Memory and Quasi-Memory

However, as I said at the beginning of the last chapter, my chief aim is to criticize not the views of Williams — with whom I am in agreement to a large extent — but those of the memory theorists. To defend a memory criterion against Butler’s objection of vicious circularity Shoemaker is forced to introduce a notion of “quasi-memory” in terms of which he goes on to lay down conditions for personal identity. But it is easy to see that if one thing can become two this notion cannot be used in this way as a defence against Butler’s objection. This is what I now turn to. 1

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References

1. I should say that Shoemaker’s work is brilliant and that I am ignoring a great deal of what he says. It is just one strand in his ideas I wish to criticize. Google Scholar
2. Joseph Butler, “Of Personal Identity”, First Dissertation to the Analogy of Religion. Reprinted in Flew (ed.), Body, Mind and Death,pp. 166–172. Google Scholar
3. Persons and Their Pasts”, p. 281. Google Scholar
4. This perhaps provides an answer to a doubt put to me by Professor Williams. He said that a slightly counter-intuitive feature of my account was the way several names “clustered around” one individual, i.e. the original in a fission case. The answer, I think, is that they do not so cluster until he has ceased to exist; for they cannot be introduced until after the occurrence. Google Scholar

1. Harold W. Noonan

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Noonan, H.W. (1980). Memory and Quasi-Memory. In: Objects and Identity. Melbourne International Philosophy Series, vol 6. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-2466-1_14

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