Episode 254: Nobody's Parfit

[00:00:00] Very Bad Wizards is a podcast with a philosopher, my dad, and psychologist Dave Pizarro, having an informal discussion about issues in science and ethics. Please note that the discussion contains bad words that I'm not allowed to say, and knowing my dad, some very inappropriate jokes.

[00:00:17] You can't stop what's coming. It ain't all waiting on you. That's vanity. The great and hot hot man behind the curtain. And with no more brains than you have, anybody can have a brain. You're a very bad man. I'm a very good man. Just a very bad wizard.

[00:01:16] Welcome to Very Bad Wizards, I'm Tamler Sommers from the University of Houston. Dave, my previous self, promised to do an episode on Parfit if we did a deep dive on Stalker, which we just did. But you know, it was my previous self that made that commitment.

[00:01:32] Does my current self have to honor that commitment? My previous self insisted on Parfit and I'm wondering the same thing now. You know, it just depends on the overlap. Let me draw you a diagram.

[00:01:46] In this diagram, I will represent you with 18 squiggly lines and you will see that there is an overlap between time one Tamler and time two Tamler. Multiple fission. Branching fission. This indicates that as a matter of degree, you are more responsible than not for keeping your problem.

[00:02:07] I think we're probably going to have different reactions to that paper just because our expectations for it were so wildly different. Maybe. Maybe we'll meet in the middle. Maybe we will. Oh yeah, there's that example where the branches start out branching and then they kind of

[00:02:21] fuse back together. In the spring. I wonder if our preferences as Very Bad Wizards podcasters over time have like merged and then separated and then merged. You can track this. Yeah, exactly. Like we merged on Stalker. We merged on Borges early on.

[00:02:44] We were initially on the same page with experimental philosophy and then you took a sharp turn. I kind of followed. Then I pushed away. We branched on Straw Dogs, but we will merge on that one day. Yeah, we merged hard on Lila from Deadwood. We merged.

[00:03:07] Tamler, we're talking about Parfitt in the second segment, but the Lila question made me want to just jump into this. If you close your eyes. How vividly can you imagine Lila from Deadwood? Pretty vividly, which is one of the good things about having a mind's eye.

[00:03:25] We're referencing this phenomenon known as aphantasia that like a while ago, the internet kind of exploded with a discussion of this. And I honestly didn't know about this phenomenon until I saw somebody posting about it probably

[00:03:42] is just the phenomenon that you have the inability to create mental imagery. So, I think originally what I saw was somebody saying it was like a tweet that said, you know, when people say that they can picture something in their mind, I only today learned

[00:04:00] that they actually mean that. Like they had no idea that like when you're trying to conjure an image of an apple, that you're not just being metaphorical by saying like, I see an apple in my mind. And so their mind was blown. TIL that people actually envision things.

[00:04:21] Yeah, no, imagine that. Like you always thought this was kind of metaphorical and then you just realized, oh wow, I have this, not a disorder, Dr. Zeman from the University of Exeter. Yeah, it's just an intriguing variation in human experience, which I mean, I don't know

[00:04:42] how you like, I don't even totally get the question of whether it's a disorder or not, but it does seem like a variation. Like I even feel like I feel like I'm in the north. I took the quiz that you sent over Slack.

[00:04:54] You can take a quiz and I just got fantasia, not hyper fantasia, but also not aphantasia. But like, I feel like even for me, it varies, you know, like sometimes it can be very vivid. Sometimes it's not.

[00:05:10] So in that quiz, one, like it asks you to try to imagine a variety of different kinds of scenes. And I found the same thing was happening to me in that quiz to the disorder question. I mean, who knows what people mean by disorder?

[00:05:24] Like, but, but one way of thinking of it is does it intrude on your normal functioning in everyday life? And that's one of the things that seems to be like a clear no in this.

[00:05:34] Like, that must be, that must be why people don't know that they don't have it. Right. Yes. I mean, they have it. Yes. Both of our first reactions to this maybe unsurprisingly was like, how do you jerk off without porn?

[00:05:53] Which having done a Google search of this, like is a lot of people's first question. Totally. Did you see the Reddit post? The Reddit? There was a Reddit. In the r slash aphantasia. Yeah. Yeah. The answer clearly was like, we don't.

[00:06:10] Like they were just like, I guess when I was younger, I tried to masturbate without porn, but like I gave that up a long time ago. Yeah. There was one person who said like they could read erotic fiction and it was okay, which

[00:06:22] is interesting because, but like I feel like I visualize if I'm. Yeah, totally. Yes. It seems like just a way of getting the mental imagery to me is like to read about it. But I mean, these are people who have like spent their lives with an imagination that

[00:06:38] just doesn't contain visual imagery. So I guess it's not a big deal to them. I guess estimates around, you know, 2% of the population reports some to some degree that they have aphantasia. Apparently the people who have this do seem to have much less strong autobiographical memory,

[00:07:00] which leads me to one of the things that got me to remember this discussion at all was that I was reading a, did you see that Larissa McFarquhar New Yorker profile of Derek Parfit? I don't know if you've seen. Yeah.

[00:07:17] In that she says that Parfit reports having no mental imagery and autobiographical details are sparse for him, which I was like, oh. Yeah, no, I'm sure these are the kinds of things that matter in terms of your intuitions, perspectives.

[00:07:39] Like, you know, I guess you're right that it doesn't impede anybody, but you would think that it would make a big difference. Just like, you know, I can call to mind the image of my daughter, you know, and her smile, and my favorite actors, my favorite performances.

[00:07:59] Yeah, I mean, just imagine like whatever basketball shot to win a game that you really cared about. Like I can picture whatever, you know, Kobe Bryant doing a turnaround jump shot or something. Like it just, as if I'm watching a replay.

[00:08:13] Yeah, you know, to not have that, in one way it's like, okay, you're probably remembering how people sound or how people, you know, like so if you're not picturing your daughter's smile, you're thinking of like how she can tell a story or something like that, or her

[00:08:30] laugh and stuff like that. But you would think it would just affect how you conceptualize things, how you talk about things in a way that I guess it doesn't seem to because we have other ways of adapting.

[00:08:46] Yeah, I think that the question, because most of these people seem to be, most of these people are lifelong this way, so they don't know any different. And so I imagine that it's like people with synesthesia who can, for instance, see sounds.

[00:09:01] They might wonder what it's like to be us and be like, well, how do you remember numbers or whatever if you can't visualize them, or sounds if you can't see a color when you hear them? Yeah, yeah. I think Nabokov was that. Oh, really? Yeah.

[00:09:19] And so he would see letters as different colors and words as different colors. Like, yeah, he didn't understand what it would mean to not have that. I had in college a blind friend. He wasn't born blind.

