Psychological Deprogramming–Reprogramming and the Right Kind of Cause

Abstract

This paper makes use of an example of Williams’s (1970), an example involving so-called psychological deprogramming–reprogramming, in arguing that procedures such as Teletransportation would not provide what matters to us in our self-interested concern for the future. This is so because the beliefs and other psychological states of a resultant person would not be appropriately causally dependent on any beliefs or other psychological states of the original person.