Robin Wilton's esoterica

While I was in Japan earlier this month, one of our meetings was very kindly hosted by the Institute of Information Security in Yokohama.We were warmly welcomed not only by Prof. Itakura, Head of Faculty for Biometrics and Personal Authentication, but also by Prof. Tsujii, the President of the Institute, and Head of Faculty for Cryptology and the Electronic Social System.

The Institute's website is all in Japanese, I'm afraid, but here is a paragraph from a one-pager handout we were given, which gives a good idea of the breadth of Prof. Tsujii's vision (I have slightly modified the phrasing in one or two sentences - I hope I have done justice to the English and Japanese originals):

"A Life that Exceeds Time and Space

The development of the information network has brought about a multiplying effect of real space and cyber space, ultimately expanding the breadth of our lives. Digital technology that resolves information into ones and zeroes, meanwhile, is extending social activity in all areas, including the direct exchange of opinion between producers and consumers. Such outcomes suggest that "digital technology has activated even analog communications". In this context of information network development and the daily lives of individuals, "freedom", "equality" and "safety" become the most important themes. For technology to enhance efficiency and convenience - thus expanding people's base of freedom - and to allow people to accept such freedom equally and use it safely, it becomes necessary to define measures which closely combine the four fields of: security technology, operation and management, legislative development and social ethics. Information security is an interdisciplinary, comprehensive science which investigates and realizes such social order."

It was a pleasure and an honour to be hosted by such a visionary academic.

Fascinating opportunity yesterday to hear Prof. Richard Swinburne set out his arguments for the existence of the soul as an essential, non-physical and persistent part of "me". I'm particularly grateful to Prof. David Charles for his continued generosity in arranging these opportunities for former pupils to reconvene and have their grey matter given a thorough pummelling.

Without going through it all in detail at this stage (though I will probably write something on specifics in due course), I have to admit that my preconceptions about Prof. Swinburne's views were not entirely positive. For instance, I had read Prof. Yujin Nagasawa's succinct and telling critique here, and found it to be very persuasive. I was wondering what Prof. Sinwburne could say to convince me otherwise. That said, within very few minutes of his starting to speak, I had to admit that his ideas really needed serious consideration.

This is not least because he adopts an approach which is either necessary, or very shrewd (or conceivably both). Within about 10 minutes, he had set out, as the 'supporting pillars' for his over-arching contention, principles concerning substances, events [physical and mental], identity, persistence, and semantic reference. First, it's worth noting that any one of these areas is practically a philosophical career in its own right; second, it means that if one wants to undermine the basis of Prof. Swinburne's position, one has to be prepared to tackle him on some pretty formidable topics. As I say, I will come back to a couple of specifics in a later post... but I'm certainly not qualified to mount a direct assault on all fronts.

Touching briefly on Prof. Swinburne's views on identity, though, I think we can point to some concepts which will be familiar to regular readers of this blog. For instance, Prof. Swinburne wants, as part of his argument in favour of the existence of a non-physical and persistent essential part of "me", to assert that "I" may survive even if my physical body ceases to be. (This is one of the arguments which Prof. Nagasawa seems to counter very effectively). In support of this argument, Prof. Swinburne advances a 'thought experiment', not unlike Derek Parfit's "malfunctioning teleporter" example. Imagine that your brain were surgically removed and half put into one empty skull and half put into another. The missing hemispheres in each skull would then be supplied through cloning, duplication or whatever.

Prof. Swinburne argues that, although we clearly cannot say that "all of you" has survived in the case of either of the two resulting beings, enough of you has survived to make it at least worth asking which of them, if any, is "you". In other words, that your identity - your 'self' - has survived to at least some degree despite the fact that your physical body has not.

A couple of questions suggest themselves:

- first, given that the two new beings each have only one hemisphere of the original brain, is Prof. Swinburne justified in asserting that each half still has the same kind of privileged access to the same feelings, memories, opinions etc. as the whole original brain? I tend to think not.

- second, if his argument rests on the idea that some persistent aspect of "me" is successfully transferred from the original to each of the new beings, does that imply that my 'soul' is divisible (and if so, what else might that imply)?

And lastly there's the good old "argument by counter-example" riposte: if, in order to support your thesis, you have to rely on examples involving improbable mechanisms such as flawless transplantation of severed brain hemispheres, supplemented by flawless cloning of the respective other halves, doesn't that suggest that the thesis itself may be a little far-fetched?

As I say, I'm not qualified to judge... and I haven't spent the last 40 years or so devoting myself to the study of this problem. However, whether I found Prof. Swinburne's position convincing or not, I certainly had to take it more seriously than I had expected to do.