Dilemma Of Identity

In “What We Believe Ourselves to Be”, Derek Parfit describes a dilemma of identity cause by using a tele transporter to travel. In this story a man uses steps into a tele-transporter to go from earth to Mars (Parfit). It removes his molecules in sequential order, and the teletransporter makes an exact copy of the molecules on Mars using matter from Mar as opposed to earth. Even though the person has the same memories and an identical physical state to his body on earth, other than in matter, the question arises on whether or not he is the same person (Parfit). The question is further complicated when a new tele-transportation device replicates the matter and makes the copy on Mars, but it ends up having adverse side effects that will kill …show more content…
I believe that the whole of identity can be defined by the parts of identity, namely the psychological and physical continuity of a person. To further my argument, I will explain how non-reductionist views are less accurate and more problematic in identifying oneself. A non-reductionist believes there are other things that play the part of identity that are unrecognizable to us and do not fit the aforementioned qualifications that I gave to define identity namely physical and psychological continuity (Parfit). An example of this type of thought is Descartes second meditation where he believes we are just thinking things that may only be a spiritual thinking being due to illusions tricking our bodies and mind (Descartes). The non reductionist believes identity is separate from both physical and mental states. This would mean that anything we relate to identity such as our thoughts and experience whether physical like feeling pain after running into a chair or mental ,like feeling empathy when your friend is upset, is actually a falsity that we need to differentiate from identity. If the non-reductionist scenario were to exist in this story it may go like this, the man who teltransported was lost in the process both physically on a molecular level, the molecules were torn apart and not put back together due to a glitch in the new teltransportation system, and his memories ceased to exist due to his brain and thoughts being wiped out , yet something remained of him in the nothingness that acted as his identity. If he were nothing, however it can be agreed upon there is nothing to identify with, so the non-reductionist theory is highly unlikely and slightly