Memory and mineness in personal identity

Abstract

Stanley Klein and Shaun Nichols (2012) describe the case of patient R.B., whose memories (they claim) lacked the sense of “mineness” usually conveyed by memory. Klein and Nichols take R.B.’s case to show that the sense of mineness is merely a contingent feature of memory, which they see as raising two problems for memory-based accounts of personal identity. First, they see it as potentially undermining the appeal of memory-based accounts. Second, they take it to show that the conception of quasi-memory that underpins many memory-based accounts is inadequate. I argue that Klein and Nichols’ characterization of R.B.’s experience is implausible; as a result, the problems that they describe for memory-based accounts of personal identity do not arise.

Keywords:

• Experimental philosophy
• memory
• personal identity

Acknowledgements

I am very grateful to Neil Levy (who kindly read two separate drafts of this paper) and Piers Benn for helpful comments, and to two anonymous reviewers who also provided useful feedback.

Notes

1. P₁ must remember P’s experiences “from the inside,” in Shoemaker’s (1984) terminology.

2. This rough characterization misrepresents aspects of some memory-based accounts. For example, Lewis (1976) takes the psychological links that constitute identity to hold between person stages, not between persons.

3. Klein and Nichols indicate that they are concerned with nomological possibility (2012, p. 683). They refer to it again in their conclusion, where they claim that mineness is a by-product of memory in that “[t]hat is just how episodic memory happens to work” (Klein & Nichols, 2012, p. 696).

4. In section 5, I outline two ways to interpret the claim that mineness is a contingent feature of memory, and argue that the stronger interpretation is appropriate. I have applied the stronger interpretation here.

5. Locke is taken to hold that identity consists solely in memory by, among others, Flew (1951, p. 55), Mackie (1976, pp. 178–79), Noonan (1989, p. 9), and Parfit (1984, p. 205). However, Locke never explicitly endorsed this view, and some have argued that he held a weaker view (e.g., Gustafsson, 2010).

6. As far as I can ascertain, comments by R.B. other than those reported in Klein and Nichols (2012) are unavailable elsewhere. Klein discusses R.B. in various other places—including Klein (2012a, 2012b, 2013a, 2013b, 2014a, 2014b, 2015a)—but these contain no additional relevant information about R.B., and the reader is referred to Klein and Nichols (2012) for a full discussion of R.B.

7. This conclusion is endorsed by Sacks (2013).

8. Comparing R.B.’s experience to cryptomnesia is intended only to illustrate that old episodic memories can be mistaken for new imaginings. We have no reason to believe that R.B. experienced cryptomnesia since we have no reason to believe that his unusual memories were forgotten then rediscovered.

9. Klein and Nichols do not spell out this implication for quasi-memory theorists. I infer it from their view that this issue is important because “[t]he notion of quasi-memory is supposed to undergird a theory of personal identity” (2012, p. 694).

10. Even so, Parfit’s claim that quasi-memory can be conceived as memory minus the belief that the depicted experiences are one’s own, given his view that quasi-memory can replace memory in accounting for identity, is controversial. John McDowell, Quassim Cassam, and David Wiggins have argued that this conception of quasi-memory is parasitic on the idea of memory, and that therefore it cannot replace memory in the way intended by Parfit. I have argued elsewhere that, whilst this objection applies to quasi-memory as Parfit introduces it, his main conclusion—that what matters in survival is not identity—demands only on a weaker, more plausible conception of quasi-memory (Roache, 2006).