The Frustrating Problem For Four-Dimensionalism (forthcoming in Philosophical Studies) A.P. Taylor 1. Introduction Metaphysical theories often have important consequences for our ethics. Thus we have reason to carefully reflect on our ethical commitments when deciding whether to endorse a given metaphysical view. We should strive for an ontology that best complements the normative views we hold most deeply. When we discover that a metaphysical theory has unforeseen and unappealing ethical consequences, this should give us at least some reason to doubt that theory.1 Perhaps no metaphysical theory has enjoyed a more rapid growth in the last century than the four-dimensionalist theory of the persistence of physical objects.2 According to four-dimensionalism objects are “spread out” across spacetime, and have temporal parts as well as spatial parts.3 They persist by having different temporal parts in different regions of spacetime. This contrasts with another popular theory of persistence, the three-dimensionalist account, according to which objects have only spatial parts and are “wholly present” at 1 This will no doubt strike many readers as an inversion of the usual order of philosophical operations, according to which we should do the metaphysics first and worry about the ethical consequences later. However, I think there is something to be said for preferring metaphysical views that complement our existing ethical beliefs and commitments with a minimum of revision. Perhaps some revision will be necessary in the end, but revision should be a last resort. 2 The ever-growing list of philosophers who endorse four-dimensionalism, includes some of the most important figures in twentieth century philosophy: Armstrong (1980), Carnap (1967), Lewis (1983a; 1983b; 1986), Quine (1960), Russell (1927), and Whitehead (1920) all held versions of the theory; as well as many excellent and able philosophers of twenty-first century, such as Balashov (2010), Hawley (2001), Heller (1999), Hudson (2001), and Sider (2001). 3 According to Sider (2001, p. 59), x is an instantaneous temporal part of y at instant t =df (i) x exists at, but only at t, (ii) x is part of y at t, and (iii) x overlaps at t everything that is part of y at t. Except where noted, I shall use ‘instantaneous temporal part’ and ‘stage’ synonymously. Thus a person-stage is just an instantaneous temporal part of a person. The term ‘subperson’ has a wider extension (see Section 3 below for details). 1 each moment of their existence.4 Given the widespread interest in the view, it is surprising that very little has been said about its ethical consequences.5 The defenders and opponents of four-dimensionalism have largely focused on the metaphysical arguments for and against the view and neglected to think deeply about its ethical implications. The present work is intended to help fill this lacuna. I do so by focusing on the concept of well-being (‘welfare’ or ultimate good). Since well-being is an important concept in ethics, the ethically serious four-dimensionalist should have good reason to be interested in developing an account of well-being that best coheres with her chosen ontology. Perhaps the most widely held theory of well-being amongst philosophers is the desire satisfaction account according to which an individual’s life goes better for them if more of their desires are satisfied and fewer are frustrated.6 In this paper, I develop a new ethical argument against four-dimensionalism, namely, that four-dimensionalism and the desire satisfaction account of well-being are incompatible. This is because the four-dimensionalist ontology includes many more beings with desires capable of frustration than we ordinarily suppose. As a result, for every person whose desires are satisfied, there will be many shorterlived individuals (‘person-stages’ or ‘subpersons’) who share the person’s desires but who do not exist long enough to see those desires satisfied; not only this, but in many cases their desires are frustrated so that the desires of the beings in whom they are embedded as proper temporal parts may be fulfilled. I call this the frustrating problem for four-dimensionalism. In the first half of the paper I will 4 Three-dimensionalism has had many prominent defenders including: Baker (2000), Chisholm (1976), Geach (1972a), Johnston (1992), Lowe (1989), van Inwagen (1990), and Zimmerman (1999). 5 To my knowledge, the best discussions of the ethical consequences of four-dimensionalism are to be found in Hudson (1999, 2001, pt. II), and Olson (2010). 6 Advocates of desire-satisfactionism, of one form or another, include: Brandt (1979), Rawls (1971), Overvold (1980), Haslett (1990), Noggle (1999), Heathwood (2006). 2 lay the groundwork for understanding the frustrating problem, culminating in a elucidation of the problem itself, and then in the second half, I will examine six possible responses to the frustrating problem on behalf of the four-dimensionalist, (i) the Parfit (1984) inspired claim that identity is not what matters, (ii) the personal pronoun revisionism of Noonan (2010), (iii) the indirect concern account of Hudson (2001), (iv) the sensible stages account of Lewis (1986), (v) a multiple-concepts account of desire satisfaction, and (vi) a No Desire View according to which subpersons have no mental states and thus no desires to frustrate. I argue that none of these solutions will help the four-dimensionalist; she does better to reject the desire satisfaction theory, while the defender of the desire satisfaction theory does better to reject four-dimensionalism. 2. Four Dimensionalism As I shall use the term ‘four-dimensionalism’ refers to an ontology of persisting physical objects (including human persons) that combines perdurantism with a commitment to mereological universalism. Perdurantism identifies physical objects with ‘fusions’ or ‘sums’ of temporal parts. These fusions are colloquially referred to as ‘worms’ on account of their elongated four-dimensional shape. Rather than “sweeping through time” as on the three-dimensionalist’s picture, objects are “spread out across time.” The basic idea of perdurantism is often conveyed via an analogy with spatial parts.7 Just as a road might extend from Boston to New York City, so you extend from your birth to the present. And just as we can subdivide the road into its Boston part and its New York part, we can subdivide you into various instantaneous ‘stages’ or ‘time slices.’ Each of these stages will have a certain height, weight, eye color, and set of beliefs, which 7 For a paradigmatic example of such a use of the spatial analogy, see Sider (2001, chapter 1). 