Careers and quareers: A reply to Burge

Philosophical Review 118 (1):87-102 (2009)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

Tyler Burge argues on the basis of an account of memory that the notion of quasimemory cannot be used to answer the circularity objection to psychological accounts of personal identity. His account implies the impossibility of the "Parfit people," creatures psychologically like us who undergo amoeba-like fission at the age of twenty-one, with only one offshoot allowed to survive, and who have "quareers," made up of the career of the original person and the career of the sole survivor, that exhibit the same sort of psychological continuity that characterizes normal human careers, and are such that epistemic warrant is preserved across the episodes of fission and often involves quasimemories that are not memories. But what he says about memory does not support the denial that such creatures are possible. Where he thinks de se attitudes are necessary, de se * attitudes, indexed to quareers instead of to careers, would serve equally well. It is further argued that the circularity objection to psychological accounts can be answered without appeal to the notion of quasi-memory. Because of the internal relations between the causal profiles of mental states and the persistence conditions of their possessors, in principle there can be a "package deal" definition that simultaneously defines both.

Other Versions

No versions found

Links

PhilArchive

    This entry is not archived by us. If you are the author and have permission from the publisher, we recommend that you archive it. Many publishers automatically grant permission to authors to archive pre-prints. By uploading a copy of your work, you will enable us to better index it, making it easier to find.

    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 102,007

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Who they are and what de se: Burge on quasi-memory.Daniel Giberman - 2009 - Philosophical Studies 144 (2):297 - 311.
Memory and identity.Marya Schechtman - 2011 - Philosophical Studies 153 (1):65-79.
Memory and Disjunctivism.Arieh Schwartz - 2018 - Essays in Philosophy 19 (2):213-230.
A defence of quasi-memory.Rebecca Roache - 2006 - Philosophy 81 (2):323-355.
Rationality and Identity.Ming-Fui Chai - 2018 - Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy 23:11-16.

Analytics

Added to PP
2009-01-28

Downloads
147 (#156,000)

6 months
25 (#127,006)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Sydney Shoemaker
Cornell University

Citations of this work

No citations found.

Add more citations

References found in this work

Reasons and Persons.Derek Parfit - 1984 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press.
Attitudes de dicto and de se.David Lewis - 1979 - Philosophical Review 88 (4):513-543.
Psychophysical and theoretical identifications.David K. Lewis - 1972 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 50 (3):249-258.
Personal identity.Derek Parfit - 1971 - Philosophical Review 80 (January):3-27.
Psychophysical and theoretical identifications.David Lewis - 2004 - In Tim Crane & Katalin Farkas (eds.), Metaphysics: a guide and anthology. New York: Oxford University Press.

View all 14 references / Add more references