How to Change Your Mind

Canadian Journal of Philosophy

How to Change Your MindAuthor(s): William R. CarterSource: Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 19, No. 1 (Mar., 1989), pp. 1-14Published by: Canadian Journal of PhilosophyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40231630 .

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CANADIAN JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY 1 Volume 19, Number 1, March 1989, pp. 1-14

Haw to Change Your Mind WILLIAM R. CARTER North Carolina State University Box 8103

Raleigh, NC 27695-8103 U.S.A.

It no longer is true in a metaphorical sense only that a person can have a change of heart. We might grant this much - allow that a person may have one heart at one time and have another (numerically different) heart at still another time - and also resist the idea that a person can have a change of mind in anything other than a qualitative sense. In the discussion that follows, this standard view of the matter is called into question. If the argument presented here is sound, it can happen both that one person has numerically different minds at different times and that different people have the same (one) mind at different times. These possibilities, as I take them to be, call for reassessment of some well entrenched assumptions concerning personal identity and responsibility. In particular, they suggest that it may not be true that person A bears responsibility for making decisions person B previously made

only on the condition that A is the same person as B. No doubt some, if not all, resistance to my thesis will arise from the

conviction that minds are not substantial things. Daniel Dennett once

conjectured that 'we may find that the entire vocabulary of the mind succumbs to non-referentiality.'1 Perhaps it simply is a mistake to suppose that the term 'mind' refers to any substantial thing - much as it is a mistake to judge that the 'smile' in 'Jack has a sinister smile' refers to any substantial thing. If Dennett's conjecture is right, the position outlined above may appear unsound. We do not succeed in transplant- ing a substantial thing called 'Jack's voice' to Jill by replacing Jill's lar-

ynx with Jack's larynx. Voices (like smiles, sakes, and sorrows) are in- dividuated by their subjects - the individual whose voice is in question.

1 D.C. Dennett, Content and Consciousness (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul 1969), 14



2 William R. Carter

At most Jill may wind up with a voice that is similar to Jack's voice. If minds go the way of voices, a brain transplant may at most leave Jill with a mind that is similar to Jack's mind. No substance is such that it first is Jack's mind and later is Jill's mind. No substantial thing is a mind.

Ill return to the substantiality issue later. For the time being, I will argue for a conditional thesis: if minds are substantial things, then minds can be transferred from one person to another person. (The an- tecedent is generally left unstated.)

I Mann's Case of the Transposed Heads

A person is a human being, a human organism. But a human organism can in theory survive an operation in which its original brain is removed and replaced by a different brain. When this happens the organism undergoing the brain transplant may wind up with a new mind. This organism may have one mind before the operation and still another mind afterward. Since this organism is a person, a person may have one mind before such an operation and still another mind afterward.

Whatever its shortcomings, I believe the argument rests upon one claim that is beyond serious question: human organisms can have different brains at different times. It clearly is possible for an individual human organism to have one heart at one time and another heart at a later time. I see no principled objection to allowing that the same thing is possible when we turn from hearts to brains. Indeed, I believe that we should allow that a human organism can have one head at one time and still another head at another time. This is precisely what happens in Thomas Mann's story The Transposed Heads.2 It happens that two individuals - Shridaman and Nanda - are decapitated and their heads subsequently reattached, by mistake, to the wrong bodies.

What a state of things - all in consequence of too much flurry! They lived who had been sacrifices. But they lived transformed; the body of the husband [Nanda] dwelt with the head of his friend, the body of the friend [Shridaman] with the husband's head. No wonder that the rocky cave echoed and reechoed as the three

prolonged their amazed outcry.3

If the terms 'Shridaman' and 'Nanda' designate human organisms, then it is true that Shridaman and Nanda exchange heads - and so exchange brains. (If two ships can exchange keels or masts, why can't two

2 Thomas Mann, The Transposed Heads (New York: Random House 1941)

3 Mann, 68



How to Change Your Mind 3

organisms exchange hearts or heads?) One might grant this much and still resist the further claim that one person can come to have another person's head. Mann tells the story in a way that suggests that the person who winds up with Shridaman's (original) head is the same person as the person who had this head at the outset of the story:

[F]or myself I can only say that I count myself the happiest of men. I have always wished I could have a bodily form like this; when I feel the muscles of my arms, look at my shoulders, and down at my magnificant legs, I am seized with unre- strained delight, and say to myself that from now on I shall hold my head high....4

The suggestion is that the referent of the operative pronoun T is an individual person who retains the same head (brain) but otherwise comes to have a new body. Conceivably - and I think that many con- temporary philosophers endorse precisely this view - it might appear that Mann's transplant case is such that two people keep, so to speak, their heads while otherwise exchanging bodies, and that two organisms exchange heads while otherwise retaining the same bodies. This assessment of the matter doesn't appear to be inconsistent. So it doesn't follow from the claim that two human organisms can exchange heads (brains) that two people can exchange heads (brains).