[00:09:34] He became blind when he was 12 through some degenerative disease, and he had synesthesia. And then I remember asking him, so when you hear my voice, like, you see a color? He's like, yeah. I was like, what color is my voice? He's like, it's like a grayish blue.

[00:09:49] I'd take that. I was like, I like that. Yeah, I like that. That's good. If there are any synesthetes listening to us, let us know what color our voices are. Yeah. I'm worried about what color my voice would be. Mustard yellow. Because of, like, mustard gas?

[00:10:08] I have no idea why I said that. It just seemed like an unflattering color to me. I would probably take that right now. I'm more worried about, like, hot pink or, I don't know, some, like, emo black or something like that. Diarrhea brown. Yeah, diarrhea brown.

[00:10:31] It also was apparently related to, there was, like, appears to be compensation or at least abilities that seem compensatory. That people with aphantasia are more likely to be, say, better analytically.

[00:10:48] I think there's a hint that people with aphantasia might also be on the autism spectrum and so it wouldn't surprise me. Is that right? I couldn't, I didn't see that. I'm not sure. I gotta double check the wiki. Certainly with Parfitt, that's the case.

[00:11:00] This is why, another reason why you wonder how this doesn't impede them more.

[00:11:04] And maybe this is a bullshit experiment, but in the article you sent, most people, you know, when you see something scary or when you read something scary, your skin conductance will be in a certain way, like a spike in your skin conductance. But people with aphantasia didn't.

[00:11:23] Yeah, interesting. But I guess it's like you don't need to have it when it's not right in front of you. That's when you really need to have it. So probably it just means you can read Stephen King novels without getting scared of them. Yeah, yeah, right.

[00:11:38] I did find it. This is from the Wikipedia. In 2021, a study relating aphantasia, synesthesia and autism was published pinpointing that aphantasics reported more autistic traits than controls. Yeah, I don't know.

[00:11:48] It's, it's a, do you have, by the way, anything that makes you, like, I don't know how to ask the question. But that experience of realizing that other people weren't like you in some deep way, do you have anything like that? Yeah.

[00:12:00] Like, apparently other people's have like 10 inch penises or less. I knew you were going to the dictionary. No, I don't think so. I kind of feel like I'm very vanilla average in a lot of these things. You know, I think there's someone, some things I know.

[00:12:22] I'm probably on the disordered end of it, like smell or, but, but I can still smell things. And I just don't think I get the same qualia that other people get from smell. And then other things probably that I feel like I'm a little higher on.

[00:12:40] I don't have anything that interesting, but I am photosensitive in the sense that I, when I look at the light, I sneeze.

[00:12:49] Not always, but if I need to sneeze and a sneeze is coming and I'm having trouble getting it out, I can just stare into a bright light. And one time I was doing this and whoever I was dating said, what the fuck are you doing?

[00:13:02] I was like, I'm just trying to sneeze. And they're like, what do you mean? I was like, you know how light helps you sneeze. And they're like, what? And it turns out that it's only like half for only half people, half the people.

[00:13:13] Like, does that actually, even work? Yeah. Yeah, that's funny. It's just like your phenomenological world, like there just is no way to know. It's like the inverted spectrum problem. There's just no good way to know whether or not you share the same kinds of experiences.

[00:13:28] For all I know, I'm just completely weird in a way that like is. Yeah, just the way we experience thoughts. Yeah. I sometimes wonder those kinds of things. Like how I will just get thoughts.

[00:13:40] And especially if you're like, if I'm meditating but also if I'm like on the border of sleep and awake. And then all of a sudden I get these thoughts that just don't seem like they're me. They're just these kind of random voices in my head.

[00:13:55] And it's like, wait, what's that? And then I remember thinking that recently. Is this something everybody has when they go to sleep? You know, like all of a sudden, like an invasion of weird voices and thoughts and stuff like that.

[00:14:11] And it's not like they're violent or like sexual or any like they're just weird and not like mine. Be honest, is it your dog telling you to kill people? But I've only listened to Charlie three times. I don't know that I get that.

[00:14:31] Maybe when I'm falling asleep, like the hypnagogic sort of hallucinations that you get. Like right when you're falling asleep, like when you're about to fall. Yeah, see? So I might be like a schizophrenic or like a serial killer. I think so.

[00:14:47] If only you listened to me as much as you listen to the voices in your head. Well, I don't really listen to them. It's always like honestly, like this is one of these weird things that like I thought was normal.

[00:14:58] But it lets me know that I'm about to fall asleep. You know, because I always I have a bit of insomnia and I worry about that. And then when that starts happening, I'm like, OK, good. And it relaxes me. It's like I'm about to go to sleep.

[00:15:11] The big plot twist is that you've been doing a podcast by yourself for the last 10 years. You're just always very tired. Quick montage of like me calling like a blank screen or a content. Well, you know, the Josh Hollies of the world that want to eliminate porn.

[00:15:32] Like I need to check their ableism. I think. It's true. No, no, a fantastic in the right mind would ever would ever wish for that. All right. We'll be right back to talk about Barfitt. This episode is brought to you by a longtime sponsor, BetterHelp.

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[00:18:33] Welcome back to Very Bad Wizards. The show where we like to thank everybody for all of their support and for reaching out to us, for communicating with us, for keeping our morale up. As it's hovering at danger levels right now. Dangerously low level.

[00:18:49] If you do want to contact us, please do. You can email us at verybadwizards at gmail dot com. You can tweet to us at Tamler at Ps. But to be honest, I haven't been on Twitter too much lately. So just as a warning.

[00:19:02] Oh my God, you're so sanctimonious and virtue signaling. It's like the people who say I don't watch TV. I'm actually not on Twitter that much, but you know, go for it. Go crazy. It's for my mental health. Self care. I still check it. Who am I fooling?

[00:19:21] I still check it out. I know that you've liked the Deadwood. You didn't tweet it. I did tweet it. I just did it. Like today. Oh, well yeah, today. I checked for it all day the day that I posted the episode.

[00:19:36] And I was like, well Tamler, I know Tamler's business. Sorry I'm not tweeting on your schedule. I almost texted you that you forgot to tweet. Anyway, tweet it. That's the nerve of you.

[00:19:49] Because I did it at like 10 this morning and you don't even like it or retweet it. It's dying out there. It is dying out there right now, that tweet. I have not checked Twitter. It's just gone cold. It's entertaining sometimes to see them fail.

[00:20:05] Anyway, tweet to us at VeryBadWizards. Tamler will definitely check. You can also join our wonderful subreddit at reddit.com slash r slash VeryBadWizards and get into some arguments there. I've been going on there just randomly posting stuff or like commenting, I mean. Oh really?

