Appropriateness of memory chains

A lot of discussion of memory theories of personal identity invokes science-fictional thought experiments, such as when memories are swapped between two brains.

One of the classic papers is Shoemaker’s “Persons and their Pasts”. There, Shoemaker accounts for personal identity across time, at least in the absence of branching, in terms of appropriate causal connections between apparent memories, not just any causal connections.

This matters. Imagine that Alice and Bob both get total memory wipes, so on the memory theory they cease to exist. But the person inhabiting the Alice body then reads Bob’s vividly written diary, which induces in her apparent memories of Bob’s life. I think most memory theorists will want to deny that after the reading of the diary, Bob comes back to life in Alice’s body. Not only would this be a highly counterintuitive consequence, but it would violate the plausible principle that whether someone is dead does not depend on future events, absent something like time travel. For suppose this sequence:

• Monday: Memory wipe

• Tuesday: Person inhabiting Alice’s body lives a confused life

• Wednesday: Person inhabiting Alice’s body reads Bob’s diary, comes to think she’s Bob, and gains all sorts of “correct” apparent memories of Bob’s life.

On Wednesday, the person inhabiting Alice’s body has memories of the person inhabiting Alice’s body on Tuesday, so by the memory theory they are the same person. But if on Wednesday, it is Bob who inhabits Alice’s body, then Bob also already existed on Tuesday by transitivity of identity. On the other hand, if Alice hadn’t read the diary on Wednesday, Bob would not have existed either on Wednesday or on Tuesday. So whether Bob is alive on Tuesday depends on future events, despite the absence of anything like time travel, which is absurd.

To get around diary cases, memory theorists really do need to have an appropriateness condition on the causal connections. Shoemaker’s own appropriateness condition appears inadequate: he thinks that what is needed is the kind of connection that makes a later apparent memory and an earlier apparent memory be both of the same experience. But Alice’s induced apparent memories are of the experiences that Bob so vividly described in his diary, which are the same experiences that Bob set down his memories of.

What the memory theorist should insist on are causal chains that are of the right kind for the transmission of memories, modulo any sameness-of-person condition. But now it is far from clear that the science-fictional scenarios in the literature satisfy this condition. Certainly, the scanning of memories in a brain and the imposition of the same patterns on a brain isn’t the normal way for memories to be causally transmitted over time. That it’s not the normal way does not mean that it’s not an appropriate way, but at least it’s far from clear that it is an appropriate way.

It would be interesting what one should say about a memory theory on which the appropriate causal chain condition is sufficiently strict that the only way to transfer memories from one head to another would be by physically moving the brain. (Could one move a chunk of the brain instead? Maybe, but only if it turns out that memories can be localized. And even so it’s not clear whether coming along with a mere chunk of the brain is the appropriate way to transmit memories; the appropriate way may require full cerebral context.) Such a version of the memory theory would not do justice to “memory swapping” intuitions about the memories from one brain being transferred to another. And I take it that such memory swapping intuitions are important to the case for the memory theory.

Here’s another implausible consequence of this kind of memory theory. Suppose aliens are capturing people, and recording their brain data using a method that destroys the memories. However, being somewhat nice, the aliens then use the recording to restore the memories, and then return the person to earth. On the memory theory, anybody coming back to earth is a new individual. That doesn’t seem quite right.

A challenge for the memory theorist, thus, is to have an account of the appropriate causal chain condition that is sufficiently lax to allow for the memory swap intuitions that often motivate the theory but is strict enough to rule out diary cases. This is hard.

"In the right way"

When I was in grad school, we were taught that one should abandon all hope of solving “in the right way” problems, such as the problem of how exactly an intention has to result in an action in order for the action to be done from that intention.

I think that with a robust metaphysics of causation, the problem is soluble.

Solution 1: Causal powers have a teleology: to produce a certain effect in a certain way. That teleology is metaphysically written into the causes. The “in the right way” condition may be infinitely complex, but it has a metaphysical home: it is found in the causal power. What makes it be the case that William James’ mountaineer who intended to kill his buddy by dropping the rope, and then dropped the rope because of the nervousness resulting from the intention did not intentionally drop the rope is because the outcome of events is a mismatch to the description in the teleology of the causal powers constituting the intention.