II An Inconclusive Argument Opposing Mind-Brain Identity

Of course consistency is one thing and truth quite another. My misgiv- ing concerning the claim that people can't change heads (brains) rests largely upon the conviction that people are human organisms. Let's assume for the moment that this conviction is correct. (I'll return to this in section V.) Does it then follow that a person can undergo a change of mind (that is, have one mind at one time and another mind at another time)? Obviously not. To arrive at this conclusion we re- quire a further premise: that our brains are (identical with) our minds.

I think there are powerful arguments supporting this premise. How- ever, I won't review these arguments here. What I will do is show that a standard argument opposing mind-brain identity is rather more problematic than many people recognize. The argument in question focuses attention upon facts concerning brain transplant cases.

Imagine that Jack's original brain Ba is found to have an incurable tumor and that a new, functionally equivalent, brain B2 is substituted

4 Mann, 71



4 William R. Carter

for Bj. Both in terms of physical appearance and psychological charac- teristics, the person who emerges from the hospital is remarkably like the person who earlier entered the hospital. Here we may judge that our friend Jack survives a brain transplant. So judging, one might think that there is a knock-down argument showing that Jack's mind cannot then be identical with Jack's brain. Suppose, for reduction, that minds are identical with brains. Then it is true before the operation that:

(1) Ba is ( = ) Jack's mind,

and true afterwards that:

(2) Jack's mind is ( = ) B2.

Since identity is transitive, it follows from (1) and (2) that:

(3) Ba is ( = ) B2.

(3) is clearly false. Since (3) follows from the conjunction of (1) and (2), this conjunction must be false. Since (1) and (2) appear to stand or fall together, it is concluded that (1) and (2) both are false.

Some people find this argument compelling. But I believe we do well to proceed cautiously here. In particular, we should recognize that the argument rests upon the tacit assumption that the term 'Jack's mind' is a (temporally) rigid designator.5 Quite obviously we cannot conclude from the fact that it is true on Monday that:

(1*) Jack is ( = ) Jill's husband,

and true on Friday that:

(2*) Jill's husband is ( = ) Mack,

that:

(3*) Jack is ( = ) Mack.

The unsoundness of this argument can be traced to the fact that the expression 'Jill's husband' is not temporally rigid (roughly, need not

5 For more concerning rigid designators see Nathan U. Salmon, Reference and Es- sence (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 1981), chapters 1 and 2.




designate the same individual at different times). It is precisely because (3) is false that we know that 'Jill's husband' designates one thing on Monday and another thing on Friday. Conceivably things might turn out much the same way when we consider the argument in (1) - (3). If our minds are our brains, then perhaps Jack has one mind before the operation and still another mind afterward. From the fact that (3) is false we might conclude not that the conjunction of (1) and (2) is false but only that the term 'Jack's mind' designates different things in (1) and (2). Accordingly the fact that (3) is false gives us no reason to deny that minds are identical with brains.

Obviously expressions such as 'Jack's house' and 'Jack's heart' fail to qualify as rigid designators. (The point holds even given the assumption that 'Jack' is rigid.) Why should we judge that the situation must be different when we turn to 'Jack's mind'? Presumably the rigidity assumption rests upon the underlying conviction that while a person can have different hearts or different houses at different times, a person cannot have different minds at different times. But quite clearly this conviction requires argument. And what, precisely, is the argument?

HI The Appeal to Psychological Connectedness

Someone might argue validly along these lines:

(A) Psychological connectedness is necessary for personal identity,

(B) Psychological connectedness is sufficient for mind identity, so

(C) Mind identity is necessary for personal identity.

Assuming that the person who leaves the hospital (Jack) is identical with a certain person who entered the hospital earlier, (C) implies that the person who departs and the person who enters have the same mind. If this is right, the term 'Jack's mind' doesn't designate different things (minds) before and after the operation. Since (C) follows from the conjunction of (A) and (B), this conjunction suggests that it must be a mistake to say that Jack has one mind before the operation and another mind afterwards.

