From: Dan Fabulich (dfabulich@warpmail.net)
Date: Tue Oct 15 2002 - 14:03:58 MDT
gts wrote:
> Lee Corbin asked:
>
> > So (just to pursue a fancy, here) you generally speaking
> > don't consider yourself to be the same person that you
> > were last week? Wow ;-) it must really be easy to get
> > out of promises, "*I* never said that! The previous gts
> > said that!" ;-)
>
> Strictly speaking, yes, I am not the same person I was last week.
>
> With regard to promises, people would never break them if what I am
> saying were not true. Rightly or wrongly, when a person willfully breaks
> a promise it is because he has "changed his mind," i.e., his personality
> has changed such that he is now a different person with a different set
> of priorities.
>
> Lest you think this should be interpreted as a license to disregard
> one's integrity, keep in mind that the breaking of a promise is not in
> itself immoral or evil. Such things must be considered in context.
> (T'would have been nice had Osama's followers decided to break their
> promise to destroy the WTC, for example.)
You say that "strictly speaking" you're not the same person you were last
week... But you also say that promises should be enforced in a "moral
context." I presume we agree on the point that our mutual moral context
holds you presently responsible for promises you made in the past.
It's hard to imagine a reason why you might be responsible, unless you
have a very special historical relationship with the person who made the
promise. You may refuse to call the relation "identity," (though, for
everyone else's sake, I hope you DO refer to it just like the identity
relation in ordinary conversation,) but whatever you call it, the
relationship is quite unique and morally relavent.
Whatever that morally relevant relationship may be, you have that same
morally relevant relationship to anything that instantiates me[past]().
The guy with me[1]() and the guy with me[2]() *both* have to honor
promises made by me[past](), whether or not you're prepared to call the
person with me[1]() "the same person" as the person with me[past]().
By bracketing the question of whether we should say that me[now] "the same
person" as me[past], I've attempted to show that, within our moral
context, we must make the same moral choices regardless.
If we speak in a language in which you must honor past promises because
you are "the same person", then we'll have a moral rule that requires
enforcement on account of this. If, instead, we speak in a language in
which you must honor past promises made by your past-person, then we'll
have a moral rule that requires enforcement on account of your special
relationship to your past-person. The rule is translated with the
language; practical choices remain invariant.
So, in particular, rule statements like "I should try to keep myself
alive" should be interpreted relative to their language. If your
rule-statement is in a language in which "I" is first-person-only, then we
may translate it into a language in which "I" applies across time. Then
it might be stated formally as "I should try to maintain me[now]."
Similarly, if the rule-statement is in a language in which "I" applies
across time, then we may translate it into a language in which "I" applies
only in the present tense: "I should try to keep myself and me[past]
alive."
Frankly, I find the latter rule most compelling; I find it compelling *for
the same reason* that I believe I should honor past promises now... it
doesn't matter whether or not you let me call that reason an argument from
"identity".
[I may, of course, ask by what rule you speak "strictly" when you say that
you're not the same person as you were last week...? But I think that'd
be tangential to the point: it doesn't matter what you call it, so long
as we share a moral context.]
-Dan
-unless you love someone-
-nothing else makes any sense-
e.e. cummings
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