Abstract
The idea that people’s numerical identity may sometimes be discontinuous over time initially appears to provide useful material for defending restrictions on putatively self-harming behaviour in a non-paternalistic manner. According to this line of thinking, sometimes a putatively self-harming act is, in fact, a matter of ‘harm to others’. Yet, in this paper I argue that if we, as we ought to do, take into consideration the non-identity problem, this challenges the notion that the agent at T1 is in fact imposing harm on anyone, even when we accept that he or she is numerically different from the agent at T2. If the life of the agent at T2 is still worth living, the agent is not worse off than he or she would have been in spite of the consequences pertaining to the putatively self-harming act since he or she would otherwise never have come into existence. In this way, the argument I put forward in this paper calls in question the ability of the shifting identity argument to actually justify imposing restrictions on self-harming behaviour.
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Notes
Gladiator fights are of course not only a case of self-regarding harm since even when people voluntarily agree to engage in these kinds of fights, one would still be harming another person. However, as Joel Feinberg argues, the relevant understanding of harm is not the physical or psychological consequences but whether people have consented. He refers to the Volenti doctrine in his understanding of harm, which says: ‘To one who consents no harm is done’ (Feinberg 1971, p. 106). This means that a voluntary gladiator fight would not be subsumed under the harm principle since it is only a matter of self-regarding harm.
Some might object that this will have radical implications for our understanding of punishment since it seems difficult to defend punishing a person for the criminal actions of his or her former self if this former self should be considered a numerically different person. Reagan (1983, p. 122) uses the case of the criminal conviction to show that when the perpetrator should be seen as having shifted identity, our intuitions seem to be that he or she should not be punished for the illegal act of an earlier different self (see also Parfit 1973, p. 143 and Kleinig 1983, p. 46). I agree that this may be an implausible implication. However, proponents of the shifting identity argument only try to justify ex ante restrictions on people’s behaviour; they are not necessarily committed to denying that people should hold a liability-responsibility for their past crimes (cf. Carter 2018).
See Schofield (2018, p. 71) for a similar case. Schofield’s argument is not a shifting identity argument as such, though. He does, however, use a similar argument to justify paternalism where he argues that ‘any individual, over the course of her life, will occupy many temporal perspectives from which she’ll adopt purposes and have interests’ (2018, p. 71), and according to him, it is because of these distinct perspectives that we have moral obligations to refrain from acting in certain ways (2018, p. 72). This means that the agent acting at T1 from one perspective might in fact owe to his future self at T2 when this future self occupies a distinctively other perspective not to burden or harm him- or herself. Even though Schofield remains agnostic regarding more controversial claims concerning personal identity, his view is not completely innocent of the idea of different persons over time. He appeals, and needs to appeal, it seems to me, to two entities with in part distinct interests etc. as proponents of the shifting-identity argument do and therefore I think the non-identity thesis applies here too (i.e. one’s future perspective would not exist but for the actions of the original perspective).
Reagan argues that ‘the suggestion that the smoker becomes a different person is an essential prop for a more standard line of argument in favor of paternalism’ (1983, p. 123).
Reagan seems to have a broader understanding of personal identity than usual discussions of personal identity, since he allows for a person to shift in some aspects and at the same remain the same person in other aspects. He writes ‘Our embezzler may after ten years be the same person for purposes and yet be a different person for other purposes. Thus, suppose that at the time she committed embezzlement, the embezzler also committed an unrelated aggravated assault. It is at least conceivable that after ten years the embezzler has grown much more conscious of duties of trust without becoming any more disposed to control a volatile temper that produces occasional physical aggression. In such a case, I think we might hold it inappropriate to punish the embezzler now for her embezzlement, but appropriate to punish her for the assault’ (Reagan 1983, pp. 124–125; see Kleinig 1983, p. 46 on this).
Carter (2018) finds that psychological and bodily continuity is sufficient for liability-responsibility, but it is not sufficient for allowing the individual to make unconstrained of a kind that have far-reaching future consequences for his or her future self.
Furthermore, it is a necessary condition that there is absence of fission since two people with identical psychological make-up and bodies cannot exist at the same time and still be one and the same person. They would be numerically different people in spite of almost everything else being identical. Cf. Parfit’s branch-line case (1984, pp. 199‒201).
I am indebted here to Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen.
