Tuesday, August 10, 2021

My mother gave birth to me

  1. My mother gave birth to me.

  2. I have no memory connection, direct or indirect, to me at birth.

  3. Therefore, the memory theory of identity is false.

3 comments:

Red said...

Also how does memory theory of identity deal with the question that which of my memories are identical to me? Intuitively I won't get annihilated by losing many of my memories.

Alexander R Pruss said...

The usual formulation is that a single memory is enough to secure identity.

Benjamin Stowell said...

1. I am myself (literally, my self).
2. My self is my first person subject, my first person experience, unified and persisting.
3. If I lost memories I would still have 2.
4. Therefore the memory theory of identity is false regardless if what comes out of my mother is me or merely a part of me.

But I worry....Graham Priest says humans are obviously wholes (where my mother gives birth to me), but I want to say, like Dustin Crummett, that persons are simples (my mother gives birth to my body which contains me).