed path of nested cognitive complexification in Homo sapiens. It offers a novel integrative lens for linking individual recursive ToM, religious cognition, adult psychological development, spiritual experience, and higher-order collective intelligence within a common active-inference architecture. (shrink)

This paper presents a new anti-criterialist view, Brutal Personal Identity (BPI). According to BPI, personal identity is a quasi-fundamental fact, which is metaphysically grounded in brute facts about absolutely fundamental personhood. By reversing the order of metaphysical explanation, BPI is not a form of identity mysticism as Dean Zimmerman asserts. Instead, BPI has even the potential to lay a solid foundation for developing an appropriate account of mentality and first-person perspectives. Furthermore, a comparison between BPI and soul theory is provided (...) to show why BPI is better than its main anti-criterialist rival. This provides us a compelling reason for considering BPI in the debate over personal identity. (shrink)