Although both issues have roots in Parfit’s influential book Reasons and Persons (1984).
Cf. Parfit (1984, p. 358) for a similar case.
When a child is born into an unwanted and miserable life (a life not worth living), he or she might have a claim against his or her parents that his or her life was wrongfully caused (Shiffrin 1999, p. 117).
Cf. Carter (2018, p.832) on this.
See also Dworkin (1972) and Velleman (1999). Dworkin and Velleman are not referring to the idea of personal identity. However, they both argue that experiences will make one change one’s mind about one’s actions. Facing the consequences of for example one’s smoking (for instance getting lung cancer) will change one’s state of mind maybe in such a way that one will no longer be sufficiently psychologically connected to the former self who initially started smoking.
In this paper, Knight challenges the luck-egalitarian claim about holding people accountable for their own choices in the past.
This, I believe, is in line with what George Sher argues in regard to the debate about transworld personal identity. He states that ‘if X has been harmed in a way that affects him physically or psychologically … then the X who exists in the actual world may be very dissimilar to any person who exists in the alternative world in which the harmful act has not been performed’ (1979, p. 378).
I am not necessarily convinced that even if we should be reductionists about personal identity, this is a case where the person making the decision will shift identity when crashing. However, since it is a case that some of the proponents of the shifting identity argument refer to, then, for the sake of the argument, let us assume that it actually constitutes such a case.
Reagan argues that in spite of this we are justified in intervening to protect the later self of the cyclist; he writes, ‘I think the ideal paternalist can intervene to protect the prudent cyclist, even though she is only a possible person, whose existence the paternalist’s intervention will prevent’ (1983, p. 126).
Even though, I do not find it necessary to settle the matter of where exactly this threshold will be, any account of exactly what makes a life worth living would be compatible with my argument; it just changes the scope of the suggested reconciliation strategy. However, I believe that the threshold would not plausibly lie at such a high level that my argument does not limit the scope of the reconciliation strategy significantly (for example being disabled or indebted would rarely be considered something that would make a life not worth living).
I am indebted to one of the anonymous reviewers for this case.
Some might object that we rarely or never shift identity. Cf. Kogan (1976, p. 842), where he writes: ‘Under the complex view of identity, another self is threatened intertemporally only when there is a high risk of future disidentification as a result of present action. Therefore, the threatened harm must involve trauma so serious that, in the event such harm occurs, future selves will reject past life plans. The range of actions involving so great a risk of harm is relatively small’. See also Buchanan (2004, pp. 133‒154), who argues, in regard to the use of advanced directives in medical treatment, that even when we accept a reductionist view on personal identity it seems very unlikely we have many cases of people shifting identity. He state that in cases where the agent at T1 ceases to exist, it is often due to such severe and significant neurological damages that the agent (or creature) existing at T2 could not be considered a person because this agent (or creature) has no psychological state or property for there to be any personal identity. This objection, however, simply adds another reason to be sceptical about the proposed reconciliation strategy. My argument is not committed to accept that we ever shift identity. I only argue that if it is the case that we in some situations shift identity in such a way that our future selves are numerically different from our current selves, there is still no harm-based reason to prevent our current selves from acting putatively self-harming.
I am grateful to Lasse Nielsen and Kim Angell for raising this objection.
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Acknowledgements
For helpful feedback and discussion on an earlier version of this paper, I am grateful to the participants at ‘The Oslo-Aarhus Workshop’, 19 March 2019, including Raino Sverre Malnes, Robert Huseby, Göran Duus-Otterström, Kim Angell, Lasse Nielsen, Jens Jørund Tyssedal, and Lauritz Aastrup Munch, who all provided me with very helpful comments. Besides, I am grateful to the two anonymous reviewers for very useful comments and suggestions. I would also like to thank Viki Møller Lyngby Pedersen and Andreas Bengtson, whom I have discussed my argument with on several occasions. I am especially thankful to Søren Flinch Midtgaard and Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen for detailed written comments and helpful conversations regarding various versions of this paper. Lastly, I would like to thank Anne Kathrine Devantier for helping me with the layout of the figure.
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Andersen, D.B. I Have Got a Personal Non-identity Problem: On What We Owe Our Future Selves. Res Publica 27, 129–144 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11158-020-09474-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11158-020-09474-0