[00:20:25] Yes, like there's no rhyme or reason to what I just said. Yeah, somebody was like kids movies. Oh yeah, kids movies. Like what's a good movie to watch with your kids?

[00:20:32] And then I just gave just like a bunch of them but like they weren't thought out or anything like that. And then somebody like annoyed me about ghosts. So I responded to that. Even I feel bad for you about all the shit you get for ghosts.

[00:20:47] Sometimes I'm like well he deserves it because he was playing it up. But like most of the time I just feel bad. I believe everything that I have said about ghosts. I think some people don't understand. Some people just don't understand what I've said.

[00:21:00] Maybe you didn't make it clear. But you hearing voices all of a sudden explains things. Okay, check us out on Instagram at VeryBadWizards. Give us a rating on Apple podcasts. Unlike Tamler, I don't ask for five star ratings.

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[00:23:52] I think I texted you, if we got people to watch Stalker and watch Deadwood, we're going to heaven. Not to mention Borges. The best kind of heaven to me. We can't put it off any longer. It's like the Alma and Seth sex scene. Will it be as hot?

[00:24:12] Probably. Roughly. Okay, this was, as Tamler said in the first segment, this is him keeping his promise, keeping his word that we were going to discuss a Parfit article.

[00:24:27] Before I dive into a little summary of this article, I do want to at least say why I wanted to do Parfit. And it is because there are so many topics that we've hit on. Just my obsession with Star Trek transporters, Severance, prestige, severance.

[00:24:45] I just realized it's just shit that I love to talk about. And I knew Parfit was one of the most influential philosophers in this and I knew broad strokes what his arguments were. But I wanted to do a deep dive.

[00:24:57] So we picked an article and we're going to give it our shot. I shot my shot. You sounded down about it. No, no. This is exciting. No, I'm happy. I'm actually happy because I learned.

[00:25:11] Okay, so like I said, we're discussing this classic paper by Parfit from 1971 called Personal Identity, published in Field Review. Parfit, if you don't know, was a British analytic philosopher who died recently, well, 2017. Is it that long ago? I know, I know. It's crazy.

[00:25:30] This was, so 1971, this is before the publication of his very influential book, Reasons and Persons, which was in 1984. This is his first article. Really? Wow. That's quite something.

[00:25:44] So in this paper, Parfit is asking this question about personal identity, which has been a staple of philosophers for quite some time. And it's simply the question of how we identify individuals over time.

[00:25:55] Like, when is it right to say that person at time two is the same as person at time one? And Parfit starts by trying to tackle this question by asking some questions for which there are no obvious answers.

[00:26:10] And throughout the paper, he relies, and throughout his career, he relies on a bunch of puzzle cases like these hard questions, often from with a very sci-fi feel to them, that are meant to try to pull some intuitions about personal identity.

[00:26:27] And he uses these and says, these hard cases don't seem to be covered by the normal criteria that we use for personal identity. And so building on these cases, he's basically arguing that it's a mistake to think that the question of personal identity has any correct answers.

[00:26:46] That is, when you ask the question, is this the same person? He thinks that it's wrongheaded because there is no actual answer as to whether that person is the same. So identity for people, he thinks, is more like identity for things like nations or companies.

[00:27:01] So if I say, is U.S. the same country as it was in 1823? Nobody thinks that there's really a right answer to that. You would just say, well, what do you mean by same country?

[00:27:12] In some sense, it's a continuous government, but obviously filled with a whole bunch of different people. And there are all sorts of criteria that you might use, but nobody thinks that there's like... Is Audible the same company once it was bought by Amazon? That's right.

[00:27:27] It's like, it is and it isn't. Exactly. And so Parfit thinks, for one, we have this language of personal identity that really makes us think that there is an underlying thing. But he always argues that there in fact isn't.

[00:27:43] And he thinks that one of the reasons why we maintain this language of personal identity is because we think that really important things hinge on it. Things like rationality or moral responsibility.

[00:27:53] But what he wants to do in this paper is argue that maybe you don't actually need this thick notion of personal identity after all. And you can still preserve those important things. So along the way, he'll make a few claims that we'll jump into.

[00:28:07] If it's not clear from this summary, hopefully it will become clear from our discussion. He says that he wants to preserve a sense of the term survive that doesn't imply identity. So a person can survive, but it's not the same person.

[00:28:23] Or it's indeterminate whether it's the same person. Yes, that's right. He wants to argue that most of the things that matter for survival are relations of degree.

[00:28:34] So person at time one and person at time two is they're related to each other to a greater or lesser degree, not an all or nothing.

[00:28:41] And then finally, as I alluded to before, he wants to argue that none of these relations need to be described in a way that presupposes identity.

[00:28:50] So he concludes that really it's the language of personal identity that's probably just a handy way of pointing to the stuff that really matters. For him, what really matters are psychological continuity and even more importantly, psychological connectedness, which we'll discuss.

[00:29:05] For him, there just is no more to it than that. Right. It is nothing over and above the facts about how connected we feel to our former self, continuous our memories are like there's nothing over and above that. That's right.

[00:29:20] And this is one of the things that's both frustrating but also good about this paper is I think he's right. He's arguing for a conclusion that is true, but I do balk at kind of the methodology that gets us there.

[00:29:37] But I'm not even sure how forceful my objections to the methodology is. So that's one of the things with this particular topic and this paper that has me a bit confused.

[00:29:51] But the one thing that I want to just add to your very nice summary of the paper is he does think this has implications. It is not just trying to preserve our common sense notions of everything, but in this new light,

[00:30:07] he thinks that this means that we should be less selfish and less afraid of death, relevantly for you. That's right. That's why I want to believe it. Honestly, that's one reason why I want to cut to this.

[00:30:23] And this is an interesting, like he is a very strong consequentialist and also like a Sidgwickian rationalist. And Sidgwick arrived at this kind of, at this view where both egoism and utilitarianism are both rational. You can have a coherent normative system for both.

[00:30:47] And I think one thing that Parfait wants to do is say no, egoism is actually irrational, which only leaves us with utilitarianism as the kind of true ethic.

[00:30:58] Which is what he believes. Like, I do think what he's doing, I'm not saying it's ad hoc, just like bullshit rationalizing, but he does kind of arrive through this personal identity argument at a way of ruling out egoism as equally rational to utilitarianism.

[00:31:20] Yeah. And I meant to end with something like that. What I was going to say if I had was that this paper doesn't do the best job at building those cases.

[00:31:31] He does hint at what I know he argued later in more fleshed out way, which is an idea that I always thought was pretty cool. That is, if there is no such thing as continuity of identity, if there's no such thing as identity over time,

[00:31:45] then you caring about, so David caring about David 20 years from now is the same as me caring about anybody else. That is, it is being impartial. Like he really likes that. It all comes down to being impartial or not being impartial.

