Thanks for writing this up! It was helpful to give a concrete example to bolster the argument you made in the last post.
I’m curious if anybody has considered temporality as an element of this question? Some (maybe) relevant questions:
Does my current brain constitute the “same” conscious system as I did when I was 2 years old?
What about somebody who undergoes a traumatic brain injury and becomes a “new person” with regard to personality/memory/learned behaviors?
If congruity/consistency between one’s self(ves) at different life-stages is related to memory, might non-human animals actually have far more conscious (sub)systems over their lifetimes than humans?
What does this imply about death? If some factory-farmed animals have lives that are worse than worth living, do we have even more evidence that they would be better off dying sooner (before they develop more conscious systems/subsystems)?
If these ideas have any amount of credence, how might we possibly quantify this?
I have little background in philosophy of mind, and there’s a good chance your team has already considered/debunked these ideas, but I wanted to throw them out there as food for thought anyway.
Hi Jasper—Thanks for these interesting questions. So speaking for myself, I did not take up the temporality issue—at least not in the way you seem to be suggestion without these cases. I can say something about your brain injury question though. The term ‘person’ is used in different ways. Sometimes it is used to just mean whatever we are fundamentally. So, if a traumatic brain injury resulted in a numerically distinct person in this sense, then it would be the same thing as death and then ‘birth’ of a new person. In that case, if there was a welfare subject pre-trauma, then there will be a new welfare subject post-trauma, so long as whatever capacities necessary and sufficient for being a welfare subject are preserved.
On another usage, being a “new person” is just metaphorical, as in what I might say to my daughter if she came home from college super interested in Goth stuff. (My daughter is not quite 5 yet, but who knows…)
Finally, some use ‘person’ in a Lockean (after John Locke) forensic sense, where forensic persons are the kinds of things which can be held morally responsible for their actions, for which prudential concern is rational, etc. There are all sorts of tricky issues here, but one possibility is that *you* can survive even if you do not survive as the same forensic person. Perhaps something like that can happen in certain cases of brain trauma. For example, maybe whatever survives post-trauma is not morally responsible for any pre-trauma actions—precisely because there are none of the same memories, personality, beliefs, and behavioral dispositions. I’d have to think more on how this connection to questions about being/counting welfare subjects, though.
I think which of these different sense of ‘person’ is apt for saying someone is a ‘new person’ post trauma depends a whole lot on the actual details of the trauma in question.
Thanks for the detailed reply to the trauma case. Your delineation between various definitions of personhood are helpful for interrogating my other questions as well.
If it is the case that a “new” welfare subject can be “created” by a traumatic brain injury, then it might well be the case that new welfare subjects are created as one’s life progresses. This implies that, as we age, welfare subjects effectively die and new ones are reborn. However, we don’t worry about this because 1. we can’t prevent it and 2. it’s not clear when this happens / if it ever happens fully (perhaps there is always a hint of one’s old self in one’s new self, so a “new” welfare subject is never truly created).
Given the same argument applies to non-human animals, we could reasonably assume that we can’t prevent this loss and recreation of welfare subjects. Moreover, we would probably come to the same conclusions about the badness of the death of the animals, even if throughout their lives they exist as multiple welfare subjects that we should care about. Where it becomes morally questionable is in considering non-human animals whose lives are worse than not worth living. Then, there should be increased moral concern for factory farmed animals given we accept that: 1. their lives are worse than not worth living; 2. they instantiate different welfare subjects throughout there life and 3. there is something worse about 2 different subjects each suffering for 1 year than 1 subject suffering for 2 years. (Again I don’t think I accept premise 2 or 3 of this conclusion, I just wanted to take the hypothetical to its fullest conclusion.)
“If it is the case that a “new” welfare subject can be “created” by a traumatic brain injury, then it might well be the case that new welfare subjects are created as one’s life progresses. This implies that, as we age, welfare subjects effectively die and new ones are reborn.”