3 will determine your height, weight, eye color, and set of beliefs at the time at which that slice exists. It is important to point out that for the perdurantist it is the properties of the stages that determine the properties of the worm. If you, the person-worm, are presently sitting in front of a computer, then this is because you have a temporal part located at this particular region of spacetime that is sitting in front of a computer. Mereological universalism is a theory of the composition of objects according to which for any group of two or more objects, however temporally or spatially gappy, the xs, there is another object y such that the xs together compose y. For example various pieces of metal and wood combine to form your desk, and various bits of hydrogen make up the Sun. One benefit of mereological universalism is that it gives us a world complete with all of the objects of ordinary everyday acquaintance. But it also tells us that there many more objects than the ones we’re used to thinking about. As Quine puts it, the theory tells us that physical objects are “simply the content, however heterogenous of some portion of spacetime, however disconnected or gerrymandered.”8 Thus, not only is your desk an object composed of many smaller objects, but likewise the coins in your pocket, my left shoe, and the Eiffel Tower constitute an object, albeit one for which we have no name (and in which we have no interest). If mereological universalism is true, then there are many many more objects in the world than we previously believed. And the objects of everyday acquaintance are but a small subset of the objects that populate our environment. 3. Subpersons According to the four-dimensionalist human persons are physical objects like 8 Quine (1960, p. 171). 4 any others, which is to say that human persons are composed of temporal parts. We can be arbitrarily sliced, and our parts summed, like any other physical object. The resulting slices are called ‘person-stages’ or ‘person-slices’ when they are temporally minimal parts that exist only instantaneously, and they are called ‘person-segments’ when they are temporally extended parts that exist through intervals of varying sizes. For every discrete instant of time at which you exist there will be a person-stage, or minimal subperson as I will call them, composed by your temporal part at that time and only that time.9 And for every discrete interval of time lasting less than your entire lifespan there will be a personsegment, or extended subperson as I will call them, constituted by your temporal part(s) at those times and only those times. (For ease of exposition, I will usually refer to both minimal subpersons and extended subpersons simply as ‘subpersons,’ accept where the argument requires that I make a distinction between them.) There is one subperson that is composed of your temporal parts while you are reading this sentence, for example, and another subperson that is composed of your temporal parts while you are reading the whole paper, and still another subperson that is composed of your temporal parts from the moment of your birth until midnight tomorrow. All of these subpersons share your present temporal part, thus if you are seated then they are also seated. And all of them likewise share your brain, and your thoughts. If you are thinking about your favorite café in Paris, or where you left your keys, then they are also thinking about Paris and your keys. What’s more none of them is identical with the others, since each is composed of a different set of temporal parts. There are also temporally gappy subpersons that are composed of, for instance, all and only your temporal parts while you are lecturing on Kant’s categorical imperative; or while 9 Olson (2010) refers to these beings by the plural ‘subpeople.’ 5 you happen to be in the State of Wisconsin; or while you are facing the North Pole. There is even a subperson composed of a single temporal part at some vanishingly small instant of your life. What is life like for one of these subpersons? David Lewis (1983b) characterizes their existence in a provocative passage: It does many of same things that a person does: it talks and walks and thinks, it has beliefs and desires, it has a size and shape and location. It even has a temporal duration. But only a brief one, for it does not last long…it begins to exist abruptly, and it abruptly ceases to exist soon after. Hence a stage cannot do everything that a person can do, for it cannot do those things that a person does over a longish interval.10 Here Lewis is talking about momentary temporally extended subpersons (note: Lewis calls them ‘person-stages,’ but his stages seem to be a little more robust than the point-like temporally minimal subpersons favored by the stage theorist since he conceives of them as lasting at least long enough to think and it is not clear that any temporally minimal subperson could think on its own).11 They walk, talk, think, believe, and have desires. Presumably they can feel pleasure and pain. They have, in essence, all that typically makes one at least a prima-facie candidate for moral status. Lewis stresses that we must not think of his person-stages as the building blocks out of which persons are made. This makes them disanaloguous with the spatial parts of your desk. Consider the first piece of wood that was hewn and shaped for your desk. By itself it was not a desk, it had to be added to a larger fusion first. There is no possible world where an exact physical duplicate 10 11 Lewis (1983), p. 76 For more on the stage theory see Hawley (2001) and Sider (1997, 2001). 6 counterpart of that piece of wood is itself a desk. By way of contrast, your first person-stage had everything required for personhood. Some of the subpersons that constitute you are vanishingly short-lived, but others are nearly as long lived as you. In fact at least one subperson will stretch from the moment of your birth until the moment just before you die. This subperson will do virtually everything you do. The only difference between you and it will be a single instant of further existence. Surely that subperson will have everything required for moral status. After all, that subperson is an exact physical duplicate of some counterpart of yours at another possible world (the world where you die a moment sooner than you do in the actual world) and at that world your counterpart is a person. 