However, this argument is (to say the least) suspect. Regardless of how we interpret talk of psychological connectedness, I doubt that premise (A) will withstand close scrutiny. To the extent that we have reason to judge that a person is a physical organism, we have reason to doubt that (A) is true. Clearly psychological connectedness is not necessary for identity where human organisms are concerned.



6 William R. Carter

Premise (B) doesn't fare much better. Simplifying matters, let's say that X is psychologically connected to Y to the extent that X has detailed putative memories (q-memories) of doing things only Y did and experiencing things only Y experienced.6 The person who emerges from the hospital is then (as we suppose) psychologically connected to a certain person (Jack) who entered earlier. Does this offer assur- ance that the person who leaves and the person who enters have the same mind? (Reminder: the question is not whether the person who leaves and the person who enters are the same person; I grant this.)

I think not. Imagine a 'brain-state transfer' (BST) machine which 'records the state of one brain and imposes that state on a second brain by restructuring it so that it has exactly the state of the first brain at the beginning of the operation.'7 If the BST machine were applied to Richard Nixon's brain, a duplicate 'Nixon' brain might be created and implanted in a second individual. Call this individual 'Nixon*.' Both Nixon and Nixon* might be strongly connected, psychologically speaking, to the person who resigned as president some years ago. If (B) were true, Nixon's (present) mind would be the mind of the person who resigned. Since the same point holds for Nixon*'s mind, defenders of (B) are thus committed to saying that Nixon's mind would be Nixon*'s mind. It isn't merely that Nixon* has a mind like Nixon's, but that Nixon's mind is identical with Nixon*'s mind. This follows from (B) and the transitivity of identity.

Since the BST machine might be employed to created hundreds of exact duplicates of Nixon's brain, and since each of these duplicate 'Nixon' brains might be embedded in a human organism leaving us with a person who is strongly psychologically connected to the man who first resigned as president, defenders of (B) are committed to the possibility that hundreds of different people might literally share one mind. I submit that we should reject this. It is logically possible that BST machines make it true that hundreds of different people are strongly connected (in the sense specified above) with the man who first resigned as president. Since (as I judge) it is not possible that hundreds of different people share one mind, we have reason not to accept premise (B).8

6 See Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1984), 204-9.

7 Sydney Shoemaker in Shoemaker and Richard Swinburne, Personal Identity (Ox- ford: Basil Blackwell 1984), 108-11

8 We might leave BST machines out of the picture. Isn't it possible that God, say, makes it true that two or more people are strongly connected to one previous person?




None of this implies that a person can change her mind. However, I believe that enough has been said to show that the argument in (A) - (C) is unsound. No doubt there are other arguments purporting to show that our friend Jack cannot have one mind at one time and another mind at another time.9 Rather than pursuing anti-transfer arguments further, let us now return to the pro-transfer argument outlined in section I above.

IV Enter the 'is' of Constitution

In a recent paper with which I am largely in agreement, Mark John- ston defends this thesis:

(J) [W]e [must] represent ourselves as things of a kind such that the easy and uncomplicated ways in which we ordinarily trace people are well adapted to tracing things of that kind.10

As Johnston forcefully argues, it is precisely because dualist accounts of people conflict with (J) that dualism should be rejected.11 The view of ourselves that appears to accord most naturally with (J) is that we are physical organisms. If correct, this means that Mann is mistaken in judging that the person who is Shridaman retains his head and winds up with Nanda's impressive arms and legs. If Shridaman is indeed a physical organism, what is true is rather that Shridaman acquires a new head and a new brain, while retaining the same heart, lungs, arms and legs. (Similarly for Nanda.)

Doesn't this suggest that Shridaman acquires a new mind! If our minds are our brains, the answer is surely affirmative. Shridaman, a certain human organism, has one brain at the beginning of the story and still another brain at the end of the story. If minds are brains, it seems that Shridaman has one mind at the outset of Mann's story and still another mind at the conclusion of the story.

No doubt some people will deny that our minds are our brains. Some of these people may appeal to arguments such as the one considered earlier in section II. As we have seen, this argument opposing mind- brain identity is inconclusive. If Jack cart have one mind at one time

9 Obviously this is impossible, if a person (Jack, say) just is a mind. But since people have arms and legs and minds don't, people can't be identified with minds.

10 Mark Johnston, 'Human Beings,' The Journal of Philosophy 84, 2 (1987), 77

11 This merely indicates the general form of Johnston's very impressive anti-dualist

argument. I'll ignore the details of the story here.



