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Personal Identity

Psychological Continuity - Forward

(Work In Progress: output at 15/01/2024)

Plug Note¹

• Thesis Text:
  1. I think there’s a conceptual difference between:-
     1. Forward psychological continuity, and
     2. Backward psychological continuity.
  2. Imagine the case where₂ I’m put into a duplicating machine₃ that is intended to take a backup copy of me while preserving the original but where something goes wrong and my body is destroyed by the duplication⁴ process, though my duplicate wakes up perfectly happily. Then, it seems to me, I⁵ would never wake up and would have no future experience after entry to the duplicating machine. I would have no forward psychological continuity.
  3. However, my duplicate⁶ would have backward psychological continuity. Any duplicate of me, looking backward, would consider himself to be “me”, having my memories⁷, abilities, plans and so forth, and a body looking just like mine. But would I⁸ ever wake up as the duplicate? My intuition on the endurantist⁹ account, as I have said, is that I would not, though I suspect that on the perdurantist¹⁰ account, this might be seen as a case of intended fission¹¹ in which I was intended to wake up twice, provided we consider that the right sort of causality¹² is in place.
  4. The above considerations raise issues similar to those in closest continuer¹³ accounts of personal identity, and the Only 'X' and 'Y' Principle¹⁴. How can what happens to someone else affect whether (so to speak) I am me? How could the “right sort of causality” have anything to do with how I experience things?
  5. Fission is, in any case, hard to imagine happening to oneself. Just what does it mean to “wake up twice”? I dare say one could get one’s head(s) around it. The two selves would then be distinct individuals, with distinct consciousnesses, but with a shared past. On the perdurantist account, we were always distinct, but had stages co-located with everything in common.
  6. Let’s consider forward psychological continuity in everyday life. What ensures forward continuity of consciousness¹⁵ in the normal case of sleep and temporary unconsciousness? I cannot know “from the inside” that when I awake I’m the same human being¹⁶ as the one that went to sleep in my bed. The reason I believe this is for external reasons: duplication¹⁷ is not physically possible (or at least practical), and in any case I have no reason to believe it happened to me last night. Other people assure me that there was nothing out of the ordinary going on.
  7. Andy Clark₁₈, raises this question about what ensures psychological continuity – more or less than in the case of Teletransportation – in the case of dreamless sleep, or (hypothetically) being frozen and then thawed out. We might ask what it is in the normal waking case. Maybe the whole thing is related to the arrow of time¹⁹ or in the distinctions between forward-looking psychological properties – desires and intentions yet to be satisfied or acted upon – and memories of what has already taken place.
  8. This is the sort of question that the Logical Positivists would denounce as meaningless, as no empirical evidence can decide it.

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  Further Remarks:
  1. Producing a reading list on this topic is difficult as the distinction – to my knowledge – isn’t usually made. There’s a huge overlap with the general literature of psychological continuity and connectedness and that on Teletransportation. For these, see:-
     → Psychological Continuity²⁰,
     → Teletransportation²¹.