3. Desire Satisfaction Theory The four-dimensionalist ontology includes many subpersons for each person. This raises the question of our ethical obligations with respect to these subpersons. If subpersons have everything that is required for moral consideration on a par with the moral consideration we commonly afford persons, then this means that we have an obligation, in so far as it is possible, to extend to them our characteristic ethical treatment of persons. This in turn gives us a reason to look for a theory of well-being that will be able to equally treat both persons and subpersons. ‘Welfare’ or ‘well-being’ refers to that which is ultimately good for some individual. Theories of well-being are generally taken to answer the question: in virtue of what do we determine that an individual’s life is going well for them or poorly for them? They give us a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for determining whether an individual’s life goes well for them, or poorly for them. 7 Theories of well-being are thus tied into the notion of an individual’s best interests or ultimate good. Whatever advances someone’s best interests or promotes their most ultimate good will be that which increases their well-being. It seems plausible to suppose that what makes my life go well for me is tied in to what makes my life seem to go well to me, namely the degree and frequency of the pleasures it presents to me, and the lack of pains. Call the view on which wellbeing consists of a balance of pleasure over pain hedonism.12 Meanwhile, the difficulty in isolating a single structural feature, value, or good that makes a life good for a person, has lead some philosophers to argue that a good life is one a life supplied with a range of the right sorts of goods. Such views are referred to as objective list theories.13 Finally, many philosophers maintain that what makes some individual x’s life go well for x is that on balance more of x’s desires are satisfied, and fewer are frustrated. This view is known the desire satisfaction theory. As Haybron (2008, p. 23) notes desire satisfaction theory is “currently, the theory to beat . . . [the] dominant account among economists and philosophers over the last century or so.” Desire satisfaction theories of well-being come in many forms. But I will confine our discussion to the most basic form of the view, which simply holds that a person’s life goes well for them if it contains on balance more satisfied desires and fewer frustrated desires, and that a person’s life goes worse for them if it contains on balance more frustrated desires and fewer satisfied desires. If this view is correct then what makes my life go well for me is that is that my desires are related to states of affairs in the world such that those states of affairs fulfill 12 Philosophers who’ve endorsed hedonism include: Feldman (2004), Crisp (2006), Bradley (2009), and Heathwood (2006). 13 Philosophers who can be characterized as defending an objective list theory include: Rawls (1971), Ross (1930), Frankena (1973). 8 my desires. Thus, on this view, well-being consists in a relation which takes in the first place subjective mental states of the individual (i.e. desires), and relates them to states of affairs of in the world in the second place.14 On the four-dimensionalist picture this amounts to a relation between some temporal parts of a person, namely the ones possessing the relevant desire, and some states of affairs in the world. Recall that on the four-dimensionalist view, it is the subperson that has the mental states and the person only has those mental states if the subperson has them. So every desire that a person has will be the desire of one or more of their subpersons.15 4. The Frustrating Problem The curious thing about the four-dimensionalist’s picture of the world is that it contains far more beings with desires than we ordinarily suppose. For every single person we count there are many more subpersons. This in turn leads to there being more individuals whose desires can be frustrated than we ordinarily suppose. And in fact, given that we can arbitrarily slice and sum subpersons, it follows that for every desire a person has there will be many subpersons who share that desire, but who do not exist at the time when that desire is fulfilled. Thus they are not constituents of the states of affairs that satisfy their desires. Their well-being is severely adversely affected. The result is a world filled with individuals whose desires are routinely frustrated. Not only this, but in many cases their desires are 14 One common refinement on this view has it that what really determines one’s well-being is that one’s ideal or all things considered desires are fulfilled, and not merely one’s subjective, or egotistical desires. I want to avoid this refinement and consider, instead, the simple view just outlined. I do this for two reasons: (i) ideal views have been critiqued for their inherent elitism, and not all desire satisfaction theorists accept them, and (ii) the Noonan style response that I will consider in section 5.2. works best if we take the subperson’s interests to align with their egotistical propositional attitudes. 15 In section 5.6 below I consider the possibility that this claim is wrong and that, while persons have mental states, subpersons do not. 9 frustrated so that the desires of the beings in whom they are embedded as proper temporal parts may be fulfilled. For example, consider the case of a person who decides to undergo a course of chemotherapy (involving severe sickness, pain, discomfort, and mental anguish) in order to combat their cancer. In making the decision to do undergo treatment, the person causes many subpersons to suffer in order that they (the person) might eventually enjoy a period of recovery and good health. But the subpersons also desire recovery and good health, though they shall not exist when that state of affairs obtains. Thus the desires of the subpersons are frustrated and their best interest and ultimate good is slavishly sacrificed for that of another individual. I call this the frustrating problem for the fourdimensionalist. At this point the four-dimensional desire satisfaction theorist might reply in a sort of platitudinous way that “life is not fair,” or that “the world can be a cruel place.” Perhaps it’s true that things are going badly for more individuals than we previously recognized, but this in itself is no reason to abandon either fourdimensionalism or the desire theory. Imagine that we found a new island of the coast of South America where the population was suffering from the most severe drought and disease, this would be unfortunate, but adding to the population of the disenfranchised hardly requires that we make wholesale changes in our metaphysical and ethical views.16 But this response misses the mark. It is not simply that four-dimensionalism adds to the population of suffering individuals that makes for the frustrating problem, the problem is that it adds to the population of suffering individuals whose interests could plausibly be said to differ from those of the persons in 16 I am indebted to Mark Spencer for first bringing the platitudinous reply to my attention. 10 whom they are embedded as temporal parts, and that in doing what is ultimately good for persons we must do what is ultimately bad for their subpersons. Setting aside the platitudinous reply, in the rest of the paper I want to turn to an examination of six further responses on the part of the four-dimensionalist. As we shall see, each of these responses faces its own difficulties. 