[00:32:03] You know, that's the part, like I'm happy that he believes that. I think he was a committed utilitarian for better or worse. But I don't know that this argument genuinely leads to that conclusion. Yeah, it is tricky. The inference there doesn't seem to work for me.

[00:32:23] Okay, so let's get to some of the cases that he brings up because I have a pretty high tolerance for convoluted cases. But I also kind of feel like you that these aren't cases that are as crazy as like trolley cases, at least for some reason to me.

[00:32:42] Like they're not so convoluted and in part maybe it's because... Wait, what? Like branching in the fall and fusing in the spring is not as crazy as pushing a fat guy off a bridge? Well, with like crazy loops, kind of no. And I'll tell you why.

[00:33:00] But really what I was thinking of is the first case that he brings, which I guess was a case that David Wiggins proposed first, which is the splitting of the brain.

[00:33:09] So he asks you to imagine that half of somebody's brain is put in one body and half stays in the original body. And we know that people can survive with half a brain and they don't die. Like that much seems pretty clear.

[00:33:29] I think I've mentioned on this podcast a few times that I have a niece who, when she was very young, had a full hemispherectomy because of cancer in her brain and severe seizures.

[00:33:39] And she is her. I mean, she woke up after the operation and nobody thinks that isn't it so sad that she died? But if you imagine that her brain, half of her brain that was removed was actually healthy and was placed in a healthy body.

[00:33:54] And so that person woke up as well with all of the memories and all of the character traits and personality that she had. Then you're sort of left with what happened in this case? Like, did someone die? Did one person survive and the other person just isn't?

[00:34:20] Right. So there's three options. There's one person died and two new people were created. But that doesn't seem right since if you just did it with one person. You would obviously think they survived. They survived. Right. Like, so then it doesn't seem like nobody survived.

[00:34:43] But then if you ask like just one person survived, then it's like, but which one? What's the basis of choosing one over the other? If you say they both of them are the original person, then what does that mean to be branched off into two? Exactly.

[00:35:03] And so like I think what Parfit wants to say is there's no right answer to this question. But if you had a gun to your head, you would pick the third one. The third one. That the two new people are the same as the first person. Right.

[00:35:20] Yeah. That's right. And then he uses, you know, he says like this may not be as crazy as it seems. We know that people with split brains seem to have two streams of consciousness.

[00:35:30] And he uses that as a further example, which is why I don't find the idea so crazy. Like it's it is sci-fi, but it's not. I don't know. It seems like a meaningful question to me. Like it is a fact that you can survive with half of brain.

[00:35:48] So this is why this may be a difference between you and me. This is why I find the transporter question so interesting, because to me it's from the from like the first person perspective.

[00:35:58] I wake up in my body and I see that there's another body that's talking and acting like me. But but there's no this is the whole problem is like I don't have good, really good reason to think that other than pure physical continuity.

[00:36:13] But like pure physical continuity kind of breaks down as well in some cases. So so I get what Parfit is doing here, where he's saying like, like, if you really believe the things that seem like common sense criteria for personal identity, like they do seem to break down.

[00:36:29] But but you have to like he needs to get people to not caring like where you are to think that this is not an interesting question. Like that's his whole. I know. That's so funny. Yeah. Like you're already sold on it.

[00:36:42] I'm already sold that it's a pseudo question. But what's interesting about my reaction to this paper and this topic is I'm not 100 percent sold on really any aspect of this.

[00:36:54] I find this topic for whatever reason to be, you know, maybe like consciousness, something that I can't fully wrap my head around because you can go full reductionist on personal identity. And and also like you were asking off air, like connections with Buddhism.

[00:37:16] Like I think this is very there are deep connections here, like and especially the kind of Buddhist idea that all we are is our thoughts and our bodily sensations. Which is a view that Hume had too. Yeah, exactly. And William James had a version of that.

[00:37:35] And and that's all we are. So it's like reductionist. It's like there's no you over and above all the, you know, your thoughts, sensations and memories and all of that. Right. But then you can believe that as I do.

[00:37:51] But that doesn't fully explain my behavior in terms of planning for the future. And not that I'm particularly good at that, but I do some of it.

[00:38:02] And thinking about the past, there is it does feel like there's some other kind of relation that that reductionist view doesn't capture. But I don't know what that is or even if it's if it's an illusion, which I think it probably probably is.

[00:38:24] But then what does that even mean for it to be an illusion? So that's the thing that fucks with me when I get onto this topic.

[00:38:30] Yeah, it is hard. And this is where I think like maybe some of his more fantastical examples of like fusion and having memories that other people of other people's experiences might be. Q memories. Yeah, Q memories might be trying to tackle this.

[00:38:47] But he does want to say that this notion of psychological connectedness with a person, that relation is a matter of degree.

[00:38:58] And I and so so to the extent that you have a lot of overlapping connectedness, which we do like tomorrow, Tamler has a huge amount of connectedness to today, Tamler, which is different from continuity, which I thought was a clever point.

[00:39:17] So he says you can continuity really is an all or nothing thing. You can be continuous or not continuous, but you can't really be a little bit continuous. So but he thinks you can be a little bit connected.

[00:39:38] And the example that that finally got me to understand what he meant was the example of an organism that lives like an eternity. And over that time, their bodies and their memories change and their experiences change.

[00:39:54] And so at some point in time, say like after a thousand years, they'll remember who they were when they were 500. And but that memory will be a little fuzzier than the memory of when they were 800. Their preferences might have changed completely there.

[00:40:13] As just a matter of degree, the further away they get from that person, like a thousand years from now, they'll barely remember who they were when they were 100. Do you remember like when we did on a Galen Straus and episodic ethics?

[00:40:28] Like he was just saying he was making that exact point that like he doesn't identify with, you know, Galen Straus and 10 years ago in any meaningful way. And he thinks that's also just variation. Yeah. And I do catch that intuition.

[00:40:45] And at some point in my life, I think the older you get, the more you realize maybe this came from like either seeing myself talking or like reading something I wrote, you know, when I was like 12 or something and not even recognizing it.

[00:40:59] And I realized like, oh, it's just because I haven't really thought about it much. Like I always assume because of this the continuity part that like I'm connected continuously with 12 year old David always that I've always felt like I must be the same person.

[00:41:18] But it's a little jarring to see what you said or thought that long ago, you know? Yeah. Sometimes. Sometimes it's like, yeah, that's me. Other times it's like, what? I find that for personality traits, it's like me.

[00:41:32] Like I had a sense of humor, like I had a dirty sense of humor when I was like nine years old, you know, like my jokes, I recognize mine.