Essay

1. Introduction
   • See the above Thesis Text, which I need to incorporate in due course.
   • This seems a very important issue to me, and I need to make more of it. For example, in the teletransportation²² thought experiment²³, it seems to me₂₄ that a new person wakes up, but I don’t, nor do I experience anything, though the new person claims to be me. Incidentally, it’s not just a new person²⁵, but a new human being²⁶ who wakes up.
   • I think there are connections here with the topic of Intermittent Existence²⁷. There is backward psychological continuity after putative intermittent existence, but no forward psychological continuity.
   • Maybe this is also connected with what – in the case of Organisms²⁸ – makes up a Life²⁹.
   • Finally, as well as TEs such as Teleportation³⁰, there is also the matter of Resurrection³¹.
2. Further Thoughts
   • I will try another thought experiment³² I’ve been considering. It’s often said in the literature that if Teletransportation³³ became commonplace as a means of travel, and was conventionally³⁴ deemed to be such, rather than as a means of death³⁵, then life would carry on just fine. Indeed, no-one could notice and difference, either from the inside or outside.
   • Let’s try a variant: imagine (as maybe many US citizens do) that each night when you’re tucked up in bed technologically-advanced aliens spirit you away and perform horrible experiments on you, in the process scanning your whole body so they can replace your mangled corpse with a perfect duplicate of the original that had been sleeping happily, and return this simulacrum to your bed. Naturally, your partner and anyone else would be unaware of any of this. Also, the person who wakes up – just like the teletransportee – would have no reason to think anything amiss. He would consider himself the same person as went to sleep³⁶ the night before. Life would carry on ‘happily’. Yet in this – admittedly phantastical situation – our sleeper only lives for under 24 hours before coming to a grizzly end and being replaced by someone else. His experience ends on the operating table aboard the starship. If the reality became known, no-one would dare go to sleep. Maybe teletransportation is less grizzly, but it leads to the same death and recreation.
   • Maybe one could cavil at the details of the experiment: maybe it’s just not possible to extract the information from a human body sufficient to create a duplicate³⁷ without destroying the original, so all the medical experimentation isn’t possible without a mangled body being returned, which would certainly be noticed. So, we might need to modify the TE so that your body is scanned – without anaesthetic, of course, to ensure this isn’t an experience you’d be comfortable with – and two copies are created – one for experimentation and the other for returning to bed. Then, one copy-you lives on happily for a day, and the other meets the grizzly end.
   • Now, what could make the waker the very same consciousness³⁸ as the sleeper in this scenario? Usually, it is said that there needs to be the ‘right sort’ of causal connection³⁹, in particular one internal to the continuant. In this case, there is a causal connection, but it is imposed externally by aliens and their (maybe tendentiously named) duplicating machine. Are objections based on causality of the wrong sort anything more than intuitions that others might not share? I leave this open at the moment.
   • On the Constitution View⁴⁰, we are individuated by our First Person Perspective⁴¹. As far as I can see, all these duplicates are qualitatively identical⁴² (that is, exactly similar⁴³), and so are their FPPs.

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References

• Relevant Works cited above: No items to list.
• The above caveats aside, works on this topic that I’ve actually read⁴⁴, include the following:-
  • Aeon:
    1. "Clark (Andy) & Kuhn (Robert Lawrence) - Aeon: Video - Andy Clark - Virtual immortality", 2019, External Link
  • General:
    1. "Bourget (David) & Chalmers (David) - The PhilPapers Surveys: What Do Philosophers Believe?", 2014, Annotations, Internal PDF Link
    2. "Dainton (Barry) - Self: Philosophy In Transit: Prologue", 2014
    3. "Dennett (Daniel) - The Mind's I - Fantasies and Reflections on Self and Soul: Introduction", 1981, External Link, Internal PDF Link
    4. "Ehring (Douglas) - Personal Identity and Time Travel", 1987, Annotations, Internal PDF Link
    5. "Lockwood (Michael) - When Does a Life Begin?", 1987, Annotations
    6. "Noonan (Harold) - Identity, Constitution and Microphysical Supervenience", 1999, Annotations, Internal PDF Link
    7. "Olson (Eric) - Immanent Causation and Life After Death", 2010, Write-Up Note⁴⁵, Annotations, External Link, Internal PDF Link
    8. "Shoemaker (David) - Personal Identity and Immortality", 2009
    9. "Shoemaker (David) - Personal Identity, Rational Anticipation, and Self-Concern", 2009
    10. "Smith (Barry C.), Broks (Paul), Kennedy (A.L.) & Evans (Jules) - Audio: What Does It Mean to Be Me?", 2015, External Link
• A further reading list might start with:-
  • General:
    1. "Blackburn (Simon) - Has Kant Refuted Parfit?", 1997, Write-Up Note⁴⁶, Read = 156%
    2. "Dainton (Barry) - Consciousness as a Guide to Personal Persistence", 2005, External Link, Internal PDF Link, Read = 10%
    3. "Dainton (Barry) - The Phenomenal Self", 2008, Book, Read = 1%
    4. "Sider (Ted) - Asymmetric Personal Identity", 2018, Internal PDF Link, Read = 6%
    5. "Torek (Paul Volkening) - Something To Look Forward To: Personal Identity, Prudence, and Ethics", 1995, Internal PDF Link, Read = 1%
    6. "Whiting (Jennifer E.) - Friends and Future Selves", 1986, Internal PDF Link

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• For a list of Works that have been considered, but have missed the cut for inclusion in this Section of my Thesis, see the following:-
  1. Read: No items to list.
  2. Further Reading: No items to list.
• This is mostly a place-holder⁴⁷.