5. Six Responses to the Frustrating Problem In this section I will examine six possible responses to the frustrating problem: the Parfit-inspired claim that identity is not what matters, the prounoun revisionism of Harold Noonan, Hudson’s indirect account, Lewis’s sensible stages view, a multiple concepts account of desire satisfaction, and the No Desire View according to which subpersons have no mental states. I will argue that none of these responses are convincing and that, as a result, the four-dimensionalist has reason to reject the desire satisfaction theory. A corollary of this conclusion is that the adherents of the desire satisfaction view have at least some reason to reject four-dimensionalism. 5. 1. Identity is Not What Matters Faced with a world filled with frustrated subpersons, the four-dimensionalist might be tempted to adopt the Parfit-inspired move of arguing that identity is not what matters.17 If this is correct, then it won’t matter that the subperson who desires a given state of affairs is not identical with the subperson (or person) who exists when that state of affairs obtains. All that will matter is that someone exists when that later state of affairs obtains, and that that someone is psychologically 17 A similar strategy is pioneered by Olson (2010). However, Olson’s target is not fourdimensionalism per se, but rather what he calls “the generous ontology” (as opposed to the sparse ontology he favors). The generous ontology appears to be his name for any ontology that allows for merelogical universalism, whether four-dimensionalist or three-dimensionalist. 11 continuous and connected to the subperson with the desire in an appropriate way. A theory such as this preserves the importance of desires, and the states of affairs that satisfty them, and recognizes the separateness of subpersons (and persons), but at the same time it minimizes the instances of frustration in the world by allowing later subpersons (and persons) to obtain the satisfactions of an earlier subperson’s desires. In Reasons and Persons (1986) Derek Parfit defends the thesis that “identity is not what matters in survival.” This contrasts with our commonsense thinking about practical deliberation. On the commonsense view, we have more reason to be concerned about what happens to some future individual if it is the case that we are identical with that individual, and less reason to be concerned if it is the case that we are not identical with that individual. Parfit argues, contrary to this view, that there are cases in which we will have reason to be concerned for a future individual even though it will be indeterminate whether or not they are identical with us. Why be specially concerned for them? Because for Parfit, it is not identity, but rather psychological continuity and connectedness that is the relation that matters (or as he calls it “relation R”). The centerpiece of this argument is the division case. Here’s how Parfit lays it out for us: My body is fatally injured, as are the brains of my two brothers. My brain is divided, and each half is successfully transplanted into the body of one of my brothers. Each of the resulting people believes that he is me, seems to remember my life, has my character, and is in every other way 12 psychologically continuous with me and he has a body that is very like mine.18 What happens to me in the division case? According to Parfit there are five possibilities: (i) I cease to exist and two new people come into existence as a result of the operation; (ii) I survive as one of the twins A, but not the other twin B; (iii) I survive as B but not as A; (iv) I survive as one person scattered across both A and B; and finally (v) it is an “empty question” whether I survive or do not survive—nothing much hinges on the answer. Parfit argues the best thing to say in this case is (v), whether I survive and how is an empty question. Defenders of the commonsense view that it really matters whether some future individual is identical with me are likely to bristle at this suggestion, but that is because they mistakenly take personal identity (or ‘identity’ for brevity’s sake) to be the relation that matters. All that truly matters, Parfit tells us, is that I will be Rrelated to both of the products of my division. Identity, for Parfit, is simply relation R plus a uniqueness, or no branching, clause and it is thus trivial and extrinsic. Thus it cannot be a component of what matters.19 The four-dimensionalist could try to avoid the frustrating problem by helping themselves to Parfit’s claim that identity is not what matters and arguing that as long as some person or subperson y, at time t2, when state of affairs S obtains, is R-related to the earlier subperson x, who desires, at t1, that S, then x’s desire is satisfied, and this is all that is required for x’s well-being to be positively affected. For example, if the subperson(s) currently located in my chair desires that this paper is well-received by my peers, then so long as some later (person or) subperson who is R-related to the subperson(s) in my chair is satisfied by the 18 19 Parfit (1986), pp. 254-255. For Parfit, personal identity consists in relation R + uniqueness. 13 obtaining of the state of affairs consisting in this paper being well-received by my peers, then the well being of the present subperson(s) will be positively affected. In short, the four-dimensionalist could argue that, while well-being for persons (and longer lived subpersons) consists in having the desires of earlier temporal parts satisfied by states of affairs involving one’s later temporal parts, for shorter lived subpersons—in virtue of their short lifespans—well-being consists in having their desires satisfied by states of affairs involving later persons or subpersons who although not strictly identical with them are nevertheless R-related to them. Making the Parfit inspired response to the frustrating problem requires the four-dimensionalist to argue that identity does not matter. But that argument is not available to the four-dimensionalist given her beliefs about the necessary and sufficient conditions for identity. David Lewis (1983a) agreed with Parfit that what matters is psychological continuity and connectedness, but he also believed that we could save the “commonsense platitude” that identity matters by recognizing that whenever we had psychological continuity and connectedness, we had all that was necessary for identity. He responded to the division case by arguing that what it really shows us is that there are two persons there all along. The two persons share all of their pre-operation stages, and diverge later on as a result of the operation. Parfit’s argument for identity not mattering relies on his claim that identity consists in relation R + uniqueness. Defining identity this way allows Parfit to reject the concept of identity, while maintaining that something, namely relation R, is what matters to us. But the four-dimensionalist takes relation R to be identity. She cannot then deny that identity matters, because were she to do so, she would have nothing left which did matter. And clearly, since we are concerned for our future survival, something does matter. 