Philosophical Problems

Does it make sense to think we can duplicate persons, so that people can divide just like cells? Since splitting means dividing one person into two people, the obvious answer seems to be that persons are unable to undergo fission. By looking at the old example of the Ship of Theseus we find that it is possible to think of artefacts dividing, in that one ship can become two. More precisely, a set of time-slices that constitute one ship can be shared by two different future sets of time slices that constitute two different ships. Exactly the same can be said of person fission of the sort that could happen using Star-Trek-style teleporter technology.

Copyright 2013 Jack Reynolds / La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.

What makes me the person I am? Two popular answers are that my identity depends on the continuing existence of my body, or that my identity depends on some psychological continuity, such as the functioning and extent of memory. The seventeenth-century English philosopher, John Locke, argued that conditions of identity are relative to the kind or sort of thing we are thinking about. Living things are not just masses of matter but organized assemblages of parts that support growth, nutrition and sometimes self-repair. We explain why Locke thought that A could be the same human being as B, but not the same person, and discuss Locke's idea that memory can be an adequate condition for personal identity.

Copyright 2013 Jack Reynolds / La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.

What makes me the person I am? Two popular answers are that my identity depends on the continuing existence of my body, or that my identity depends on some psychological continuity, such as the functioning and extent of memory. The seventeenth-century English philosopher, John Locke, argued that conditions of identity are relative to the kind or sort of thing we are thinking about. Living things are not just masses of matter but organized assemblages of parts that support growth, nutrition and sometimes self-repair. We explain why Locke thought that A could be the same human being as B, but not the same person, and discuss Locke's idea that memory can be an adequate condition for personal identity.

Copyright 2013 Jack Reynolds / La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.

Does it make sense to think we can duplicate persons, so that people can divide just like cells? Since splitting means dividing one person into two people, the obvious answer seems to be that persons are unable to undergo fission. By looking at the old example of the Ship of Theseus we find that it is possible to think of artefacts dividing, in that one ship can become two. More precisely, a set of time-slices that constitute one ship can be shared by two different future sets of time slices that constitute two different ships. Exactly the same can be said of person fission of the sort that could happen using Star-Trek-style teleporter technology.

Copyright 2013 Jack Reynolds / La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.

Does it make sense to think we can duplicate persons, so that people can divide just like cells? Since splitting means dividing one person into two people, the obvious answer seems to be that persons are unable to undergo fission. By looking at the old example of the Ship of Theseus we find that it is possible to think of artefacts dividing, in that one ship can become two. More precisely, a set of time-slices that constitute one ship can be shared by two different future sets of time slices that constitute two different ships. Exactly the same can be said of person fission of the sort that could happen using Star-Trek-style teleporter technology.

Copyright 2013 Jack Reynolds / La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.

What makes me the person I am? Two popular answers are that my identity depends on the continuing existence of my body, or that my identity depends on some psychological continuity, such as the functioning and extent of memory. The seventeenth-century English philosopher, John Locke, argued that conditions of identity are relative to the kind or sort of thing we are thinking about. Living things are not just masses of matter but organized assemblages of parts that support growth, nutrition and sometimes self-repair. We explain why Locke thought that A could be the same human being as B, but not the same person, and discuss Locke's idea that memory can be an adequate condition for personal identity.

Copyright 2013 Jack Reynolds / La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.

What makes me the person I am? Two popular answers are that my identity depends on the continuing existence of my body, or that my identity depends on some psychological continuity, such as the functioning and extent of memory. The seventeenth-century English philosopher, John Locke, argued that conditions of identity are relative to the kind or sort of thing we are thinking about. Living things are not just masses of matter but organized assemblages of parts that support growth, nutrition and sometimes self-repair. We explain why Locke thought that A could be the same human being as B, but not the same person, and discuss Locke's idea that memory can be an adequate condition for personal identity.

Copyright 2013 Jack Reynolds / La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.

Is time travel possible? An introduction to the philosophy – not the science – of time travel, asking whether time travel can be described without contradictions. To answer the question we look at the movie Back to the Future, and the UK TV series, Doctor Who. The Grandfather paradox is also discussed: could you go back in time and kill your grandfather even before he met your grandmother?

Copyright 2013 Jack Reynolds / La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.

Is time travel possible? An introduction to the philosophy – not the science – of time travel, asking whether time travel can be described without contradictions. To answer the question we look at the movie Back to the Future, and the UK TV series, Doctor Who. The Grandfather paradox is also discussed: could you go back in time and kill your grandfather even before he met your grandmother?

Copyright 2013 Jack Reynolds / La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.

Can the past be changed? It looks as if time travellers could wreak havoc by interfering with things that have already happened. If what is past cannot be changed, does this commit us to determinism? We ask what would happen in the scenario of the Terminator movies if the Terminator really erased John Connor from the history of the fictional world in which the movie is set.

Copyright 2013 Jack Reynolds / La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.