I am not sure this follows. Even if we granted that traumatic brain injury could result in a new welfare subject—which would depend on (i) what welfare subjects are, and (ii) what happens in in brain injury—whether the same thing would happen during the aging process would depend on whether whatever relevant thing happens in the brain injury happens in aging. (For my part, I do not see why this would be the case. Maybe you are thinking of natural neurological changes that happens as we get older?)
And let me add this. The most neutral way of understanding welfare subjects, to my mind, is just what we say in the report: an individual S be a welfare subject if and only if things can be non-instrumentally good or bad for S. Assuming that our theory of welfare subjects is subordinate to our theory of well-being or welfare, then a welfare subject will just be the kind of thing that can accrue welfare goods and bads—whatever those are.
Suppose now that x has a traumatic brain injury at t1. We can then ask:
Is there still a welfare subject at t2?
Is y at t2 (post trauma)the same welfare subject as x at t1?
The answer to (1) depends on whether whatever is there at t2 can accrue welfare goods and bads. And that depends on what those goods and bads are. If, for example, we adopted a desire-satisfaction view, and the brain injury knocked out the ability to have desires, then tjerewould no longer be a welfare subject at t2.
The answer to (2) depends not just on whether there is still a welfare subject at t2 [so a ‘yes’ answer to (1)], but also the kind of thing x fundamentally is—maybe a forensic person, maybe something else—which will determine its persistence conditions, and thus whether it can survive brain injury. (Compare: I am a resident of Texas, but this does have anything to do with what I am fundamentally, as I can survive if I move somewhere else. If I am a forensic person but only in the way I am a Texan, then I can survive not being a forensic person. And if being a welfare subject has nothing to do with being a forensic person, then I can survive as a welfare subject without surviving as a forensic person.) I would assume that if x at t1 = y at t2, then we have the very same welfare subject too, so long as being a welfare subject comes automatically with whatever it takes for us to persist over time.
Thanks for writing this up! It was helpful to give a concrete example to bolster the argument you made in the last post.
I’m curious if anybody has considered temporality as an element of this question? Some (maybe) relevant questions:
Does my current brain constitute the “same” conscious system as I did when I was 2 years old?
What about somebody who undergoes a traumatic brain injury and becomes a “new person” with regard to personality/memory/learned behaviors?
If congruity/consistency between one’s self(ves) at different life-stages is related to memory, might non-human animals actually have far more conscious (sub)systems over their lifetimes than humans?
What does this imply about death? If some factory-farmed animals have lives that are worse than worth living, do we have even more evidence that they would be better off dying sooner (before they develop more conscious systems/subsystems)?
If these ideas have any amount of credence, how might we possibly quantify this?
I have little background in philosophy of mind, and there’s a good chance your team has already considered/debunked these ideas, but I wanted to throw them out there as food for thought anyway.
Hi Jasper—Thanks for these interesting questions. So speaking for myself, I did not take up the temporality issue—at least not in the way you seem to be suggestion without these cases. I can say something about your brain injury question though. The term ‘person’ is used in different ways. Sometimes it is used to just mean whatever we are fundamentally. So, if a traumatic brain injury resulted in a numerically distinct person in this sense, then it would be the same thing as death and then ‘birth’ of a new person. In that case, if there was a welfare subject pre-trauma, then there will be a new welfare subject post-trauma, so long as whatever capacities necessary and sufficient for being a welfare subject are preserved.
On another usage, being a “new person” is just metaphorical, as in what I might say to my daughter if she came home from college super interested in Goth stuff. (My daughter is not quite 5 yet, but who knows…)
Finally, some use ‘person’ in a Lockean (after John Locke) forensic sense, where forensic persons are the kinds of things which can be held morally responsible for their actions, for which prudential concern is rational, etc. There are all sorts of tricky issues here, but one possibility is that *you* can survive even if you do not survive as the same forensic person. Perhaps something like that can happen in certain cases of brain trauma. For example, maybe whatever survives post-trauma is not morally responsible for any pre-trauma actions—precisely because there are none of the same memories, personality, beliefs, and behavioral dispositions. I’d have to think more on how this connection to questions about being/counting welfare subjects, though.
