Propositions (2015), and many articles in metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, and philosophy of religion.
Merricks applied the “Page 99 Test” to his new book, Self and Identity, and reported the following:
Here is page 99 of Self and Identity in its entirety:Visit Trenton Merricks's website.what it would be like to be a vampire because you cannot know what it would be like to have a different self, or at least not a significantly different self. (Paul (2014; 2015a) goes so far as to claim that an adult woman who is not yet a mother cannot know what it would be like for her to have the values, desires, and projects she will have as a mother.)So that was page 99.
Suppose that you are now a vampire. Back when you were a normal human, you could not know what it would be like to have your current vampiric values, desires, and projects. But you—a vampire—remember what it was like to have the values, desires, and projects of a normal human. So you know what it would be like to have those values, desires, and projects. So I need to qualify my remark that you cannot know what it would be like to have a different self. Let me say instead that you cannot know what it would be like to have a different self unless you had that self in the past and remember what it was like.
You have first-personal access to a person’s point of view at a future time only if you can know what it would be like to be that person at that future time. You cannot know what it would be like to have a different self (unless you had that self in the past). So if a person at a future time will have a different self than you have now (or have ever had), then you do not have first-personal access to that person’s point of view at that future time. So—according to Velleman—that person will not have, at that future time, what matters in survival for you. Thus Velleman’s views imply that you cannot survive a change in self (unless that change results in your reacquiring values, desires, and projects that you once had). So Velleman is (nearly) a Selfer.
I shall take my objections to the Selfer view to be objections to what Velleman (1996) says. So it is important that my objections to the Selfer view are not just objections to the view that you cannot survive any change in self, but are also objections to the thesis that you cannot survive those changes in self that involve your acquiring values, desires,
I think the test does not work very well for my book. This is for two reasons.
First, this is not really a book about vampires, but page 99 makes it seem like it is.
Second, page 99 is making a point that is important to the book’s overall argument. But that point all by itself—when not put in the context of the book’s overall argument—leaves the reader in the dark about the main topics of the book.
The book is about this question: what way of being related to a person at a future time explains why it is appropriate for you to first-personally anticipate the experiences that that person will have at that time, and to have self-interested concern with regard to those experiences?
I defend this answer to the above question: your being identical with that person at that future time. The first three chapters of the book defend this answer.
The next three chapters object to competing answers to the above question, answers that all involve some sort of psychological connectedness and/or psychological continuity. The answer Chapter Four focuses on is the “Selfer view,” which answers this question in terms of having “the same self,” that is, in terms of having the same values, desires, and projects. But this chapter also considers another answer in terms of “first-personal access.” Page 99 occurs in Chapter Four, and is part of my argument for the claim that this other answer implies (something really close to) the Selfer view.
The Page 99 Test: Propositions.
--Marshal Zeringue
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