8 William R. Carter

and another mind at another time, the argument from the falsity of (3) to the falsity of (1) and (2) is unsound.

Causal arguments advanced by Armstrong and Lewis suggest that mental states (tokens, not types) are identical with brain states.12 John- ston seems to agree, proposing adoption of 'a properly naturalistic view of our mental functioning' according to which mental activity is identified with 'the characteristic function of our brains.' If this is right, as I think it is, I doubt that there is good reason to deny that our minds are our brains. Since brains are substantial things, minds turn out to be substantial things. If Shridaman winds up with Nanda's former brain, Shridaman then finds himself with Nanda's former mind. (If Jack emerges from the hospital with Jill's former brain, Jack then has Jill's former mind.)

Johnston clearly would not accept this assessment of the situation.

[WJhenever we have reason to say that a single mind has continued on, we have reason to say that a single person has continued on. But if we now adopt a properly naturalistic view of our mental functioning, i.e. see our mental functioning as the characteristic functioning of our brains, then it will be difficult, albeit not im-

possible, to resist the idea that one's mind would continue on if only one's brain were kept alive and functioning. Given the conceptual connection between people and minds, this amounts to the conclusion that one would go where one's brain goes and that one could survive as a mere brain.13

The first premise of the argument is that locating the same mind suffices for locating the same person. The second premise is that the same mind 'continues on' (survives) when the same functioning brain continues on (survives). Since - third premise - it is in theory possible for the same functioning brain to continue on (survive) in different human organisms, it is concluded that we (people) can switch organisms. But obviously we can't be (identical with) human organisms, if we can in

theory switch organisms. Johnston is not offering an argument for dualism. His point is rather that in 'tracing' ourselves we are tracing human beings - "beings that could outlive the human organisms they are in- variably constituted by if their minds were to continue on.'14 The term that is doing the heavy work here is 'constituted.' Shridaman coexists

12 David Armstrong, A Materialist Theory of Mind (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul 1968) and David Lewis, 'An Argument for the Identity Theory,' in Philosophical Papers, Volume I (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1983), 99-107

13 Johnston, 78

14 Ibid.




with one human organism at the beginning of the story and coexists with still another human organism at the end of the story. Since one individual can't be identical with different things at different times, we can't say that Shridaman is first identical with one human organism and later identical with still another human organism. We should say, it is argued, that one organism first is/constitutes Shridaman, while later another organism is/constitutes Shridaman. On this assessment of the matter, it is false that Shridaman first has one mind and later has another mind, true that Shridaman first has one set of arms and legs and later has another set of arms and legs.

V The Overpopulation Corollary

I have misgivings about this assessment of the matter. For openers, I don't understand the proposed distinction between human organisms and human beings (people). I think we do well to resist the pro- posal that our organisms (the organisms with which we coexist) merely constitute - and are not identical with - ourselves. The brain that is my brain is undeniably part of Fats, the human organisms with which I presently coexist. On any 'naturalistic' account of mental functions, Fats has precisely as much claim to having a mind as do I. If we deny that Fats and I are one individual (that is, identical), then we appear to be committed to saying that two psychological beings (Fats and I) presently are located in one place. This leaves us with one psychological being too many. If ever Occam's razor is called for, it is called for here. The chair in which I presently am sitting contains only one psychological being - if you will, only one mind. (And how can two individuals share one mind?)

Conceivably it might be replied that only people have minds. If human organisms are not (identical with) people, as Johnston argues, then human organisms do not have minds. Since Fats is a human organisms, Fats does not have a mind. My chair turns out to contain only one psychological being.

But I find this mysterious and entirely implausible. Canine and fe- line organisms can feel pain and hunger. (It would be ironic if defense of the no-transfer of minds thesis committed us to agreeing with Des- cartes that dogs and cats are not psychological beings.) Why should things be different when we turn to Fats and his fellow human organisms? And if Fats is a psychological being, why judge that two individuals each having a psychology are located where Fats is located? Why not say that I am Fats - that in speaking of myself I am in fact refer- ring to Fats?

In short, my misgivings concerning the appeal to constitution are based squarely upon Johnston's immensely plausible 'naturalistic view



10 William R. Carter

of our mental functioning/ If X and Y have the same brain, whose phys- iological functions are psychological functions, then X and Y are equally psychological beings - individuals with minds. Since Fats and I have the same brain, we Ijoth' have minds. Since it is false that two psychological beings presently are located where I am located, Fats and I are one. If Fats continues to exist in the future with a new brain, then / continue to exist in the future with a new brain. (If minds are brains, I then might continue to exist with a new mind.)

