Personal identity and memory transfer. Ameriks, K. The Southern Journal of Philosophy, 14(4):385–391, 1976.
Paper doi abstract bibtex [first paragraph] Recent discussions of the conditions of personal identity often refer to the possibility of memory transfer. Such transfer, broadly construed, would appear to have serious implications. In the words of Bernard Williams, it seems logically possible that a "state information-theoretically equivalent to the total state of the brain" could be passed from a brain to a dormant nervous system, in which case it might be concluded that the recipient would be identical with the original person and hence personal identity could be maintained without bodily continuity. I shall argue that this possibility is not, as is generally assumed, a significant challenge to the bodily criterion of personal identity in that it does not refute the claim that (1) bodily continuity is a necessary condition of personal identity. It will also be suggested that in recent discussions the bearing of the notion of memory transfer on the bodily criterion has been obscured by the entaglement of (1) with claims about sufficient conditions of personal identity. Finally, it will be agued that the very notion of memory transfer is questionable.
@article{Ameriks1968a,
abstract = {[first paragraph] Recent discussions of the conditions of personal identity often refer to the possibility of memory transfer. Such transfer, broadly construed, would appear to have serious implications. In the words of Bernard Williams, it seems logically possible that a "state information-theoretically equivalent to the total state of the brain" could be passed from a brain to a dormant nervous system, in which case it might be concluded that the recipient would be identical with the original person and hence personal identity could be maintained without bodily continuity. I shall argue that this possibility is not, as is generally assumed, a significant challenge to the bodily criterion of personal identity in that it does not refute the claim that (1) bodily continuity is a necessary condition of personal identity. It will also be suggested that in recent discussions the bearing of the notion of memory transfer on the bodily criterion has been obscured by the entaglement of (1) with claims about sufficient conditions of personal identity. Finally, it will be agued that the very notion of memory transfer is questionable.},
author = {Ameriks, Karl},
doi = {10.1111/j.2041-6962.1976.tb01295.x},
file = {:Users/michaelk/Library/Application Support/Mendeley Desktop/Downloaded/Ameriks - 1976 - Personal identity and memory transfer.pdf:pdf},
issn = {00384283},
journal = {The Southern Journal of Philosophy},
number = {4},
pages = {385--391},
title = {{Personal identity and memory transfer}},
url = {http://doi.wiley.com/10.1111/j.2041-6962.1976.tb01295.x},
volume = {14},
year = {1976}
}
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