12942
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Memory doesn't make identity; a man who relearned everything would still be the same man [Leibniz]
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Full Idea:
If a man were made young again, and learned everything anew - would that make him a different man? So it is not memory that makes the very same man.
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From:
Gottfried Leibniz (New Essays on Human Understanding [1704], 2.01)
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A reaction:
Leibniz takes this as a foregone conclusion. If you flipped to a possible world where someone you know well, as a physical being, has been brought up entirely differently (new language, culture, ethics etc), is it really the same person?
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1392
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If we split like amoeba, we would be two people, neither of them being us [Parfit]
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Full Idea:
In the case of the man who, like an amoeba, divides….we can suggest that he survives as two different people without implying that he is those people.
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From:
Derek Parfit (Personal Identity [1971], §1)
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A reaction:
Maybe an amoeba is a homogeneous substance for which splitting is insignificant, but when a person has certain parts that are totally crucial, splitting them is catastrophic, and quite different. I'm not sure that splitting a self would leave persons.
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1391
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Concern for our own lives isn't the source of belief in identity, it is the result of it [Parfit]
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Full Idea:
Egoism, and the fear not of near but of distant death, and the regret that so much of one's life should have gone by - these are not, I think, wholly natural or instinctive. They are strengthened by a false belief in stable identity.
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From:
Derek Parfit (Personal Identity [1971], §6)
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A reaction:
This raises some very nice questions, about the extent to which various aspects of self-concern are instinctive and natural, or culturally induced, and even totally misguided and false. I can worry about the distant death of my guinea pig, or my grandson.
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19368
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The will determines action, by what is seen as good, but it does not necessitate it [Leibniz]
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Full Idea:
Choice, however much the will is determined to make it, should not be called absolutely and strictly necessary: a predominance of goods of which one is aware inclines without necessitating, though this is determining and never fails to have its effect.
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From:
Gottfried Leibniz (New Essays on Human Understanding [1704], 2.21)
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A reaction:
Something like seeing that 7+5 equals 12 makes you say '12', but it doesn't actually necessitate your saying '12'? Certain facts seem determined by nature, but not necessitated. Or not necessarily necessitated?
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