[00:41:38] So this gets to one of the things we were saying about aphantasia is that I do think that there is something to Parfit himself saying that he didn't have strong autobiographical memory that makes this conclusion a bit easier.

[00:41:53] Because like I feel like I have very vivid memories of myself from a fairly young age. And that makes it pretty hard for me to not think of myself as the same person, I think. Yeah.

[00:42:07] Yeah. Let's can we back up for a second and just talk about the use of thought experiments and to what extent you think that they're useful for the argument. So it starts out like you said, like this actually happens. Split brains. What did your niece have? Hemispherectomy.

[00:42:32] Like these things happen, but it's still very hard to imagine. Right. But then it gets to, OK, now you're being divided into five bodies and they themselves are branching out. And then there are bodies fusion fusing.

[00:42:49] And do you think that these kinds of thought experiments actually yield insight into something like personal identity and what the criteria for it are?

[00:43:04] I do think so. But so I'm going to give maybe what I think is a good reason and then what I think is a bad reason.

[00:43:11] So the good reason for me is that I think so in part because I am somebody who disagrees or disagreed, at least with his conclusion. And in thinking about these cases, I am left with no answer.

[00:43:33] So I feel like they work better in this deflationary way where my positive claim was that identity is a thing. And he's like, yeah, but think about these cases. Then I do. I feel compelled to say, yeah, I have no good answer for this.

[00:43:49] And it doesn't so much matter that it's fantastical. Like I can imagine a species that divides, you know, like there are species that divide asexually.

[00:43:58] And it doesn't seem that weird to think of a species that could pass along the memories of the first, like the father, the mother organism.

[00:44:11] And then over time they would keep dividing. The bad reason maybe is that there are a ton of cases from sci-fi that I really enjoy that have maybe made these into more of a reality.

[00:44:24] So like, if you'll permit me, I want to tell you about one case that's always fucked with me and it's from the Star Trek Voyager series. Oh boy, you're really getting your revenge right here. I'm really going to nerd out. Yeah. With three hours on Star Trek.

[00:44:44] Fair enough. And it maps on well to the cases of fusion that Parfit is talking about where he's talking about organisms where two separate organisms might fuse into one. And so there is this episode where a transporter accident fuses two people into one person.

[00:45:01] And that one person sort of has a new identity. So it's called Tuvix for anybody who cares about the episode. And that new personality emerges, but they actually have the memories of both lives, but they're just one person.

[00:45:19] And it's a kind of a powerful episode because it ends with them developing the ability to split them into the original two. But the new person who has formed is begging them not to. They're like, no, I'm a new person.

[00:45:36] I feel like I was born as a new person and I've experienced this life. And now you're going to essentially murder me. And the captain decides anyway, in their really heartless decision to just split them back into the two separate beings.

[00:45:49] And so the thought of maybe having somebody else's memories as Parfit sort of builds one of the pillars of his argument here is based on the idea that it's not incoherent to have a first person memory of someone else's experience.

[00:46:05] Like that much, it just makes sense. But at the very least, it seems like he is abusing my intuitions when he's coming up with these cases in a way that has worn me down into thinking, yeah, maybe there is no single criteria that would ever play the role that I thought it was playing.

[00:46:22] Right. And I guess that's, I think you're right that if they're going to work, they're going to work better for deflationary accounts where you think there is some set of criteria that defines your personal identity and, you know, in the way that if you thought that that was true about knowledge, like the Gettier cases might put pressure on those and things like that.

[00:46:48] And the difference is that nobody really thinks that about knowledge except philosophers. But I think people do sometimes think that that might be true with personal identity.

[00:46:58] I think we feel it in a deep way. I guess my resistance, so you know, my first publication actually addressed this issue of thought experiments and their value because I was talking about zombies.

[00:47:14] And I remember being very influenced by Kathleen Wilkes and her view on like the use of thought experiments. And she said they're really only useful when you can establish the phenomenon, right?

[00:47:29] Like if you know all the relevant facts and background information, that's when they're useful. But the problem with it, I think she was singling out Parfit. I didn't know Parfit at the time, but she was singling out Parfit among others as giving these thought experiments that we just don't understand what it would mean for two people to fuse together or, you know, one person to be branching out into five different people.

[00:47:58] And so like our intuitions on that are kind of worthless because we can't fully wrap our minds around what any of that would mean.

[00:48:10] And that seems right to me. Like this is like I'm a little torn because at the same time I could see how these would work to deflate or to, you know, any pretensions that some kind of systematic theory that will tell you like this is when you're the same person and this is where you're not.

[00:48:30] But like I just feel like Hume gets there, you know, in like a half a page of just like I look for anything beyond my thoughts and I don't find anything. You know, but I just don't think these thought experiments cast light on that aspect of it, which to me is the most interesting part.

[00:48:53] Maybe that's because I was already, I just started at his conclusion already, you know, so I didn't need his cases to get me there.

[00:49:01] Yeah, maybe that is true. I find myself, to be honest, a little puzzled at that view that you just expressed. Not because I don't get like the, like it sounds reasonable.

[00:49:16] It's just that like I feel like there is a role for imagination that your view is not allowing for in philosophy where like, yeah, it does like no one's ever going to get to another solar system. It's true. But like imagine that they could like it feels like.

[00:49:38] But that's an established phenomenon. Well, that's what I'm not sure what you mean. We can wrap our minds around that in a according to Kathleen Wilkes.

[00:49:46] But say more about what it means that it's an established phenomenon. It does remind me of something that I thought you also were a bit resisting of, which is when we discussed the video game Sona with our hero Ted Chiang.

[00:50:01] One of the objections that he raised multiple times was that there is no non-destructive brain scan. And so this is why he thought it was a meaningless question. And I was like, but you can imagine that there would be a technology that is not non-destructive.

[00:50:16] And I suppose you could just insist that there's not. So you don't want to think about it. But it feels like it's a failure of imagination.

[00:50:23] Yeah. No, look, what's nuanced about this debate is I think something like Soma where you are playing this game and very incompetently if you're me, but you're still playing it from the perspective of this person.

[00:50:40] And then all of a sudden you switch bodies and the little twist at the end that plays on you is I think more revealing than some of these cases precisely because it establishes the phenomenon better than these cases. So here is just a more fleshed out imagination, right?

[00:51:02] Yeah, right. Like I think you're misunderstanding. It's not that thought experiments can't be useful. It's just that they have to flesh it out or establish the phenomenon.

[00:51:13] She says, the burden of any thought experiments rest on the establishment in the imagination of a phenomenon. Once the phenomenon is established, the inference to a theory is fairly unproblematic.

[00:51:26] However, if there is uncertainty concerning the relevant background conditions, however, then it becomes unclear whether or not the thought experimenter has established the phenomenon.

