Williams - Fear Extending

my favorite contemporary philosopher - Bernard Williams is a G
here is my paper on his essay "the self and the future"


Fear Extending


I. Introduction
In his essay “The Self and the Future” Bernard Williams argues for the bodily criterion of personal identity from the claim that undergoing physical pain in the future is not excluded by any psychological state one experiences at the time. Ones fear of pain extends through any experiment thought to involve body exchanging. Since a person who has an entirely new body, but the same character as before, will still fear bodily harm, the bodily criterion seems the most plausible explanation of identity.

II. Background, Limitations and the Initial Case
As a thought experiment proposed to get closer to the core of the problem of personal identity, Williams explore bodily exchange and its implications. A process in which bodies were exchanged is question begging, because it presupposes that the bodies are actually exchanged as opposed to the mind exchanging or consciousness exchanging. Williams, firstly, wants to discuss such a case in terms of information extracted into a device from A’s and B’s brains and replaced in the others brain.

However, there are two certain limitations Williams’s wants to put aside in order to ignore certain extraneous objections. Firstly, there are limitations with regard to character and mannerisms. If two people, extremely different in personality, body and memory decided to exchange bodies, certain problems would arise concerning the plausibility of such personality and memory as connected with the new body. In the case of the two people being of different sex or if both people have a large age gap, each new person might find it extremely uncomfortable, and want to change back. “There might be grave difficulties in reading B’s dispositions in any possible performance of A’s body.” Williams writes that, for the sake of argument, in this thought experiment, each person is sufficiently like the other for such problems to not arise. He cannot state how alike they must be, but without such technology to make bodily exchange possible, we cannot presently know how alike they must be. Therefore, for this thought experiment, bodily exchange is possible in this strict sense.

The problem is, if both A and B are too alike, it may not be possible to describe the situation as a successful body exchange. We might not be able to tell that such information extracted (character etc) from A is now in the body of B. It is crucial to be absolutely sure that an exchange has taken place. Memory has a casual relationship with the body; it is a necessary condition that memories do not run outside the body. Therefore, there must be a casual link between the state of the body and of the new experiences placed in the body. If information was extracted from A’s and B’s brain, put onto a device while each brain was repaired to prepare for transfer, and then put into the others body, A and B would not have to have a total recall of memory. The memory would be there to begin with when A and B woke up from the state they were put in for the information extraction.

We can now clearly describe a situation where persons A and B enter a machine and exit as the A-body person and B-body person. The A-body person has the appearance of A (i.e. the body of A), but has the memories of B, and the B-body person has the body of B and the memories of A. The question to ask concerning personal identity is - what happened to person A? Where does the identity of A now reside? Person A is now either in the body of A, in the body of B, in both bodies or has ceased to exist.

The possibility of person A being in both the body of A and B can be immediately ruled out on the assumption that there cannot be two of the same person. In other words, this possibility would violate transitivity. The Lockean theory of identity would insist that person A is in the B-body person, because that is where A’s consciousness is. A’s memories will now extend inside the body of B. If A and B are told that after the procedure one of them will get money and the other will receive torture, the logical answer A should give is for the B-body person to get the money and the A-body person to get the torture. Thus showing that this procedure must really be about changing bodies, because each subject considers himself to be in a new body. To care about what happens to ones self does not entail (by this situation) that one cares about ones present body.

III. The Six Cases
Williams then changes direction in his discussion of personal identity to argue for the bodily criterion. He proposes six different situations all including the end result of torturing A. Furthermore, in each case, A is told what will happen to him leading up to torture. Williams claims that no psychological state (other than unconsciousness) can change A’s fear of the upcoming torture; however, an opponent would argue that yes some psychological state can. Because to say it cannot leave in question the very person for whom A is fearful. In other words, it presupposes A will be A after the operation. Here are the six cases (all followed by torture):

(i) Amnesia is produced in A
(ii) (i), character is changed
(iii) (ii), fictitious illusory memories beliefs are induced
(iv) (iii), illusory memories believes are induced, namely those of person B
(v) (iv), except from a real person B
(vi) (v), A’s memories are transferred to B

Williams then discusses the possible differences in reaction towards each individual case and concludes that there can be no difference in fearing future torture. No one would claim that (i), (ii) and (iii) would produce any difference in A’s prospect of future pain. Just because one has forgotten (amnesia) that he will be tortured does not change the fact that he will be tortured. In fact, for one to be tortured without any prior knowledge could make ones fear worse. Logically, (ii) and (iii) make no relevant difference in principle; these situations only seem to give more reason to fear as well. Situation (iv) introduces B, but makes no material difference concerning A. It is an external fact (external to A) that such transferred memory impressions have a model (B). If (iv) does not produces a difference in attitude towards fear, than (v) will not either, because all that is added in (v) is a model for the cause. An outside model should have no bearing on experience or not experiencing future pain. The pain itself will still occur, so the expectation of pain is still present. “If his fears can, as it were, reach through the change, it seems a mere trimming how the change is in fact induced.” Situation (v) is different from the initial situation because there is a concrete person B left; therefore, there is no question as to which one is person A.

