From: gts (gts@optexinc.com)
Date: Tue Oct 22 2002 - 03:23:07 MDT
Dan Fabulich wrote:
> gts wrote:
>> In other words, contrary to your words above, your moral
>> obligation to keep a promise made by your past-person is not
>> as you claim "on account of your special relationship to your
>> past-person." It is rather on account of your current moral
assessment
>> of the need to act consistently with the promise.
you replied...
...
> Suppose we're in an ordinary and uncontroversial case of
> promise keeping. You need money for the bus; I lend you that
> money on the condition that you pay it back to me the following day...
> Whether or not you're the "same person" you were the day
> before, you have *some* present moral obligation to pay me back.
> Why? Why (within our moral context) would your moral assessment
> of the situation show that you should pay me back?...
> I'd argue that it at least has to do with at special
> relationship you have with the person who made the promise,
> regardless of whether it's called "identity." What's wrong with
> that picture? How could anything be wrong
> with the idea of an unnamed "special relation"?
I think there is nothing wrong with that picture and I see nothing wrong
with the unnamed "special relation." In my mind your present-person
clearly has a special relation to your past-person. However the question
here is whether that relation is one of "identity of personality." I
believe it is not.
As I see it, your present-person should feel responsible for keeping
your past-person's promises for reasons analogous to those for which a
son should feel responsible for keeping a deceased father's promises.
The degree of obligation of a son to keep his deceased father's promise
is of course usually quite less than that of a present-person to keep
his past-person's promise. However I think the obligations are
qualitatively similar even if quantitatively different.
The son must make his own moral assessment of his deceased father's
promise and decide for himself if it is one worth keeping. If his late
father promised to do something morally repugnant to the son (e.g.,
commit murder) then the son will feel inclined to break the father's
promise. If on the other hand the father promised something morally
acceptable to the son (e.g., to pay back a loan for bus-money) then the
son will feel inclined to keep the father's promise.
The key point here is that the son's decision to keep or break the
promise will depend on the son's moral assessment of his father's past
promise -- *not* on some false belief that "father equals son."
Your present identity as conceived in Lee's thought experiment is
analogous to you the son. Your past identity frozen in the ice is
analogous to your deceased father. It's perfectly understandable that
you the son might feel some identification with your father, and some
obligation to keep your father's promises, but it's a mistake I believe
to think you are identical to the father.
Because personality is always evolving, your frozen duplicate is not
you.
-gts
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