[00:51:36] At this point, our intuitions were on a rye and the inferences are not only problematic, but the jump from phenomenon to the conclusion has made the larger because of the further need to imagine just what these backing conditions under the imagined circumstances would be.

[00:51:51] The possible world is inadequately described. I mean, I don't think I could possibly do her argument justice from just hearing a paragraph of it, but I do want to know more about what it means to establish.

[00:52:02] And what I was going to say about Soma is that it seems like a version of what you said where you play Soma and it's like you devote 20, 30 hours to the game and there's this set of twists and you're like, oh man, who is me?

[00:52:19] I feel like what you were saying earlier about Hume getting there, I feel like Parfit can get there by just saying, imagine that this happened. I don't know. I don't find it as illuminating to think of some case that I can't even fully understand.

[00:52:33] And from that, I'm learning something about my actual sense of self or sense of identity, continuity. That's what I'm questioning. Whereas if you do what Hume does or like a lot of Buddhist texts and you just say, well, really interrogate your own experience.

[00:52:54] What is that thing that's over and above it? Well, okay. That's fucks with me, but not because I can't decide whether our Richard Prime at time four is the same as Richard Asterix at time eight who's been branched off into like eight other different people.

[00:53:14] Like that's, but it's going to fuse together in the spring. Like all of a sudden, like that's not illuminating to me anymore. That's not telling me anything. Yeah. It's a degree. It's a matter of degree. It might be a matter of degree.

[00:53:27] I do think that maybe I just feel like because I feel like Parfit got me to the place where like, as you and Sam Harris insist, meditation requires.

[00:53:42] Parfit got me there with a thought experiment, which like I have no, I guess I just have no problem thinking about how my views would be affected by these cases, whether or not they could ever exist.

[00:53:55] Like it seems as if all of the relevant details that there is a creature that fuses with another creature.

[00:54:01] Like if I just let my imagination do that thing, I find that now I have a creature with two sets of memories and then I'm like, oh, what would that mean?

[00:54:10] And whether or not that can ever happen or whether or not you think that says anything about, say, like the nature of the real world. It says something to me about my inability to accommodate something that I thought I could accommodate for lack of a better term.

[00:54:24] Like, I don't know. But I think here's a key question. Like, does it just change how you conceptualize or theorize about this question? Or does it actually change how you feel about it and your actions?

[00:54:41] Right. So are you going to put less into retirement now and devote more of your savings to charity? Do you feel less connected with your previous self than you did before?

[00:54:52] Do you feel like—is there any kind of practical upshot in any way to you just thinking, oh, I don't think like the physical and psychological continuity constitutes like the theory of the self? Like does that have anything beyond just how you would describe it philosophically to others?

[00:55:15] Probably not. Maybe a little bit. But like I'm so perplexed by even that being like a criteria for the importance of an argument. Like it's like, well, then math doesn't matter at all to you. Like that's weird. That's like, why would it have to matter?

[00:55:30] As far as I'm concerned, it doesn't change my practices in the same way that determinism doesn't change my— I'm saying that I don't think it can is the point in the way that some of these other approaches—

[00:55:41] So do you not believe Harfet when he says that it changed his whole notions of what it means to die and what it means that it gave him like it lifted this veil and like he was living in lightness now? It liberated him.

[00:55:52] So he says—I found this quote that's in Reasons in Persons. Is the truth depressing? Some may find it so. But I find it liberating and consoling. When I believed that my existence was a further fact, I seemed imprisoned in myself.

[00:56:11] My life seemed like a glass tunnel through which I was moving faster every year and at the end of which there's darkness. When I changed my view, the walls of my glass tunnel disappeared. I now live in open air. This is so Buddhist sounding.

[00:56:26] There is still a difference between my life and the lives of other people, but the difference is less. I am less concerned about the rest of my own life and more concerned about the lives of others.

[00:56:36] When I believed that personal identity was a further fact of importance, I also cared more about my inevitable death. After my death, there will be no one living who will be me. I can now re-describe this fact, though there will later be many of—

[00:56:49] Okay, so blah, blah, blah, right? You know that this is this kind of consequence that he reports, right? So what I'm saying is the fact that this did this for him and it didn't do it for you,

[00:57:05] you are not convinced in the way that he is convinced by the theory. I mean, I literally read the paper two days ago. Like, it's a pretty high bar that you have there. Can we just take a step back?

[00:57:20] Because I feel like this is just now becoming a discussion of meta philosophy in the way that we always get bogged down into. And I really thought that choosing this paper, you could at least play along with the structure of the arguments

[00:57:34] in a way that we could discuss, like, oh, what does he say about memory? What does he say about changing this? Sure, I'm happy to do that. I'm sorry. I thought I was.

[00:57:44] But you don't see this as just a version of the same conversation we've had many times. No, and not really, actually. I didn't see that. But like, I don't know. Maybe it is like that. I don't know.

[00:57:57] Maybe I'm being unfair, but it just smacks to me of like you just crapping on analytic philosophy in a way that I thought, well, okay, like this is the one time you've agreed to play along. What were your beliefs going in about personal identity?

[00:58:14] Like going into this, the thing that has been undermined by Parfit's arguments. And we can go through exactly how, but like what were they to start with? It's still hard for me to shake the view that in a deep sense, that like me 20 years from now is me.

[00:58:32] That there is that if you. Cloned me, that would just be a clone of me, not me. It doesn't matter if they had all of my same memories and I've never had a good positive case for what the criteria of personal identity could be.

[00:58:46] I just have doubled down on the intuition. Right. That's that's my my issue with the transporter cases. I'm like, look, if I'm standing here and you make a perfect copy of me in that perfect copy is standing right there.

[00:58:59] That's interesting, but it's so not me that I don't even know why you would think it. And what Parfit is saying is, well, why doesn't that thing have just as much claim to being you as you?

[00:59:10] And I still can't wrap my head around it, but because I can't think of any good answer to that, like it makes me think, okay, so what would I be giving up? Like. Am I giving up anything really that meaningful?

[00:59:27] Maybe not. Or maybe I could get that sense of liberation that Parfit had. I would love that. I would love it, to be honest. Like for the very thing like I'm not even joking.

[00:59:37] That very thing about the fear of death, like I would love to have that thing that Parfit experienced. I wonder if I don't know how this happens anyway, but I wonder if I guess these kinds of arguments can get there.

[00:59:49] But let's just go through what they are before we ask step back and ask that question. Right. So like I guess the idea then and I didn't start with the same intuitions as you about transporter cases.

[01:00:02] So I guess you have like implicitly a physical continuity view of identity because a lot of people are not where you and Paul are, where it's just so clear that that's not you. They watch the show and they don't think, oh, Kirk just died.