I grant that a person can't be (identical with) his or her organism, if indeed it is in theory possible for the person first to coexist with one organism and later to coexist with still another organism. But I think we do well to take a hard look at the possibility premise. This premise loses much of its appeal in the event that brain-transfer cases are properly described not as cases in which one person coexists with different human organisms but rather as cases in which different people (organisms) have at different times the same mind. The attraction of this (last) way of viewing the matter lies, in large part, with the fact that it allows us to endorse a naturalistic conception of the mind. I doubt that the same can be said for the view that one person switches organisms in brain-transfer cases. Since it isn't plausible to judge that each of us coexists with a distinct but psychologically indiscernible being, naturalism suggests that we are (identical with) our organisms - and so suggests that it is false that a person switches organisms in brain-transfer cases.

No doubt some people will cheerfully head for a dualist exist. As everyone knows, state dualism does not entail substance daulism. We might deny that headaches are physical states without being committed to the view that there is is some immaterial substance in the works. We then might say that although Fats and I share all and only the same (material) components or parts, I am on occasion in headache (hunger, fear, etc.) states and Fats is not. Defenders of this position must deny that psychological states are 'realized in' neurophysiological states of the brain. If my headaches were realized in states of my brain, presumably Fats - who has the same brain - would have precisely as much claim to suffering headaches as do I.

But this flies in the face of a supervenience hypothesis that most of us find immensely plausible, namely, that beings that are indiscernible both physically and environmentally must be psychologically indiscernible as well.15 It also leaves us with the anomaly that human

15 The environmental rider is meant to block Twin Earth objections to standard su-

pervenience claims. See Tyler Burge, 'Individualism in the Mental/ in Peter A. French, Theodore E. Uehling, Jr., and Howard Wettstein, eds., Midwest Studies in Philosophy Volume IV (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 1979), 73-121.




organisms don't feel hunger and pain. I submit that such a view is plain- ly not credible. If we are driven to such absurdities in defense of the no-transfer (of minds) thesis, then we do well to reject this thesis.

VI Brown, Brownson, Brownless

But are we so driven? Johnston, for one, would deny that we are. John- ston defends both the view that one human being can at different times be 'constituted' by different human organisms and the view that:

[A] person cannot be outlived by (what once was) his own mind. It is not a tem-

porary feature of my mind that it is my mind. Nor could it be. No situation could deserve a description to the effect that the very mind that is my mind has been or will come to be the mind of someone else. Talk of a particular mind is just talk about a particular person's mental functioning. (77-8)

Since Johnston also defends a naturalistic conception of mind - re- jecting both state and substance dualism - it might appear that something must be wrong with the argument in section V. I submit that this gets things the wrong way round. Since the argument in section V is sound, something must be wrong with Johnston's position.

To appreciate the point, perhaps it helps to consider Johnston's in- teresting variation on a case made famous by Sydney Shoemaker. Brown and Robinson have their brains extracted. By mistake, Brown's brain is later put in Robinson's body - leaving us with an individual (Brownson) who is strongly psychologically connected to Brown.16 Brown's debrained body is provided merely with 'enough in the way of transplanted brain-stem to keep it alive indefinitely.'17 Johnston suggests that this individual (Brownless) is the same human organism as Brown:

[I]f "human organism" is taken to pick out a purely biological kind, Brownless and not Brownson is the same human organism as Brown. Hence if Brown survives as Brownson, neither Brown nor his kind-mates (those essentially the same as he) are essentially human organisms. (76)

This deserves close scrutiny. Assuming (what surely is the case) that only one human organism is located where Brown is located before

16 This leaves out many detials. See Sydney Shoemaker, Self-Knowledge and Self- Identity (Ithacan, NY: Cornell University Press 1963), 23-4.

17 Johnston, 76




the operation, we clearly cannot both identify this organism with Brown and judge that Brown survives as Brownson. Suppose (case one) we deny that Brown survives as Brownson. Since Brownson seems to have Brown's mind, we then must reject Johnston's thesis that minds can't be transferred. Suppose (case two) we deny that Brown can correctly be identified with the human organism with which he coexists at the outset of the story. We then are left with the overpopulation (of psychological beings) problem that surfaced in section V. In brief, the problem is that the coexisting organism (Brown*, say) has the same brain Brown has. Assuming a naturalistic conception of mind, this means that Brown* is as surely a psychological being as is Brown - which leaves us, in case two, with two psychologically indiscernible coexisting individuals.