Most people would agree that there is a difference in case (vi). The difference being A now has reason to feel differently regarding any future pain, because according to the Lockean theory of identity, person A is now in the body of B. The impressions and character that once was in A is now in B, so this situation looks like that of a bodily-exchange. However, in situation (vi) there actually is no difference in what happens to person A. The only difference is that person B now has the memories and impressions of person A. If amnesia, new impressions and a model for new impressions do not effect person A’s attitude towards pain, then the fact that another person now has person A’s old impressions should not effect A’s attitude either. Personhood is local and is not be affected by what happens to another.

IV. Fear and Indeterminacy
It is not the case that fear can never be hindered from a psychological state. If someone is afraid of spiders, and will be forced in the future to go into jungle that houses many different varieties of spiders, one could be given a pill that curbs his or her psychological state to the point that he or she does not even believe spiders exist. This would allow such a person to enter in the jungle. Furthermore, one might fear change, even though such change would make the resulting state pleasant (e.g. if one could be hooked up to an eternal pleasure machine, but fear this option as better than his prior existence).

Lock claims that the pain will extend through case (vi), because aversion to pain is “absolutely minimally dependent on character or belief.” Aversion to pain is much different from less psychologically straining pain (e.g. what one feels when one hits his funny bone), because all people have the ability to experience it. Certain people may actually enjoy pain (e.g. masochist), but no one, unless psychologically incapable (e.g. unconscious) can enjoy extreme pain. Extreme pains are precisely what is being discussed here. No matter how masochistic, torture is not to be enjoyed by anyone.

One obvious question to ask is - why does Williams set up this thought experiment without any indeterminacy regarding if A will get tortured or not? In a sense, it might be fairer to opponents of Williams’s theory to set up the case with five subjects. Giving A less than one hundred percent probability of being tortured. However, Williams believes that this can not be the case. To be told that the chance that I will be tortured is less than sure should not effect me, because a borderline case has no comprehensible representation in my expectations of torture and of my feelings that go with my expectations (Williams). In other words, the fact that something may or may not happen to me in the future has no effect on me if said thing actually happens. If I win the lottery, my reaction will always be that of joy no matter what happened to me between buying the ticket and when the numbers were called.

I may be more cheerful if I know I have a chance of escaping the torture, but I will still have fear. All the emotions I have revolve around and have the capability of being changed by the eventual determination of the indeterminacy. There are many indeterminate factors that surround many particular situation. In all of Williams’s cases, what is determinate is that the subject will feel fear.

V. Conclusions
One of the general aspects in certain analytic theories of personal identity is that the type of language one uses when writing out thought experiments concerning personal identity can slant the conclusion of the argument containing such experiments. It is sometimes assumed that a first-person description supports a mentalistic (Lockean) view of the self, and a third-person description a bodily conception. However, the reverse happens in Williams’s article. The initial case is in the third person and supports the Lockean view and the second set of cases is in the first person and supports the bodily criterion.

However, Williams concludes that the reason why the initial case supports the Lockean view is how the example is set up. If A got B’s memories, but B kept his memories we would be more hesitant to accept the Lockean view. We would say A is in the A-body person with new memories.

VI. One Objection
I thought up one objection towards William’s theory. It seems that Williams allows for other emotions to be effected by a change in psychological states. If A is afraid of spiders, he can be given the impression of one who has no fear towards spiders. In a situation where that person would be soon forced to enter into a spider infested area, the new memories and character he has should help curb his present distress. He also allows that aversion to pain has minimal cause from character. So it seems that it is at least plausible for a culture that produces people who feel pain only slightly, and are more indifferent to pain than effected by it. Years of evolution could produce humans who hardly can feel pain if certain mutations develop that help in survival that cause such a thing. It is even possible if just one person develops this indifference. If A trusts everything we tell him before the torture, and we tell him that we found the one person on earth who is indifferent to pain and his impressions would be put into A’s brain, his attitude should change. If either of these scenarios occur it is possible for the new character, memories and impressions to help change the fear of future pain for someone who would do whatever is in their power not to feel it. Therefore, pain would not extend through the body changing experience.

I think this argument is not forceful though, because such impressions may be so different that such impressions have no connection with the new body they inhabit. Also, the body must be an important part of a human that is indifferent to pain. And, if the impressions are to actually make a difference, the new psychology can be the only possible factor to change the way the pain is felt. Without the old body, extreme forms of pain should penetrate even the most indifferent impressions. Therefore, it is highly unlikely that even impressions from such a differently evolved human would help.