[01:00:16] And now this Kirk is there. Right. Like and it's not a big cognitive dissonance thing either. It's just like, you know, psychological continuity is something that seems to trigger a lot of people's intuitions about identity, period.

[01:00:31] I actually think that most people, if they sit and think about it, they'd be like, oh, shit, it is a holocaust of Star Trek characters. That's for the X5 people to determine. Because I think a lot of people think that there is physical continuity in those cases.

[01:00:50] Oh, you mean that all the atoms are literally. They're like being beamed over. Yeah, that could be. So there are cases in which physical continuity does seem to not be enough.

[01:01:05] So I have thought often about what it would mean to be completely amnesic and to have lost all my autobiographical memory. It feels like death in a way that I'm not sure it actually would be like death, but it does feel like death.

[01:01:26] So my intuitions are just bouncing around, I think. That's the thing with personal identity. I think it's very hard. You know, we watch Succession, right? And not Succession, Severance. We watched Severance and then we did it with, we talked about it with Paul Bloom.

[01:01:44] You just kind of take for granted that the two Adam Scots are like different people. Even though they have the same physical continuity, but no psychological continuity. And it's such a premise of the show in some ways that it was like we didn't even talk about transporters.

[01:02:05] Because it was like both you and Paul who are publicly opposed to any kind of psychological continuity view. Like just kind of took it for granted really quickly in that show.

[01:02:17] And I think like our intuitions, just depending on how you manipulate them can go in every direction on personal identity. The thing that fucked with me that Paul said in that discussion was the general anesthesia thing.

[01:02:35] Where it's like you go under general anesthesia and maybe you are feeling that pain, but then forgetting it. And if you go full psychological continuity, then it's like, well, that's fine. It's someone else that went through it, but you don't fully, like that's horrifying.

[01:02:55] That would actually like affect, like do I want to go under general anesthesia if I thought that like a recognizable Tamler with my body is going to be suffering like all this pain. You know, that will just then be forgotten.

[01:03:11] So that's a thought. So that is sort of a thought puzzle that because it's plausible enough in the real world like fucks with you. So can I ask you a question then about, suppose you've gotten to the point of Hume or of Buddhists or Parfit.

[01:03:32] And now you believe that there is no there, there. It's like identity is like Oakland. There's no there, there. Is what you're saying that this was always an intuitive view? So you just never had the clash of intuitions? I think I had the clash of intuitions.

[01:03:54] Maybe my clash is me at different places than your clashes. But like what I never had was any confidence that there was some way of describing what's me and what's not.

[01:04:08] My always first impulse for those kinds of questions are, well, like there's a sense in which I'm me and there's a sense in which I'm not. So you were always like the nation view.

[01:04:22] But again, this is why I was trying to pin you down on the thing you got mad about is that I don't think my behavior... Hurt, hurt.

[01:04:31] The thing that you were hurt and hurt is that I don't think my behavior and how like what I do fully reflects that. You know what I mean? Like I seem to behave in a way that is like indicative of a greater continuity.

[01:04:50] In that way, you might be right. Like, you know, who knows? Like these things can trigger some kind of epiphany or some kind of realization. And it really depends on the sophistication of the person, how far along on whatever path they already are.

[01:05:12] And so maybe these perfect cases do that for you. They didn't do it for me, but a different kind of case would do it for me and not for you. Yeah, my vivid mental imagery of transporters. Yeah, exactly. Your Star Trek.

[01:05:26] It might be. I'm not even joking. It might just be that I watch more sci-fi. So these have more pull. Like when you what you were saying about Soma, I really think that if you had just given me like a one paragraph description of the video game,

[01:05:41] I would have arrived at the same perplexed feeling as I did through the whole video game. Like I didn't think that it needed much. But I, okay, a couple of things. But one, yeah, there is a thing that Parfit says here that I found to be pretty insightful.

[01:05:58] Because he kind of even says, look, these puzzle cases that I'm constructing where I'm artificially separating criteria like psychological, physical continuity, memory. These don't exist, which is why our common sense notions of personal identity persist.

[01:06:21] What he's proposing as the actual criteria for like why you feel like the same person, which is physical connectedness or psychological continuity, that those in everyday life bolster common sense intuitions of personal identity so that you never really see what's doing the work is connectedness.

[01:06:40] And what he's trying to artificially do, which I think you would just say is absolutely artificial. But like, but it's not abusive of concepts.

[01:06:50] Like it's not. I think he just thinks that plausibly, if you can imagine a case where I separate these apart, you could see why your common sense notion comes apart.

[01:06:59] But like in everyday life, he might be whatever the equivalent of a compatibilist is for personal identity, which is like, yeah, like practice. Like these things just cohere so much that like it's rare that anybody would would start questioning whether or not personal identity is actually the thing.

[01:07:16] Okay, I want to do two things. But the second thing gets us more meta. So let me do the first thing first.

[01:07:25] So the argument that you're referring to, as I understand it, is when he starts talking about like cue memories, you don't even have to call it memory because maybe memory is something that is defined by the fact that it's me that's having the memory.

[01:07:40] So invent this concept, cue memory, where you can have memories of other people. And this is one, you know, like I honestly like I had a memory of like that my daughter had and told me.

[01:07:54] And then I like a year later told her that memory back to her. So that could happen. But then he also does it, which is kind of interesting with intentions. Like I could have an intention that would influence somebody else to act and all these things.

[01:08:11] And he's saying you can separate all those that we can imagine those things. I have an intention and you punch yourself right now, even though that was my intention to punch myself. But that intention goes to you. And he's like, all these things are easily imaginable.

[01:08:28] But normally they all just occur in the same like physical body with the same kind of continuity. They all kind of coalesce around the same things. So that's why we believe almost accidentally that there is this kind of identity that sustains. Metaphysically.

[01:08:47] And persists over time. Yeah. You know, that's the part of it that's very consonant with the Buddha. It's like, no, there are just these things. You know, there are just these things. And because they happen to all swarm around.

[01:09:04] But then it's like, did we ever think that it was anything over and above the continuous memories and intentions all located within the body? Did we ever think there was an identity over and above all those things in the first place?

[01:09:19] I'm not even sure I don't think that still. Still. Right. I guess it's just coming from such a different place that it is. I can see why your eyes would glaze over if you're not.

[01:09:32] But I do think that my intuitions, that I strive to make my intuitions consistent. So the demonstration that my intuitions have like glaring inconsistencies, by any means you can get me there, is like a valuable way of making me change my mind.

[01:09:49] So you never had the thought like, am I the same person as I was then? In one sense, yes. In another sense, no. You're always like, well, yes. Yeah. I mean, like I'm swayed by the like memory is always a memory of me.

