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Working Paper Group: Heidi Savage on Life-Trajectories, Virtual Immersion, and Survival

We haven't had Working Paper Group discussion in quite a while, so I am delighted to announce that Heidi Savage (SUNY Geneseo) has submitted a draft of her paper, "What Matters in Survival: Life Trajectories and the Possibility of Virtual Immersion", for open discussion and feedback. Here is the paper's abstract:

Abstract: The immediate goal of this paper is to establish that one can both agree with Parfit that identity is not what matters in survival and yet still maintain that the concept of a persisting person requires singularity over time. That is, fission cannot preserve what matters in survival. This can be maintained once one recognizes an externalist constraint on preserving what matters. Specifically, I claim that what matters in the survival of persons is something Parfit might call the “quasi-continuation” of what I term their “life trajectories.” The motivation for this externalist conception of what matters in survival comes from considering the implications of certain kinds of cases of complete virtual immersion — the immersion of a psychological subject in a completely virtual world, a world in which her experiences are de-correlated with events in the objective world. Of course, the idea that externalist constraints are important in a complete metaphysical account of the nature of persons is not new, but I propose my own specific account about how to understand these constraints. Furthermore, this account not only rules out fission cases as those in which we have what matters equally as well as in single cases on metaphysical grounds, it also can be used to explain our reactions to different virtual immersion scenarios. Therefore, simply on explanatory grounds alone, my view is to be preferred over pure psychological continuity theories.

If you're at all interested in personal identity, please do consider reading Heidi's paper and providing feedback in the comments section below. This is a great chance to help an early-career author improve her work–and hopefully it will get our working paper group going again!

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3 responses to “Working Paper Group: Heidi Savage on Life-Trajectories, Virtual Immersion, and Survival”

  1. Heidi Savage

    So maybe I should say something about what I am looking for. At least one of the the problems with the piece is the way the paper is currently framed, I spend A LOT of time on set up before I get to the positive view, and there’s also some repetitiveness involved. BUT, I do need to answer the questions that get answered in that set up somehow. So if you have suggestions about how to frame it, I would really appreciate it. Of course, any comments on any aspect are appreciated, but I am really frustrated with the organization of it right now.

    Reply
  2. Marcus Arvan

    Hi Heidi: Very interesting paper! A couple of quick questions while giving it a first read this morning (I haven’t thought about them very carefully, but thought I’d see what you think).
    (1) On p. 6, you suggest that we can reject fission by supposing that genuine psychological continuity occurs in the single case but not the fission case–even though in both cases the psychological relations that exist are otherwise identical, indeed as you note fully qualitatively and introspectively the same (in the single case, a future person stage bears psychological relations R to a single previous stage, whereas in the fission case both post-fission individuals bear R to a previous person).
    I worry that this move looks arbitrary–as motivated not my any metaphysical facts, but instead only by a motivation to solve the fission problem. Since the continuity relations are otherwise the same in both cases, there seems to be no non-arbitrary metaphysical reason for thinking continuity is “genuine” in the single case but not in the fission case.
    (2) On p. 11, you suggest that most of us would recoil in horror at entering Nozick’s experience machine, and that this is because the person we would be in the machine would be a mere simulacrum of the person we are before entering the machine.
    I’m intrigued by your idea that psychological continuity is partly an external/environmental matter, and think the idea is very much worth pursuing. However, I have several concerns.
    First, it’s not at all clear to me that most people would recoil in this way. Virtual immersion (viz. online RPGs) is becoming increasingly common/normalized, and I don’t think people tend to react in the ways you suggest–but instead view their avatar as a kind of persona they have adopted as a continuing person.
    My second concern is that if psychological continuity is truly preserved when entering the machine, it is not at all clear to me that entering the machine is “a fate in many ways like death.” Consider the Matrix film series. We do not doubt that ‘Neo’ and the other characters in the movies are the same people inside of the Matrix simulation and outside of it. We are entirely comfortable with the idea that they are the same person, in part because we recognize their psychological continuity.
    Finally, I worry that the case only has some pull if we suppose (as I think Nozick supposes, if I recall) that one does not remember any of one’s previous life before entering the Experience Machine. Yet, this does not seem to me to suggest that psychological continuity theory is false–but perhaps that memory plays a more important role in continuity than currently recognized.
    Anyway, these are just some off-the-cuff questions. I’m really enjoying the paper so far!

    Reply
  3. Heidi Savage

    Great comments. As you’ll see, I do make room for a kind of virtual immersion, and I point out that I can actually distinguish types that are and are not threatening, unlike a strict continuity theorist. Not sure I got the first comment about q-continuity — that part is playing the role of simply revealing a logical possibility: that you might reject fission, but yet, still Parfitian about identity (perhaps because of skepticism about treating personhood as a natural kind).

    Reply

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