The subject and its apparatus: are they ontological trash?
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The subject and its apparatus: are they ontological trash? Mark Johnston1
Accepted: 25 June 2020 Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Keywords Subjects Ontological trash Christopher Peacocke Christopher Peacocke has been a leading philosopher of his generation, for at least two generations, depending on how you count such things. The Primacy of Metaphysics is a rich work, handsomely repaying multiple readings. It testifies to Peacocke’s creativity and philosophical seriousness. This response focuses on Peacocke’s subtle treatment of the identity of subjects and his intriguing account of how it might resolve the personite or fellow-traveller worries set out in my ‘‘Personites, Maximality and Ontological Trash’’ (Nous, 2017), ‘‘The Personite Problem’’ (Philosophical Perspectives, 2016) and, with Sarah-Jane Leslie, ‘‘Essence and Accident’’. Center-stage is Peacocke’s biconditional (Int) subject x is identical with subject y iff x and y have the same material integration apparatus (MIA). which suggests a persistence condition, i.e. a constraint on subject-identity over time, namely: A subject x considered at one time is identical with a subject y considered at another time iff x and y have numerically the same MIA. Peacocke glosses (Int) as follows: An integration apparatus takes information from the subject’s various sensory, perceptual, and action systems, and integrates that information by placing predicative materials drawn from those various sources into an integrated & Mark Johnston [email protected] 1
Princeton, USA
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M. Johnston
representation concerning what is represented as a single here and as a single now…. An integration apparatus is broadly characterized in informational terms, but it will have some material realization. Primacy, pp. 115-6. I take it that the invocation of ‘‘informational terms’’ works to impose some constraint to the effect that the specified representational function be secured across the continued existence of the MIA—in effect we have a necessary functional condition on the persistence of a MIA. I also take it that the MIA has further necessary conditions of persistence due to the kind of material thing it is. Just how do these two kinds of constraints mesh? Could it be that a series of wholly numerically distinct collections of neurons and glial cells or their functional equivalents successively constitute a single wholly material integration apparatus thanks to the holding of the informational constraint? The test: could a MIA and its subject survive teletransportation? If so, a series of material things is compatible with the survival of a subject. If not, then the same material thing, as it might be a persisting organic thing made up of neurons and glial cells, is required for a subject to survive. Which option captures the determinate persistence conditions of the subject? No matter. Choose one, then consider the persisting thing characterized by the other option. Do we not then have two things, potentially entirely coincident, but with different conditions of persistence,
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