14 Given that something does matter, and that if four-dimensionalism is true, all that can matter is identity, I contend that the four-dimensionalist has at least a prima-facie reason to resist making a Parfit inspired move in light of the frustrating problem. 5. 2. Pronoun Revisionism Another solution that might appeal to the four-dimensionalist is a variation on Harold Noonan’s response to the thinking animal problem of Eric Olson (2002, 2007). Olson contends that when a human animal comes to constitute a human person, then there will be too many thinkers located wherever the animal is located. After all if the person uses its brain to think, and the animal uses the same brain, then both should be thinking. But this leads to the absurdity, among others, that one cannot know when one says “I am hungry” whether one is referring to the animal or to the person. Noonan (2003, pp. 205-208) responds that since ‘I’ is a personal pronoun then it must always refer to a person, and not the animal. Olson (2007) calls this the pronoun revisionism view. The four-dimensionalist might help themselves to a similar thesis to avoid frustrating problem, that is, they might argue that whenever the subperson expresses a desire using the personal pronoun, the desire it expresses is a desire for a state of affairs involving the person rather than itself. Thus all of a subperson’s desires would in fact be desires on behalf of the person, and if this is the case, then we needn’t worry about the subperson not being around when the desire is satisfied, so long as the desires of the person are satisfied. Noonan insists that it is analytically true that the referent of the personal 15 pronoun must always be a person. He thinks it is not enough to have thoughts about thoughts, but rather an individual must have the right sort of psychological persistence conditions in order to be the referent of ‘I’. Thus the animal cannot be the referent of ‘I’, since its persistence conditions will not be psychological but rather biological. The interesting claim for our present purposes is that even though the animal can utter the pronoun ‘I’ it cannot use that pronoun to refer to itself since it always refers to the person with psychological persistence conditions. According to Noonan the animal can think about itself, just not in the first person mode. Whenever the animal thinks “I am a person”, it is not thinking something false, since ‘I’ refers not to itself but to the person it constitutes. Likewise the four-dimensionalist might argue that the subperson will not have the proper persistence conditions to be the referent of the personal pronoun. For example, Hudson (2001, p. 121-127), argues that the best candidate for the title of person, is a being that (i) is not a proper part of any other thinking being, and (ii) is a what he calls a “maximal C-possessor.” To be a C-possessor, according to Hudson, is to possess what he calls “characteristics C,” a collection of cognitive capacities including self-consciousness and first-person intentional states, that are usually agreed to be relevant to personhood. To be a “maximal” Cpossessor is for it to be the case (i) that all of one’s temporal parts possess characteristics C, and (ii) that one not be a proper, temporal, part of any Cpossessor. Many subpersons according to a Hudson-like view will be Cpossessors20 (i.e., all of their temporal parts will possess characteristics C) but they will fail the anti-parthood criterion, thus, will have not have the proper persistence conditions for personhood. As a result whenever any such subperson 20 It bears reiterating that not all subpersons are instantaneous temporal parts. Many subpersons are longer-lived fusions of such parts, being sufficiently temporally “thick” to possess thoughts, beliefs, desires, and so forth. 16 thinks “I desire that my cancer goes into remission” it refers not to itself or its own desires, but the person of whom it is a part, and oto the person’s desires. But I think this Noonan inspired response fails. I shall offer three arguments against it. First, we could always introduce a new subpersonal pronoun, Schmy, that refers to the subperson rather than the person. In which case desires expressed using Schmy would be desires of the subperson and not simply desires on behalf of the person. This would allow the subperson to formulate and express its own desires, in which case four-dimensionalist would again have to give some account of the well-being of the subperson as distinct from the well-being of the person. Second, not all of our desires are expressed using pronouns. For example very young children have desires (e.g. to be fed or to sleep) even though they do not express them self-consciously using the personal pronoun. And brainwashed individuals likewise might have desires that they have been programmed either to forget or ignore. So it appears that being able to use the personal pronoun is not necessary for having desires. If this is the case, then it doesn’t matter that subpersons cannot use the personal pronoun to express desires of their own. They may be like the brainwashed. A third argument is that we could get at the desires of the subperson indirectly via the substituted judgment of the person. The person can simply ask themselves what they’d want in the subperson’s place, I can imagine that I will go out of existence at midnight and then ask, would I rather work on the paper, or go out for a few martinis, and this would give the subperson, who will in fact go out of existence at midnight, a way of thinking about its own desires without use of a personal pronoun. If these arguments are correct then pronoun revisionism will not help the four-dimensionalist. What desires an individual has does not, it seems, depend on their ability to use the personal pronoun to refer to themselves as Noonan contends. 17 5. 