University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom.
J Med Philos. 2023 Sep 14;48(5):478-491. doi: 10.1093/jmp/jhad028.
Lockean views of personal identity maintain that we are essentially persons who persist diachronically by virtue of being psychologically continuous with our former selves. In this article, I present a novel objection to this variant of psychological accounts, which is based on neurophysiological characteristics of the brain. While the mental states that constitute said psychological continuity reside in the cerebral hemispheres, so that for the former to persist only the upper brain must remain intact, being conscious additionally requires that a structure originating in the brainstem-the ascending reticular activating system-be functional. Hence, there can be situations in which even small brainstem lesions render individuals irreversibly comatose and thus forever preclude access to their mental states, while the neural correlates of the states themselves are retained. In these situations, Lockeans are forced to regard as fulfilled their criterion of diachronic persistence since psychological continuity, as they construe it, is not disrupted. Deeming an entity that is never again going to have any mental experiences to be a person, however, is an untenable position for a psychological account to adopt. In their current form, Lockean views of personal identity are therefore incompatible with human neurophysiology.
洛克式的个人身份观认为，我们本质上是通过与过去的自己保持心理连续性而持续存在的人。在本文中，我提出了一种新的反对这种心理解释变体的观点，这种观点基于大脑的神经生理学特征。虽然构成这种心理连续性的心理状态存在于大脑半球中，因此为了让过去的自我持续存在，只有大脑上部必须保持完整，但意识还需要一个起源于脑干的结构——上行网状激活系统——发挥功能。因此，可能会出现这样的情况：即使是小的脑干损伤也会使个体不可逆地陷入昏迷，从而永远无法接触到他们的心理状态，而这些状态本身的神经相关物仍然存在。在这些情况下，洛克主义者被迫认为他们的历时持续标准已经得到满足，因为他们所构想的心理连续性并没有被打破。然而，对于心理解释来说，将一个永远不会再有任何心理体验的实体视为一个人，是一种站不住脚的立场。因此，洛克式的个人身份观在目前的形式下与人类神经生理学是不相容的。