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In-Page Footnotes:

Footnote 2:

1. On an endurantist account of persistence – see elsewhere for the distinction and its relevance to this case – between endurantism and perdurantism.

Footnote 3:

1. I don’t think this is a tendentious term.
2. The intended use of the machine is to produce an exact copy without destroying the original.
3. So, this isn’t the same as Dennett’s “Telecloning” machine in "Dennett (Daniel) - The Mind's I - Fantasies and Reflections on Self and Soul: Introduction", where the destruction of the original is intended, yet (despite the label) the machine is used as a means of transport.

Footnote 18: In "Clark (Andy) & Kuhn (Robert Lawrence) - Aeon: Video - Andy Clark - Virtual immortality".

Footnote 24:

• I want to make this more than just an Intuition, one that many – but by no means all – philosophers share.
• See "Bourget (David) & Chalmers (David) - The PhilPapers Surveys: What Do Philosophers Believe?".

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Table of the Previous 10 Versions of this Note:

Date	Length	Title
06/07/2023 00:43:12	9225	Psychological Continuity - Forward
28/09/2022 10:24:58	6151	Psychological Continuity - Forward
11/04/2022 00:01:26	5706	Psychological Continuity - Forward
17/02/2021 01:17:46	5544	Psychological Continuity - Forward
15/06/2020 18:28:48	4967	Psychological Continuity - Forward
14/07/2019 18:05:46	2327	Psychological Continuity - Forward
05/02/2018 20:02:24	3627	Psychological Continuity - Forward
18/12/2010 19:58:05	1982	Psychological Continuity - Forward
26/11/2007 23:25:26	1986	Psychological Continuity - Forward
12/08/2007 10:17:46	951	Psychological Continuity - Forward

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Note last updated	Reading List for this Topic	Parent Topic
03/05/2025 12:22:32	Psychological Continuity - Forward	Psychological Continuity

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Summary of Notes Referenced by This Note

Awaiting Attention (Personal Identity)	Blackburn - Has Kant Refuted Parfit?	Causality	Closest Continuer	Consciousness
Constitution View	Convention	Death	Duplication	Endurantism
First-Person Perspective	Fission	Human Beings	I	Intermittent Objects
Intuition	Life	Logic of Identity	Memory	Olson - Immanent Causation and Life After Death
Only 'X' and 'Y' Principle	Organisms	Perdurantism	Persistence	Person
Plug Note Apologia	Psychological Continuity	Resurrection	Similarity	Sleep
Teletransportation	Thought Experiments	Time	Works Read - Explanation

To access information, click on one of the links in the table above.

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Summary of Notes Citing This Note

Blackburn - Has Kant Refuted Parfit?	Continuity	Duplication	Metaphysics	Olson - Immanent Causation and Life After Death
Olson - What Are We? Animals	Personal Identity and Moral Action. T1	PID Note, Book & Paper Usage, 2, 3	Psychological Continuity	Psychological Criterion
Psychology	Research - Proposal	Status: Personal Identity (2025 - March)	Status: Priority Task List (2025 - May)	Status: Summary (2025 - March)
Teletransportation, 2	Thesis - Chapter 01 (Introduction), 2, 3, 4, 5	Thesis - Chapter 03 (What is a Person?)	Thesis - Chapter 04 (Basic Metaphysical Issues)	Thesis - Chapter 10 (Thought Experiments), 2, 3
Thesis - Current Stance	Thesis - Personal Identity, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7	Unity of the Person	Website Generator Documentation - Functors, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

To access information, click on one of the links in the table above.