Solution 2: It is a Thomistic maxim that the effect is the actuality of the cause qua cause. This maxim I suspect needs a qualification: the proper effect—the one that happens in the right way—is the actuality of the cause qua cause. So now we have a neat and simple criterion for when a cause C has caused an effect E in the right way: this happens precisely when E is the actuality of C qua cause. (See here for more discussion.)

I think the reason we were taught to eschew the problem of “in the right way” conditions was because of an implicit reductionistic metaphysics. If we think that the cause is just an arrangement of particles, it is hopeless to have a distinction between proper and improper effects.

Probabilistic perception

We could imagine critters whose perceptual system works as follows: When they have an object in their visual field, instead of the perceptual system delivering the presence of a dog, it delivers something like:

• dog:0.93, coyote:0.03, wolf:0.03, deer:0.01.

There are probably many interesting questions to ask about critters with a perceptual system like that. But I want to briefly muse about three.

Question 1: Can we redescribe the perceptual system of these critters so that at base what we have are just attitudes to propositions or properties pairs or something like that?

Answer: I am not sure. Some options fail. For instance, while it may be true that the critter in my example is having a disjunctive perception of a dog-or-coyote-or-wolf, that doesn’t capture all the information in its perceptual system—it doesn’t capture the much greater probability of its being a dog.

Alternately, one could say that the critter has four perceptions of different strengths: a 0.93 strength perception as of a dog, a 0.03 strength perception as of a coyote, a 0.03 strength perception as of a wolf and a 0.01 strength perception as of a deer. But that doesn’t quite capture what’s going on, at least not if we read the story as I intended it. The critter takes dog, coyote, wolf and deer to be alternative hypotheses for what is in front of it, not to be four different perceptions. The story that breaks up the perception into four perceptions of different strengths fails to distinguish the story I intend from a story where the animal might be all four (it’s only a posteriori that we know there are no dog-coyote-wolf-deer).

Maybe we could say that the critter’s perceptual system also delivers something more complicated:

• only-dog:0.93, only-coyote:0.03, only-wolf:0.03, only-deer:0.01.

That will get out of the alternativeness worry, but I am sceptical that it needs to be like that. One could just see the four options, and not see that the probabilities involved force them to be exclusive (because the probabilities add up to one). This is even more plausible if the probabilities are qualitative or interval-based.

Nor will it do to say that one perceives that there is a 0.93 probability of a dog, a 0.03 probability of a coyote, and so on. For these probabilities are not objective facts out there. They are, I suppose, measures of what credence the critter should have in each hypothesis if there is no further data available. We need not suppose that the critter has the degree of self-reflectiveness that would be needed to perceive these measures of hypothetical credence as such.

So maybe a reduction to more familiar perception stories is possible, but I think there is some reason to be sceptical.

Question 2: What is it for this perceptual state to be veridical?

Answer: A necessary condition, of course, would have to be that what is present is a dog, coyote, wolf or deer. But there is room for much Gettiering. Maybe it’s a wolf dressed up as a sheep dressed up as a wolf. Then the perception isn’t in the right way, and we don’t have veridicality. But what if it’s a dog that recently went to the pet salon and was made up to look more wolf-like? Then maybe it’s veridical. Maybe. I just don’t know.

I have a suspicion that once we have such probabilistic deliverances of perception, the in-the-right-way problem of characterizing veridicality not only becomes epistemically intractable—it may already be that in standard theories of perception—but the whole concept of veridicality, apart from the necessary condition that one of the alternative hypotheses be true, may break down.

Question 3: Are we always such critters? We could, after all, take the ordinary perception of a dog to be just a limiting case like “dog:0.999999, something weird:0.000001” or even “dog:1”. Should we do that in every case?

Answer: Phenomenologically, the answer seems negative. But phenomenology can mislead about such things. But as long as it’s a live hypothesis that we might be such critters, we may need to be cautious about claims like that perception is a propositional attitude (see Question 1) or that there is a viable concept of veridicality (see Question 2).

And the apparent possibility of critters whose perception always works like this should make us cautious as to the kinds of claims we make in epistemology.

Culpably mistaken conscience

It is plausible that we have duties of conscience arising from inculpable mistakes about what we should do. I shall assume this and argue that culpable mistakes also yield duties of conscience.