3. Hudson’s Indirect Account Yet another solution to the frustrating problem is the indirect account offered by Hudson (2001). He argues that even though the four-dimensionalist ontology gives us a world populated with many more thinking and desiring beings, or C-possessors, than we previously imagined, this need not threaten our commonsense approach to ethical deliberation. This is because, as he says In absolutely every case, what we do to the part we do to the person. Accordingly, whereas our moral behavior toward a person is restricted directly insofar as the person is an object of direct moral concern, our moral behavior towards person-parts is restricted indirectly insofar as any consequence of an action on a person-part is always a consequence of an action for a person.21 In other words, so long as we have accounted for the well-being of persons, we needn’t go the further step of accounting for the well-being of subpersons, since, in directly procuring what is good for persons, we indirectly procure what is good for their parts. In terms of the desire satisfaction theory, what matters for a Hudsonian view is that we are attentive to the desires of persons. We needn’t worry ourselves about the desires of subpersons, since whatever desires the subpersons have, they will also be the desires of persons, and so long as we are fulfilling the desires of persons then we will be indirectly fulfilling the desires of the subpersons. But this seems false. Consider again the case of the cancer patient who decides to undergo chemotherapy. The person (i.e., the “maximal C-possessor) will both undergo the chemotherapy and obtain the benefits of recovery and 21 Hudson (2001), p. 165. 18 health. Thus, its desire for health will be satisfied. But the subperson, who exists only during the most painful period of the chemotherapy, will likewise desire recovery and health, but it will not exist long enough to enjoy the satisfaction of its desire. Now, suppose that the cancer diagnosis is made very early on, when the tumor presents no discernible symptoms. The patient could enjoy weeks of continued good health and normal activity. But the chemotherapy will involve gruesome suffering and indignity over the same period of time. By deciding to undergo the chemotherapy now, the person, and present subperson, decides to inflict suffering on a later subperson, so that the person, and even later subpersons, can enjoy the improved health and well-being the person desires. And to make matters worse, the suffering subperson will inherit its beliefs and desires from the earlier (sub)person(s), thus it will slavish sacrifice its own well-being for that of another being. The upshot is that we are certainly doing something to the part, i.e., the subperson, that we are not doing to the person; we are not making the person sacrifice their well-being for that of someone else. If this is correct, then the Hudsonian response is not a good one. 5. 4. Lewis’s Sensible Stages Some remarks by David Lewis (1986, p. 126) suggests that a solution to the frustrating problem that appeals to rationality of subpersons and the notion that what one subperson desires can be fulfilled by later subperson so long as the pair are appropriately causally related. In a brief footnote where he responds to a criticism made by Mark Johnston, Lewis writes I agree that my view makes it fair to think of desires as belonging in the first instance to my present stage, and derivatively to the persisting sum of many stages. And I agree that that what my present stage wants is not to finish the book itself – it’s a sensible stage, so it knows that can’t be 19 expected. But that’s not to say that it only cares what happens, never mind how. There is a middle ground. My present stage wants the book to be finished in the fulfillment of its present intentions—there’s the egocentric part—and that will only happen if the proper sort of causal continuity binds together my present stage with the one that finishes the book. The continuity thus desired is part of the continuity that unifies mereological sums of person-stages into persisting people. At first blush, Lewis’s account seems similar to the Parfit-inspired account with identity not mattering. After all, Lewis thinks that what matters is not that the stage that does the desiring is the same as the stage which is a constituent in the state of affairs that fulfills the desire, but rather merely that some appropriately related stage is a constituent in that state of affairs. But it is important to keep in mind that for Lewis any appropriately related future stage will be identical and thus identity will matter for Lewis. One might think this coheres well with the desire satisfaction theory, for on a such a theory it might seem that our well-being can be affected after we have ceased to exist—well-being doesn’t stop at the grave, it outlives us, though we are its subjects. In terms of the present discussion the four-dimensionalist might think that even though a given subperson will not exist at some future time, its wellbeing at the time at which it does exist might be affected by what happens to an Irelated counterpart at that time. However, such a solution faces difficulties. For one thing, it is difficult to imagine how one’s well-being can be affected by states of affairs that occur after one has ceased to exist. This has lead several desire satisfaction theorists, including Overvold (1980), Fuchs (1991), and Dorsey (forthcoming), to argue for a restriction of desire satisfactions to only those states of affairs involving the 20 desiring subject as a constituent. Thus, in terms of the present argument, no states of affairs involving a later subperson as a constituent will suffice to affect the well-being of an earlier subperson. (this also seems to be a consideration for those who hold that satisfactions should be restricted to states of affairs concurrent with desires on account of the problem changing desires (e.g. some hold that if at time t1 I desire to climb a mountain but later no longer desire to do so, it will not add to my well-being if I am later made to climb the mountain)). Even if we reject this restriction of desire satisfaction another problem remains. Perhaps Lewis is correct in supposing that his sensible subpersons will not mind a later subperson getting the satisfaction of their desire. But it is hard to imagine a subperson accepting with equal sensibility the fact that it must suffer great pain or mental anguish in order that a later subperson might get some satisfaction. It seems the opposite of sense to suppose that a subperson would accept such a state of affairs willingly were they not slavishly subservient to the larger beings in whom they are embedded.22 5. 5. The Multiple Concepts of Desire Satisfaction View A fifth response to the frustrating problem is what I call the multiple concepts of desire satisfaction view.23 In the previous pages I have been assuming that whatever the correct account of desire satisfaction is, it must be a unified “single concept” account. In other words I have assumed that whatever makes for desire 22 Perhaps some will think that the stages would endure the suffering out of their concern for the person. Just as one might willingly sacrifice one’s own life to save or improve the life of one’s child or spouse. But in cases of such extreme familial sacrifices, the individual is usually aware of how their sacrifice will benefit their loved one and they are at liberty to decide for themselves whether to make the sacrifice or not. But the subperson who sacrifices for the person is not at liberty to decide to do otherwise, nor are they aware of what is they are doing (they think they are the person). 