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Authors, Books & Papers Citing this Note

Author	Title	Medium	Extra Links	Read?
Blackburn (Simon)	Has Kant Refuted Parfit?	Paper
Dainton (Barry)	Self: Philosophy In Transit: Prologue	Paper		Yes
Dainton (Barry)	The Phenomenal Self: Appendix - Reductionism	Paper
Ehring (Douglas)	Personal Identity and Time Travel	Paper		Yes
Huenemann (Charlie)	If I teleport from Mars, does the original me get destroyed?	Paper		Yes
Lockwood (Michael)	When Does a Life Begin?	Paper		Yes
McInerney (Peter K.)	Person-Stages and Unity of Consciousness	Paper
Olson (Eric)	Immanent Causation and Life After Death	Paper		Yes
Olson (Eric)	Life After Death and the Devastation of the Grave	Paper		Yes
Olson (Eric)	What Are We? Animals	Paper		Yes
Shoemaker (David)	Personal Identity and Immortality	Paper		Yes
Shoemaker (David)	Personal Identity, Rational Anticipation, and Self-Concern	Paper		Yes
Smith (Barry C.), Broks (Paul), Kennedy (A.L.) & Evans (Jules)	Audio: What Does It Mean to Be Me?	Paper		Yes
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Chapter 01 (Introduction)	Paper	2, 3, 4, 5	Yes
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Chapter 03 (What is a Person?)	Paper		Yes
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Chapter 04 (Basic Metaphysical Issues)	Paper		Yes
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Chapter 10 (Thought Experiments)	Paper	2, 3	Yes
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Continuity	Paper		Yes
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Current Position	Paper		Yes
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Duplication	Paper		Yes
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Metaphysics	Paper		Yes
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Personal Identity	Paper	2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Psychological Continuity	Paper		Yes
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Psychological Criterion	Paper		Yes
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Psychology	Paper		Yes
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Teletransportation	Paper	2	Yes
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Unity of the Person	Paper		Yes
Van Inwagen (Peter)	Materialism and the Psychological-continuity Account of Personal Identity	Paper		Yes
YouTube	Video - The Trouble with Transporters	Paper		Yes