Here are two cases.

1. Fred hires a neurologist to brainwash him into a state which will make him think the next day that it is his duty to embezzle money from his employer. The neurologist succeeds. The next day Fred conscientiously believes he has a duty to embezzle money from his employer. But he refrains from doing so out of fear of being caught.
2. Sally hires a neurologist to brainwash her into which will make him think the next day that it is her duty to embezzle money from her employer. The neurologist fails. But that night, completely coincidentally, a rogue neurologist breaks into her home and while she's sleeping successfully brainwashes her into that very state the first neurologist failed to brainwash her into. The next day Sally conscientiously believes she has a duty to embezzle money from her employer. But she refrains from doing so out of fear of being caught. There are no further relevant differences between Sally's case and Fred's.

Fred is responsible for his conscience being mistaken. Sally is not responsible for that. Granted, Sally is culpable for trying to make her conscience be mistaken, but she is no more responsible for the mistaken conscience than the attempted murderer is responsible when her intended victim is coincidentally killed by someone else.

If inculpably mistaken conscience gives rise to duties, Sally has a duty of conscience to embezzle, and she fails in her duty. She thus acted immorally on both days: on the first day she acted immorally by asking to be brainwashed and on the second day she acted immorally by refusing to obey her conscience.

Thus:

3. If culpably mistaken conscience does not give rise to duties, then Fred has not violated a duty of conscience by refraining from embezzling, while Sally has.

If culpably mistaken conscience does not give rise to duties, then Sally is in a morally worse state than Fred, being guilty of two things while Fred is only guilty of one.

But on the other hand, Fred and Sally have made all the same relevant decisions in the same subjective states. The only possibly relevant difference is entirely outside of them--namely, whether the neurologist that they actually hired is in fact the neurologist who brainwashed them. But the whole point of the idea of duties of conscience is to honor the subjective component in duty, and so if Fred and Sally's relevant decisions are all relevantly alike, Fred and Sally will also be alike in whether they've violated a duty of conscience. Hence:

4. If Sally has violated a duty of conscience by refraining from embezzling, so has Fred.

It logically follows from (3) and (4) that:

5. Culpably mistaken conscience gives rise to duties.

Of course all of this argument was predicated on the assumption that inculpably mistaken conscience gives rise to duties, and perhaps a reader may want to now revisit that assumption. But I think the assumption is true, leaving us with the conclusion that mistaken conscience gives rise to duties whether or not the mistake is culpable.

Now let's turn the case about. Suppose that both Fred and Sally follow their respective mistaken consciences and therefore embezzle. What should we say? Should we say that they did nothing wrong? It seems we shouldn't say that they did nothing wrong, for if they did nothing wrong then their consciences weren't mistaken, which they were. So let's accept (though I have a long-shot idea that I've talked about elsewhere that might get out of this) that they both did wrong. Thus, as in Mark Murphy's account of conscience, they were in the unhappy position that whatever they did would be wrong: by embezzling they defraud their employer and by not embezzling they violate their conscience.

But what about their culpability? Since Sally's case is one of inculpable ignorance, we have to say that Sally is not culpable for the embezzlement. Let's further suppose Sally and Fred's reasons for having themselves brainwashed were to get themselves to embezzle. Thus Sally is guilty of entering on a course of action intended to lead to embezzlement--basically, attempted embezzlement. But she's not guilty of embezzlement. What about Fred? He is certainly responsible for the embezzlement: it was intentionally caused by his immoral action of hiring the neurologist. But I am inclined to think that this is an effect-responsibility ("liability" is a good word) rather than action-culpability. Fred is responsible for the embezzlement in the way that one is responsible for the intended effects of one's culpable actions, in this case the action of hiring a brainwasher, but he isn't culpable for it in the central sense of culpability. (Compare: Suppose that instead of hiring a neurologist to brainwash himself, he hired the second brainwasher in Sally's case. Then Fred wouldn't be action-culpable for Sally's embezzlement, since one is only action-culpable for what one does, but only responsible for her embezzlement as an intended effect of his action.) Sally lacks that responsibility for the effect--the embezzlement--because her plan to get herself to embezzle the money failed as the embezzlement was caused by the rogue neurologist.