[01:10:03] Right. So it's it is like the pull has always been like there's been never a question in my mind that 10 year old me was me in like anything other than appearance.

[01:10:16] So here's a question. What is his positive account? Because it's not like total obliteration of the self or the self as an illusion. It's just the self is these psychological connections that we have.

[01:10:31] Yeah. So here's where the case of the eternal beings actually mattered to me, where if I imagine my life extending eternally, and I have a sense that I change over time in the life of an average lifespan of whatever, 80 years, it's just not that much.

[01:10:49] But like if I project this change to like a thousand years, it really starts to I really do start to think, yeah, in what meaningful sense is it the case that I'm the same person that I was a thousand years ago?

[01:11:02] Like why would I even care about that person or why my memories are kind of faded? And and so his positive account of the atoms have all changed. Yeah. His positive account of like even in his little diagram, this one diagram actually helped me a little bit.

[01:11:16] I don't know why the other diagrams are confusing where it's just almost like two little bell curves where he's like, look, it overlaps a lot.

[01:11:23] So like just a little bit of time that separates you and the other you is like it's reasonable to think you're ish the same person. And then at some point it becomes unreasonable. And because you really have so little.

[01:11:40] And so just the notion that it can be a degree is something that like I think is an interesting and different way of thinking about than I have thought about it.

[01:11:51] And I think it's because all of our experiences in the real world bolster this notion of token metaphysical token identity over time in a way that never leads me to question it.

[01:12:03] And the thought that maybe it is just I'm more David five years ago than I was David 10 years ago. And that's kind of meaningful. I don't know whether that would ever influence my practice.

[01:12:17] Like there are so many reasons that I should save say for like the future if I retire. Like there's so many good reasons that don't require either a deflated account of self or it's just.

[01:12:30] Why? What are those reasons? Why are you not like putting money into my retirement? Because I'm so connected to that person in a way that I'm not connected to anybody else.

[01:12:44] But I guess here's where says something that's meaningful to me where like for the same reasons that I would put more money into Bella's account than I would into Eliza's account. Like that seems like a reasonable conclusion.

[01:12:56] And that what's interesting is I think that he really wants to talk you away from that partiality. I know that's where I'm at. He's not taking me there. No, right. But I don't think that's where I think this kind of argument really can't get you there. Yeah.

[01:13:15] I'm not against this idea. I just like it when Borges is telling me, you know, painting the picture of the immortal and the fact that his identity is blending into all that.

[01:13:27] Like he doesn't even know whether he's Homer or the other one is Homer. Like that works better for me than this. That's really interesting. That's interesting.

[01:13:35] I can get so, okay. I can get behind that and I can say for some reason, like when you say these are all word games, there's part of me that wants to say, well, yeah, but like aren't these fun word games?

[01:13:48] And part of me which wants to say, yeah, but like they're word games that matter to me. There's part of my brain that gets tickled in the way that a Borges story can tickle me. Also gets tickled by fantastical puzzle cases.

[01:14:03] You don't find like the zombie cases or... No, but for ad hoc reasons. Yeah, yeah. For ad hoc reasons. Like I think the zombie cases and even when we talked about like the veil... The Mary, the color.

[01:14:16] Yeah. The veil of ignorance. Like some of these fail and even in par for sometimes I'm like, whoa, your intuitions actually aren't my intuitions. So yeah, yeah, yeah. No, totally. What's interesting is when you don't know.

[01:14:31] So Bernard Williams has a paper around this time as well. And he starts out with two people are going to be put to sleep like A and B.

[01:14:41] Like Williams could do this shit too if he wanted to. And what's going to happen is that all the information encoded in A's brain will be transferred to B's brain and vice versa.

[01:14:55] So like I'm going to be like all of a sudden you'll have my mind and I'll have your mind. And then they say, so we're going to go to sleep and when you wake up, that's going to be the deal.

[01:15:07] But afterwards, one of the two people will be given a hundred thousand dollars and the other will be tortured. So which one do you want? Like do you want... So you and me, this is happening to right now.

[01:15:22] And now you have to decide, do I want like you get to decide. Do you... I want to be wake up as Tamler's body but with my memories and be tortured.

[01:15:34] Or do I want my body and have my body be tortured, my previous body or however you think of this. And what Williams says at the end is that like he has no idea what he would do with that. Like that's kind of interesting.

[01:15:49] I have a strong intuition that I want my mind to not be tortured. Yeah, I kind of do too, although... It is interesting what these examples... where these examples get me.

[01:16:04] Like all I can say is like maybe testify as a witness to the spirit of this that I have been more shaken. And that's what philosophy just does to me sometimes. It shakes me even with crazy cases in a way that's good.

[01:16:21] It wakes you from your dogmatic slumber. Dogmatic slumber. I often think that Kant was like 50 when that happened. And so I'm like, I got some time. I got some time to sleep. Eight months.

[01:16:33] Like 10 years. But having defended to the point of anger Parfit, I wish that he were a little bit clearer in the steps that his mind takes. I do find that even though I'm compelled, it took... I burned calories reading this paper in a way that I don't often.

[01:16:56] It almost makes me a little nostalgic because the one thing it doesn't do that people add now is like a million citations. Yeah. It's just giving the argument and it can get a little convoluted and fantastical.

[01:17:13] And yeah, a lot of connections aren't made that you wish were made. Right. I know. He even starts the paper like as I was telling you off air.

[01:17:25] I'm sitting there trying to write a summary and usually you go to the first few paragraphs to get what the argument is going to be. And I found... I was like, wait, where is the argument? It was less of a thing back then. Think of freedom and resentment.

[01:17:39] If you go to try to figure out a kind of abstract of the opening, there's no way to do an abstract about that. You can do that more here, but there was just less of... That structure wasn't as set down as it is now.

[01:17:55] It almost feels more conversational. You can imagine that this is how a conversation would go and less like what we would teach a student to write now, which is get... We tell our students to get to the point quick, at least I think.

[01:18:08] I think that's exactly the nostalgia. Yeah. Is that it does feel like that. It's like here's this philosophical problem that I'm going to talk about right now and I'm just going to start talking about it. Right.

[01:18:20] But I agree with you also that it also is very clubby and it's like, well, Wiggins has recently done this. I felt like I was like sitting around smoking a pipe in like an Oxford after dinner club. Yeah.

[01:18:37] All right. Well, I hope I redeemed myself a little bit. Reasons and persons next. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Just the only one I won't do is the last. What was it? The three volume. What matters. On what matters. On what matters. Yeah. Like not this.

[01:18:59] All right. Join us next time on Very Bad Music.

[01:19:42] I'm a very good man. Just a very bad wizard.