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References & Reading List

Author	Title	Medium	Source	Read?
Blackburn (Simon)	Has Kant Refuted Parfit?	Paper - Cited	Dancy - Reading Parfit, 1997, Chapter 9	78%
Bourget (David) & Chalmers (David)	The PhilPapers Surveys: What Do Philosophers Believe?	Paper - Cited	Philosophical Studies: Vol. 170, No. 3 (September 2014), pp. 465-500	Yes
Clark (Andy) & Kuhn (Robert Lawrence)	Aeon: Video - Andy Clark - Virtual immortality	Paper - Cited	Aeon, 19 August, 2019	Yes
Clark (Tom)	A Notable Theoretical Convergence	Paper - By Subtopic	Naturalism.org.	Yes
Clark (Tom)	Death, Nothingness, and Subjectivity	Paper - By Subtopic	Naturalism.org.	Yes
Dainton (Barry)	Consciousness as a Guide to Personal Persistence	Paper - Cited	The Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 83/4: 549-71, 2005	10%
Dainton (Barry)	Self: Philosophy In Transit	Book - Cited (via Paper Cited)	Bibliographical details to be supplied	7%
Dainton (Barry)	Self: Philosophy In Transit: Prologue	Paper - Cited	Dainton (Barry) - Self: Philosophy In Transit, Prologue	Yes
Dainton (Barry)	The Phenomenal Self	Book - Cited	Dainton (Barry) - The Phenomenal Self	1%
Dancy (Jonathan), Ed.	Reading Parfit	Book - Cited (via Paper Cited)	Bibliographical details to be supplied	17%
Dennett (Daniel)	The Mind's I - Fantasies and Reflections on Self and Soul: Introduction	Paper - Cited	Hofstadter & Dennett - The Mind's I - Fantasies and Reflections on Self and Soul	Yes
Ehring (Douglas)	Personal Identity and Time Travel	Paper - Cited	Philosophical Studies, Vol. 52, No. 3 (Nov., 1987), pp. 427-433	Yes
Epstein (Dmitry)	What if We’re Still Here? A Selfish Reason to Care for Future Generations	Paper - By Subtopic	Medium, 29 March 2020	Yes
Gasser (Georg), Ed.	Personal Identity and Resurrection: How Do We Survive Our Death?	Book - Cited (via Paper Cited)	Bibliographical details to be supplied	96%
Hains (Brigid) & Hains (Paul)	Aeon: C-F	Book - Cited (via Paper Cited)	Bibliographical details to be supplied	51%
Hofstadter (Douglas) & Dennett (Daniel), Eds.	The Mind's I - Fantasies and Reflections on Self and Soul	Book - Cited (via Paper Cited)	Bibliographical details to be supplied	14%
Lockwood (Michael)	When Does a Life Begin?	Paper - Cited	Lockwood - Moral Dilemmas in Modern Medicine, 1987	Yes
Lockwood (Michael), Ed.	Moral Dilemmas in Modern Medicine	Book - Cited (via Paper Cited)	Bibliographical details to be supplied	29%
Noonan (Harold)	Identity, Constitution and Microphysical Supervenience	Paper - Cited	Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 271-288, 1999	Yes
Olson (Eric)	Immanent Causation and Life After Death	Paper - Cited	Gasser (Georg) - Personal Identity and Resurrection: How Do We Survive Our Death? 2010	Yes
Robert (David)	The Existential Passage Hypothesis	Paper - By Subtopic	PhilArchive, July 14, 2018 (Updated Dec. 20, 2020)	Yes
Shoemaker (David)	Personal Identity and Ethics: A Brief Introduction	Book - Cited (via Paper Cited)	Bibliographical details to be supplied	Yes
Shoemaker (David)	Personal Identity and Immortality	Paper - Cited	Shoemaker (David) - Personal Identity and Ethics: A Brief Introduction, 2009, Chapter 1	Yes
Shoemaker (David)	Personal Identity, Rational Anticipation, and Self-Concern	Paper - Cited	Shoemaker (David) - Personal Identity and Ethics: A Brief Introduction, 2009, Chapter 2	Yes
Sider (Ted)	Asymmetric Personal Identity	Paper - Cited	Journal of the American Philosophical Association (2018) pp. 127-146	6%
Smith (Barry C.), Broks (Paul), Kennedy (A.L.) & Evans (Jules)	Audio: What Does It Mean to Be Me?	Paper - Cited	BBC Website, April 2015	Yes
Stewart (Wayne)	Metaphysics by Default	Paper - By Subtopic	Personal Website; pdf created 19 April 2011	12%
Stewart (Wayne)	Metaphysics by Default - Chapter 09:  Existential Passage	Paper - By Subtopic	Personal Website; pdf created 19 April 2011	Yes
Stewart (Wayne)	Metaphysics by Default - Chapter 17:  Application to Other Species	Paper - By Subtopic	Personal Website; pdf created 19 April 2011	38%
Stewart (Wayne)	Metaphysics by Default - Chapter 20:  Proof and Speculation	Paper - By Subtopic	Personal Website; pdf created 19 April 2011	30%
Stewart (Wayne)	Uzgalis: Accidentally Opening a Transmigration Window by Nixing the Proper Continuer	Paper - By Subtopic	Reddit, 2019	Yes
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Psychological Continuity - Forward	Paper - By Subtopic		Yes
Torek (Paul Volkening)	Something To Look Forward To: Personal Identity, Prudence, and Ethics	Paper - Cited	PhD Dissertation, University of Michigan (1995)	1%
Uzgalis (William)	Review - Dainton - The Phenomenal Self	Paper - By Subtopic	Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews; 2008.12.08	Yes
Whiting (Jennifer E.)	Friends and Future Selves	Paper - Cited	Philosophical Review 95.4 (Oct. 1986), 547 - 580	No

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Text Colour Conventions

1. Blue: Text by me; © Theo Todman, 2025

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