23 To my knowledge, this view has no precursor in the desire satisfaction literature, but it is inspired by recent work on the conceptual analysis of causation. Philip Dowe (2000), among others, has argued that we need multiple concepts of causation to account for both positive or “biff” causation, and negative causation (or causation by void or absence). 21 satisfaction with respect to persons must also do so with respect to subpersons. But what if there is no unified account? What if desire satisfaction consists in one thing for persons and in quite another for subpersons? For instance desire satisfaction for persons could consist in having the desires of one’s earlier subpersons fulfilled by states of affairs involving one’s later subpersons, while desire satisfaction for subpersons could consist in being properly causally related to, or psychologically continuous with, some future person or subperson (who enjoys the satisfaction of the desire). Thus making desire satisfaction an (at least in part) internal relation for persons and an external relation for subpersons. If this was the case, then the desires of subpersons could be fulfilled by other subpersons, though not in the same way that a person’s desires are fulfilled. This would again allow the four-dimensional desire satisfactionist to avoid the frustrating problem. However I think this sort of multiple concepts view of desire satisfaction is troublesome as well. First, as with any multiple concepts view (in other areas), we’d face the difficulty of stating precisely what it is about the two views that make them both instances of desire satisfaction. Outwardly they look very different. One is an intrinsic relation between the temporal parts of a given aggregate (i.e. a person), and the other is an extrinsic relation involving nonidentical individuals (two or more supersons). In virtue of what feature would we judge that either sort of relation makes for desire satisfaction? And even if we could settle on precisely what that feature is, why not make that feature the grounds for desire satisfaction rather than the relations just described? Second, keep in mind that many of your subpersons were they to exist as counterparts in another possible would have everything that is required for personhood. For instance consider the subperson, in the actual world, that 22 stretches from the moment of your conception until the moment just before you die. Call this subperson Almost. Surely Almost will have a counterpart in another possible world where you did not live for that additional moment. Almost will be an intrinsic physical duplicate of his/her counterpart, but Almost’s well-being will depend one sort of one sort of desire satisfaction, while his/her counterparts wellbeing will depend on something else in another. It seems strange that two things that are intrinsic physical duplicates could vary with respect to what makes for their well-being. 5. 6. The No Desire View Throughout the foregoing discussion we have been laboring under the assumption that, as Lewis claims, subpersons are thinking, believing, and desiring beings, and that persons have the mental states they do because their subpersons have those mental states intrinsically. But one way for the four-dimensionalist to avoid the frustrating problem is to deny that subpersons have the mental states Lewis and others attribute to them. It is at least possible that some fourdimensionalists might deny that subpersons have any intrinsic mental states whatsoever. Perhaps persons have mental states, but the person’s mental states, rather than being derived from the intrinsic mental states of her subpersons, arise from facts about how her subpersons are constituted and arranged. If subpersons have no mental states, then it follows that they have no desires to frustrate, in which case the frustrating problem dissipates. Call the view on which subpersons have no desires the No Desire View.24 While it is true that most four-dimensionalists are unlikely to accept the No Desire View, there may nevertheless be some plausible argument(s) that can 24 I would like to thank anonymous reviewer for suggesting this avenue of response to the frustrating problem. 23 be given in its favor. In this final section of the paper I will present and critically evaluate what I take to be the two best such arguments. Sidney Shoemaker (1999, p. 304) argues that a being must have the right kind of psychological persistence conditions in order to be the subject of mental states. He is concerned with resisting the overcrowding problem that arises if we believe that both the human animal and the Neo-Lockean psychological person, which it constitutes, are subjects of mental states (in virtue of the fact that both use the same brain to think). In order to avoid this problem he argues (i) that mental states play characteristically functional roles in the subject’s cognitive dynamics, and (ii) that only beings with the right persistence conditions can have mental states that play such functional roles. The friend of the No Desire View could make a similar maneuver arguing that, like human animals, subpersons lack the appropriate persistence conditions to allow them to play the functional roles that are characteristic of mental states. If only those beings with the psychological persistence conditions of persons have mental states, and subpersons lack those persistence conditions, then it follows that they will not be subjects of mental states, and thus they will have no desires to frustrate. But, here we need to recall the distinction we made above between minimal subpersons and extended subpersons (See section 3). Minimal subpersons have a point-like duration, while extended subpersons range in duration from nearly point-like to nearly as long-lived as the person. For the No Desire View to hold, it must be the case that only persons have desires. And while many critics and advocates of four-dimensionalism might agree that minimal subpersons are too short-lived to play the characteristic functional roles of mental states, it is much less obvious that extended subpersons cannot do so. At best, the 24 functionalist argument will only eliminate minimal subpersons and extended subpersons at the minimal end of the extended spectrum as subjects of desire. Though perhaps we needn’t grant the No Desire View even this much. It might be the case, as Strawson (1994) claims, that part of what is essential to intentional mental states such as belief and desire is a characteristic ‘feeling’ or qualitative state. If so then, any being that possesses this qualitative state might be said to have, or at least to share in, the desire that it is about. Even a minimal subperson with such a qualitative might be said to have a desire. In which case the frustrating problem returns. While Strawson’s view is admittedly