If you punish a 94 year old for the crimes of the 21 year old version of himself, you're just punishing the wrong person.
Personal identity does not endure over that span of tme. Don't believe philosophers if they start banging on about transitive identity.
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@PhilosophyExp And yet I feel sharply guilty for things that the 30-year-ago version of me did. Am I just being irrational? -
@TorquilMacneil Did your 30 years ago self feel sharply guilty...? -
@PhilosophyExp For some things yes, for other no. I find it hard to believe that that feeling is in some sense a mistake. -
@TorquilMacneil Surely you wouldn't take an absence of feelings of guilt as being a reliable indicator of absence of culpability? So... -
@PhilosophyExp But if the person who did those things is in no meaningful sense me, it is a 'mistake' of some sort to feel guilt, no? -
@TorquilMacneil Yes. My point is the presence or absence of guilt is not in and of itself a reliable indicator of culpability. -
@PhilosophyExp I get that, but you are also claiming that future me/you is in no meaningful sense the same person as now-me/you, right? -
@TorquilMacneil Well, more that any meaningful sense one can give of it will turn out to be deficient in terms of what we standardly mean
End of conversation
New conversation -
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@PhilosophyExp Personal identity doesn't endure through some TBI. But who draws distinctions and where and how?Thanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
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@PhilosophyExp yeah but a court would have fun arguing you can't punish a 30 year old for something they did when they were 25...Thanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
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@PhilosophyExp Or for something they did last year...73 is relative. Why not 70 or 75 or 20. Where do you draw a line? A slippery slope.Thanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
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@PhilosophyExp This seems to me to be wrong. Personal identity is not unchanged over time, but there is continuity as well as change.Thanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
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