Mémoire numérisé par la Direction des bibliothèques de l'Université de Montréal.

Undergraduate honors paper--Mount Holyoke College, 2005. Dept. of Philosophy. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 167-169).

Lim Wai-Man Jenifer. / Thesis submitted in: December 2002. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 102-105). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / Abstract --- p.i / Acknowledgements --- p.iii / INTRODUCTION --- p.1 / Chapter 1. --- The Problem of Personal Identity --- p.1 / Chapter 2. --- Personal Identity: A Review --- p.3 / Chapter 3. --- Different Versions of the Theory of Personal Identity --- p.6 / Chapter 3.1 --- Different Versions of the Physical Theory --- p.6 / Chapter 3.2 --- Different Versions of the Memory theory --- p.8 / Chapter 4. --- Cases of Exchanging Bodies --- p.14 / Chapter 5. --- Conclusion --- p.17 / Chapter CHAPTER ONE --- THE REDUPLICATION ARGUMENT --- p.19 / Chapter 1. --- Introduction --- p.19 / Chapter 2. --- Shoemaker's Brownson Case --- p.21 / Chapter 3. --- The Reduplication Argument --- p.22 / Chapter 4. --- "Memory Claims, Bodily Presence and Reincarnation" --- p.27 / Chapter 5. --- Objections to the Reduplication Argument --- p.31 / Chapter 5.1 --- The Two Cases are Different --- p.31 / Chapter 5.2 --- A Counter-Example by Robert Coburn --- p.33 / Chapter 5.3 --- A Too High Standard Set by the Reduplication Argument --- p.36 / Chapter 6. --- Conclusion --- p.38 / Chapter CHAPTER TWO --- THE NONDUPLICATION ARGUMENT --- p.40 / Chapter 1. --- Introduction --- p.40 / Chapter 2. --- Story 1: The Memory Theorist's Understanding of 'Exchanging Bodies' --- p.41 / Chapter 3. --- Story 2: Williams' Analysis of the Experiment --- p.44 / Chapter 4. --- Conventionalist Decision and the Best Candidate Theory --- p.49 / Chapter 5. --- Conceptual Undecidability --- p.51 / Chapter 6. --- The Relationships between Criteria and Perspectives --- p.52 / Chapter 7. --- Conclusion: 'Exchanging Bodies' as an Artificial Neatness --- p.55 / Chapter CHAPTER THREE --- PARFIT'S THEORY --- p.56 / Chapter 1. --- Introduction --- p.56 / Chapter 2. --- The Nature of Personal Identity --- p.57 / Chapter 2.1 --- The Basic Teletransportation Case --- p.60 / Chapter 2.2 --- The Branch-Line Teletransportation Case --- p.62 / Chapter 2.3 --- Physical Spectrum and Combined Spectrum --- p.65 / Chapter 2.4 --- Personal Identity: A Conceptual or Linguistic Issue --- p.68 / Chapter 3. --- The (Un)-Importance of Personal Identity --- p.71 / Chapter 3.1 --- Cases of Brain Operation --- p.71 / Chapter 3.2 --- Cases of Duplication --- p.73 / Chapter 3.3 --- Survival and its Moral Significance --- p.76 / Chapter 4. --- Conclusion --- p.78 / Chapter CHAPTER FOUR --- CONCLUSION: THE IMPORTANCE OF ONE'S IDENTITY --- p.79 / Chapter 1. --- Introduction --- p.79 / Chapter 2. --- The Dependence on External Facts Versus the Principle of Intrinsicness --- p.81 / Chapter 2.1 --- The Non-Branching Memory Theory --- p.81 / Chapter 2.2 --- The Best Candidate Theory --- p.86 / Chapter 3. --- The Importance (or Unimportance) of Personal Identity --- p.92 / Chapter 3.1 --- Unimportance: ´بPersonal Identity' as a Linguistic Issue? --- p.92 / Chapter 3.2 --- Importance: Subjective Linkage of the First Person --- p.94 / Chapter 4. --- Conclusion --- p.98 / References --- p.102

In this dissertation, I discuss two distributive principles in moral philosophy: Derek Parfit's Prioritarianism and Egalitarianism. I attempt to defend a version of Egalitarianism, which I call Weighted Egalitarianism. Although Parfit claims that Egalitarianism is subject to what he calls the Levelling Down Objection, I show (a) that my proposed Weighted Egalitarianism is not subject to the Objection, and (b) that it gives priority to the worse off people. The real difference between the two principles lies in how the weight of each person's well-being is determined. Prioritarianism assumes that there is a moral scale of the goodness of well-being, independently of distributions of people's well-being. I raise two objections to this claim: firstly, it is hard to believe that the choice of the level of well-being affects our distributive judgement; secondly, it is hard to believe that there is such a moral scale independently of distributions of people's well-being. On the other hand, Weighted Egalitarianism claims that the weight is given by the rank order position of the person in the ranking by well-being level. This means that, in Weighted Egalitarianism, the goodness of a distribution is an increasing, linear function of people's well-being. Weighted Egalitarianism is not affected by the choice of the level of people's well-being. Nor does it require require the moral scale of the goodness of well-being independently of distributions of people's well-being. Leximin, which might be a version of Prioritarianism, avoids my objections. But it is hard to support Leximin, because it rules out the trade off between the better off and the worse off. I conclude that Weighted Egalitarianism is more acceptable than Prioritarianism.

This thesis examines Derek Parfit's theory of personal identity. Parfit argues that what matters in the continued existence of persons through time is psychological connectedness and continuity (relation R), and that the identity relation does not matter. He makes this claim through a series of arguments which, he says, inevitably lead to the conclusions that relation R is the only relation that matters, in all cases. I argue that Parfit does not convincingly demonstrate that relation R is in fact all that matters. In examining each of Parfit's arguments, I show that it is possible to draw conclusions that are inconsistent with those drawn by him. I argue that this shows Parfit's position to be an arbitrary one. If Parfit's arguments do not necessarily lead to the conclusion that relation R is all that matters in questions of survival, then his theory is not an adequate solution to the problem of personal identity.

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