controversial, there is another argument lurking. Katherine Hawley (2001, p.65) claims that we have no reason to think that having mental states must be intrinsic properties of minimal subpersons (or as she calls them ‘person-slices’). She argues: My present stage has interests and acts, partly because it is appropriately related to other stages which have appropriate properties. In the same way, this piece of wood is a table-leg partly because it is appropriately related to other pieces of wood. It is no less a table-leg for all that. On Hawley’s view the four-dimensionalist is at liberty to maintain that a minimal subperson does have mental states so long is it appropriately related (e.g. via immanent casual ties, or the counterpart relation) to some other appropriately propertied subpersons. If Hawley is right, then even the most minimal subperson can be said to possess mental states, and thus desires. In which case, again, the frustrating problem returns. Perhaps, instead of a commitment to functionalism, the No Desire View could be generated from an intuitively appealing exclusion principle which says that no being with mental states could be embedded as a proper, temporal (or 25 spatial) part of another being with mental states. Thus, while the person has mental states, none of her proper parts could have them. If this were the case, then only whole persons would be subjects of desire. But while it may appeal to a three-dimensionalist such as Olson, or van Inwagen, it is not at all clear why a four-dimensionalist should accept such a principle. In fact, Hudson (2001, p. 144) explicitly rejects such a principle. According to Hudson’s formulation, “human persons are those (spatially and temporally gappy) spacetime worms (i) that are not proper parts of other human persons, (ii) that are maximal C-possessors, (iii) whose person-stages are united by a certain relation of psychological continuity and connectedness, (iv) whose later person stages bear an appropriate causal-dependence relation to earlier person stages, and (v) which are most often found somewhen within the lifespan and somewhere beneath the skin of a living human organism” Most important for our present purposes is Hudson’s (iii). According to Hudson a human person’s person-stages are united by their psychological continuity and connectedness. If this is so, then it follows that person-stages, i.e., subpersons must possess mental states. Furthermore In his story involving Hopeful, Vital, Feeler, Thinker, and Cheerful, (pp. 116-117) Hudson makes it explicit that some thinking beings, namely Thinker (the Neo-Lockean psychological person) and Cheerful (the person with a fully-developed psychology), are proper parts of larger thinking beings, namely, Feeler (the merely sentient being) and Vital (the living human organism). Both Feeler and Vital think in virtue of having proper parts that think. Even if one were to argue that contrary to the Neo-Lockeans, the person is identical to Feeler rather Thinker, the sentient-person would still be embedded in 26 Vital, the larger living organism, which is also a thinking being. So, if fourdimensionalism, can allow for the person to be embedded in another thinking being (the merely sentient being), why think that it cannot accommodate thinking beings embedded as proper (temporal) parts of the person? I want to conclude this section by pointing our that if, on the grounds of the frustrating argument (or a similar ethical argument), some advocates of fourdimensionalism are moved to adopt a position like the No Desire View, then, given that this view is unlikely to convince many, for the reasons we have discussed, I think that this result should count as a modest success for the critics of four-dimensionalism. The most plausible version of four-dimensionalism (whether it be the worm or the stage theory) is one on which subpersons have their mental states, and thus their desires, intrinsically. 6. Conclusion In the foregoing discussion, I have argued that four-dimensionalism, when combined with the desire satisfaction theory of well-being, leads to the frustrating problem. I then discussed six responses to the frustrating problem on behalf of the four-dimensionalist. First, she could endorse the Parfit inspired strategy— claiming that identity is not what matters. But this undercuts one the supposed advantages of four-dimensionalism, namely its conservative approach to identity mattering. Second, the four-dimensionalist could endorse the personal pronoun revisionism of Noonan. But the subperson could have interests, well-being, at stake despite its inability to refer to itself using the personal pronoun. Third, the four-dimensionalist could opt for a Hudson-style indirect concern account. But this will fail, since it turns out that if four-dimensionalism is true, then it is false that whatever we do to the part we do to the person. Fourth, the four27 dimensionalist could argue, as Lewis does, that it is sensible for their subpersons to do what is in the interests of the person. The problem here is that it does not seem sensible to subject oneself to a lifetime of suffering purely for the benefit of another. Fifth, The four-dimensionalist could adopt a multiple concepts account of well-being, however this will not allow them to explain why one concept of wellbeing will apply to a supberson and another to the subperson’s intrinsic physical duplicate counterpart. Finally, the four-dimensionalist could argue endorse the No Desire View, which says, contra Lewis, that subpersons have no intrinsic mental states and therefore no intrinsic desires to be frustrated. I argue that while it is plausible that temporally minimal subpersons have no mental states, it is less plausible that longer-lived subpersons lack them. Thus there will still be many extended subpersons whose desires will be frustrated. And if Hawley or Strawson are in the right, then there really is no problem with attributing mental states to minimal subpersons. Furthermore even if my argument for this last claim fails to convince my readers, I hope to have at least shown that the most plausible version of four-dimensionalism faces considerable difficulty. So what response remains for the friend of four-dimensionalism? I would counsel her to reject the desire satisfaction account of well-being, and opt instead for one of its theoretical rivals, i.e. hedonism or the objective list theory, unless similar problems could be generated for both of those views. The corollary of this claim is that inasmuch as one is committed to the desire-satisfaction theory, they a reason to reject four-dimensionalism, especially of the sort endorsed by Lewis.25 25 I would like to thank an anonymous reviewer at Philosophical Studies for many helpful comments, especially those that lead to the development of the argument in section 5.6. 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