In terms of moral culpability for their actions, in the modified case where they conscientiously embezzle, Fred and Sally are, I think, exactly on par. Each is morally culpable precisely for hiring the neurologist, and that's all. That may seem like it gets them off the hook too easily, but it does not: they did something very bad in hiring the brainwasher. So, if I'm right, they are on par if they both conscientiously embezzle and they are on par if they both violate their consciences by refusing to embezzle.

Causation in the right way and actualization of causal powers

Consider William James' murderous mountaineer. His buddy is hanging on a rope that our antihero is holding, and our antihero decides to murder him by letting go. The thought of what he's about to do makes him so nervous that his hands start shaking and let go of the rope. The intention, and by extension the reasons behind the intention, caused the murderous mountaineer to let go, just as he intended to. But although the reasons and the intention cause the letting go, he didn't intentionally let go and his letting go wasn't done for a reason, though it was because of a reason.

This is a famous example where we need the idea of "causation in the right way". Not every intention that causes an action according with intention causes it in the right way, in the way that makes the action intentional. The problem of having to add a "non-aberrancy" or "in the right way" condition plagues a lot of philosophy. A usual thought about such cases is that there is a messy story, beyond our ability to specify all the details. Perhaps that story includes various messy exceptions for various kinds of accidentality, or perhaps it has fairly onerous conditions on the details of the causal chain.

But what if in some--it's too much to hope that in all--cases instead of a long and messy story, we just have a bit of irreducible (or relatively so?) metaphysics. It's just a metaphysical feature of some instances of causation that they are intrinsically non-aberrant.

How could that be? Think of a causal power for an effect as something that can be actualized partially or completely. When a causal power is actualized completely, that causal power automatically causes its actualization, and everything constitutive of that actualization, in the right way. When it fails to actualize completely, it falls short of causing in the right way, though perhaps we can say something more (here's one place serious work would need to be done) about the degree of aberrancy in its partial causes.

It's a medieval dictum that causes contain their effects. But that needs qualification. Causes in a sense contain their proper effects. They contain those proper effects as telê, and then some aspect of the effect--perhaps with cooperation or thwarting from other causes--just is an actualization of the cause with that telos. When all goes well, the whole of the teleologically specified effect is an actualization of the cause, but in aberrant cases, very little is. For instance, in the case of the murderous mountaineer, thinking about how to drop the buddy is an actualization of the intention, but the dropping of the rope is not. There is no further messy reductive story. The one event just is an actualization of the causal power and the other just is not.

But there is something incredible about this story. Sam leaves money for her grandchildren invested wisely in some investments locked up for twenty years after her death. All goes according to plan: the investments rise in value and eventually enrich her grandchildren. But how could the enriching of her grandchildren twenty years after her death somehow have as an irreducible feature its being the actualization of her intention? (Quick thought: It'd be very hard to get a presentist story about this. But presentism is false.) By the time the enrichment happens, her intention is long past. (Does it matter that it's long past? Probably not, but the story is more vivid then.)

There are, I think, three things I can say about the incredulity objection. First, I could bite the bullet. Her intention in some sense lives on in the effects. Yes, these intended effects in the future really just are actualizations of her intention. That's just a metaphysical feature of them. This isn't all that crazy if one believes in the essentiality of origins. For if one believes in the essentiality of origins, then the enrichment's having this cause is an essential feature of the enrichment. Somehow this makes it less surprising if in fact the enrichment is an actualization (or part of the actualization) of the intention. We could even think that the very being of an effect is its having-been-caused.

Second, we could say that when x causes y in the right way, then being-an-actualization-of-x is an intrinsic feature of y, a feature that is causally involved in everything y does, and so when y causes z in the right way, z has the intrinsic feature of being-an-actualization-of-y, and we can go back down the chain to x. Perhaps this is what Aquinas means by per se ordered causal series.

Third, I could go the road of caution. I could say that this metaphysical "actualized by x" feature only is found in immediate effects. Thus, we would in the first instance only have a story about causation-in-the-right way for immediate effects. And then we would use this feature to help construct messier account of causation in the right way for remote effects.

All of this, though, requires a fairly non-reductive metaphysics of human beings.