I think which of these different sense of ‘person’ is apt for saying someone is a ‘new person’ post trauma depends a whole lot on the actual details of the trauma in question.
Thanks for the detailed reply to the trauma case. Your delineation between various definitions of personhood are helpful for interrogating my other questions as well.
If it is the case that a “new” welfare subject can be “created” by a traumatic brain injury, then it might well be the case that new welfare subjects are created as one’s life progresses. This implies that, as we age, welfare subjects effectively die and new ones are reborn. However, we don’t worry about this because 1. we can’t prevent it and 2. it’s not clear when this happens / if it ever happens fully (perhaps there is always a hint of one’s old self in one’s new self, so a “new” welfare subject is never truly created).
Given the same argument applies to non-human animals, we could reasonably assume that we can’t prevent this loss and recreation of welfare subjects. Moreover, we would probably come to the same conclusions about the badness of the death of the animals, even if throughout their lives they exist as multiple welfare subjects that we should care about. Where it becomes morally questionable is in considering non-human animals whose lives are worse than not worth living. Then, there should be increased moral concern for factory farmed animals given we accept that: 1. their lives are worse than not worth living; 2. they instantiate different welfare subjects throughout there life and 3. there is something worse about 2 different subjects each suffering for 1 year than 1 subject suffering for 2 years. (Again I don’t think I accept premise 2 or 3 of this conclusion, I just wanted to take the hypothetical to its fullest conclusion.)
Hi again. Regarding this comment:
“If it is the case that a “new” welfare subject can be “created” by a traumatic brain injury, then it might well be the case that new welfare subjects are created as one’s life progresses. This implies that, as we age, welfare subjects effectively die and new ones are reborn.”
I am not sure this follows. Even if we granted that traumatic brain injury could result in a new welfare subject—which would depend on (i) what welfare subjects are, and (ii) what happens in in brain injury—whether the same thing would happen during the aging process would depend on whether whatever relevant thing happens in the brain injury happens in aging. (For my part, I do not see why this would be the case. Maybe you are thinking of natural neurological changes that happens as we get older?)
And let me add this. The most neutral way of understanding welfare subjects, to my mind, is just what we say in the report: an individual S be a welfare subject if and only if things can be non-instrumentally good or bad for S. Assuming that our theory of welfare subjects is subordinate to our theory of well-being or welfare, then a welfare subject will just be the kind of thing that can accrue welfare goods and bads—whatever those are.
Suppose now that x has a traumatic brain injury at t1. We can then ask:
Is there still a welfare subject at t2?
Is y at t2 (post trauma) the same welfare subject as x at t1?
The answer to (1) depends on whether whatever is there at t2 can accrue welfare goods and bads. And that depends on what those goods and bads are. If, for example, we adopted a desire-satisfaction view, and the brain injury knocked out the ability to have desires, then tjere would no longer be a welfare subject at t2.
The answer to (2) depends not just on whether there is still a welfare subject at t2 [so a ‘yes’ answer to (1)], but also the kind of thing x fundamentally is—maybe a forensic person, maybe something else—which will determine its persistence conditions, and thus whether it can survive brain injury. (Compare: I am a resident of Texas, but this does have anything to do with what I am fundamentally, as I can survive if I move somewhere else. If I am a forensic person but only in the way I am a Texan, then I can survive not being a forensic person. And if being a welfare subject has nothing to do with being a forensic person, then I can survive as a welfare subject without surviving as a forensic person.) I would assume that if x at t1 = y at t2, then we have the very same welfare subject too, so long as being a welfare subject comes automatically with whatever it takes for us to persist over time.
Thanks for fleshing this out—that all makes sense to me.