The really crucial thing to notice here, I think, is that Johnston is led to the view that Brown survives as Brownson by the no-transfer (of minds) thesis. I submit (1) that this thesis forces us either to reject a naturalistic conception of the mind or to accept the implausible view that two psychologically indiscernible beings are located where Brown is located at the beginning of the story, and (2) that (1) provides us with good reason to question the no-transfer (of minds) thesis. It is nowhere inscribed in stone that one person's mind cannot in theory be the mind of another person. If people are physical organisms, it clearly is true that one person's brain can in theory be the brain of another person.18 And we have good reason to suppose that a person's mind can go where her brain goes.

VII Deferred Responsibility

Consider Brown, whose healthy brain is transplanted from a diseased body to a healthy body from which a hopelessly diseased brain has been removed. Later a person (Brownson, say) emerges from the hospital who appears to remember climbing Mt. Everest by an excep- tionally difficult and heroic route before the operation (this being something only Brown did). If we think that Brownson deserves credit for the ascent, and deny that one person can deserve credit for doing what another person has done, we will conclude that Brownson is the same person as Brown. On this basis, we will affirm that Brownson

18 Judith Thomson seems to agree. See her 'Ruminations on an Account of Personal

Identity/ in J. Thomson, ed., On Being and Saying: Essays for Richard Cartwright (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press 1987), 220-33.




has switched organisms and deny that Brownson has undergone a change of mind.19

I submit that we do well to question this. Since people are human organisms, the term 'Brownson' refers to a person who has never been anywhere near Mt. Everest. Brownson can't remember climbing Everest, since Brownson didn't climb Everest. What may be true is that Brownson's mind remembers being part of an individual who climbed Everest. Brownson's mind, unlike Brownson himself, has made an ascent of Everest. If we suppose that a person goes where his mind goes, we may conclude that Brownson is Brown and so deny that people are human organisms. This gets things the wrong way round. It is true that Brownson's mind is Brown's mind, false that Brownson is Brown.

Imagine a case in which Nixon's mind is transferred to McGovern. McGovern then remembers stepping aboard a helicopter on the White House lawn after resigning as president. This is absurd, since McGovern didn't step aboard such a helicopter after resigning as president. People can't (really) remember doing things they never did.

I agree. Accordingly I deny that having Nixon's mind provides any guarantee of having memories of doing things only Nixon once did. Still, McGovern winds up with Nixon's mind. McGovern's mind may, accordingly, remember being part of a person who stepped onto a certain helicopter after resigning as president.

Can we blame McGovern for Nixon's earlier decision to bomb Cam- bodia? Critics may argue that this is a corollary of the view that McGovern winds up with Nixon's mind. Since McGovern can't be responsible for Nixon's decisions, it might be concluded that McGovern can't really have Nixon's mind.

I am not convinced by this. If (as I believe) my decisions are made by my mind, then in the event that my mind is transferred to another person this person can bear a certain responsibility for my (previous) decisions. Such 'deferred' responsibility shows not that one person can switch organisms but that one mind may first be a component of one person and later be a component of still another person. Conceivably McGovern might bear a certain responsibility for Nixon's decision to bomb Cambodia. For McGovern's mind might be the mind that once decided to do this awful thing.

Resistance to this view of the matter is deeply entrenched. No doubt many critics will argue that minds cannot be brains. At the very least,

19 For articulate skepticism concerning memory as a criterion of personal identity, see Terence Penelhum, Survival and Disembodied Existence (New York: Humani- ties Press 1970), 67.




I hope to have shown that we need better arguments for this conclusion than the argument considered in section II of this paper. I should add that I am not convinced that the possibility of mind transfers stands or falls with the thesis of mind-brain identity. Suppose that it turns out that 'the brain is just a digital computer and the mind is just a computer program/20 Presumably one computer can at different times have different programs and different computers the same program. On the program conception of the mind, I see no reason why one person cannot have different minds at different times or why different people cannot have the same mind at different times.21

Received May, 1987 Revised December, 1987

20 This view is considered, and rejected, by John Searle in Minds, Brains and Science

(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1984), chapter 2.

21 Members of the Triangle Circle discussion group provided distressingly good crit- ical comments for which I am grateful. I also am indebted to Alan Sidelle of Har- vard University, and to a referee of this journal, for pointing out mistakes.



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