Objection 2

It might be objected that even if we could truthfully talk about experiences as strictly momentary – if we were to adopt the alternative linguistic convention under discussion – we would nevertheless still be able to posit extended experiences. So long as we have the notion of an experiential state we can derive the notion of an experiential event, because an experiential event is simply a conjunction of successive experiential states. And so the extensional theory would work whichever linguistic convention was adopted.

What this objection misses is that the conjunctive experiential event we would end up with would be a ‘fictional amalgam’ (Dainton 2006: 130). This can be clearly seen by reintroducing persons qua subjects of experience into our discussion.

In Chapter 2 we saw how the Reductionist arguments of Derek Parfit establish not only that it can be an empty question whether diachronic identity holds between two subjects of experience – as Parfit argued – but that it is always an empty question. As it is impossible for two distinct subjects to be subjects of the same experience, it was concluded that it is always an empty question whether diachronic identity holds between two experiences.

We then considered an objection: if Reductionism is true, and facts about personal identity just consist in empirical facts, then we could cease all talk of persons and talk only in terms of the empirical facts. We could, that is, adopt an impersonal conceptual scheme which lacked the concepts of ‘person’ and ‘subject’. This scheme would have the concept of an experience – or more accurately, an experience* - that did not demand the existence of a subject. Once we do away with subjects of experience, however, it becomes obscure how we could conclude that it is an empty question whether diachronic identity holds between two experiences. We wouldn’t be able to say it is an empty question whether two subjects are diachronically identical; and so we couldn’t then conclude that it is an empty question whether two experiences(*) are diachronically identical.

To overcome this objection we took the Parfittian line of reasoning employed in the case of personal identity and set it to work in the case of experiential* identity. In short, if we can give an empirically informative account of diachronic experiential* identity – which we should, for the same reasons that support empirical informativism about personal identity – then the same conclusion follows: it is always an empty question whether

diachronic identity holds between experiences*. From then on, we restricted our discussion to experiences, and dropped the ‘*’ from the discussion.

The objection we are currently considering claims that, even if our linguistic convention was such that experiences were essentially unextended, we could still make sense of an extended experience insofar as we could make sense of a conjunction of unextended experiences. I suggest that if one finds this objection compelling, it is because one has lost track of what an experience* is. The concept of ‘experience*’ would replace our concept of ‘experience’. So what we would normally regard (i.e. from within our ‘personal’ conceptual scheme) as a single subject having a single extended experience would, from within the impersonal scheme, be regarded as a single extended experience*. Similarly, what we would normally regard as two distinct subjects having two distinct experiences would be regarded as two distinct experiences*. We can translate between the two conceptual schemes in this way.

We can assume either our normal or the impersonal conceptual scheme in responding to the objection. If we assume the normal scheme, then, as we have rehearsed just now, it is an empty question whether diachronic identity holds between subjects, and the same counts for their experiences. If it were linguistic convention that subjects – and their experiences – were temporally unextended, then it would be wrong to say we can make sense of an extended experience by simply conjoining successive experiential states. These would be the experiences of distinct subjects, and distinct subjects cannot be subjects of the same experience. As William James (1952: 147) puts it:

Neither contemporaneity, nor proximity in space, nor similarity of quality and content are able to fuse thoughts together which are sundered by this barrier of belonging to different personal minds. The breaches between such thoughts are the most absolute breaches in nature.

If we assume the impersonal conceptual scheme, the same applies. Conjoining distinct experiences* gets us nowhere, because such a conjunction would be just as gerrymandered. Of course, we cannot appeal to the breaches between experiences ‘sundered by this barrier of belonging to different personal minds’. But we can translate between the two schemes. We can appeal to the breaches of experiences between experiences belonging to different impersonal minds. We can suppose X and Y are experiences or experiences*. If we suppose they are experiences and decide that they

cannot be the same experience, then we would have to say that X and Y cannot be the same experience* were we to suppose they were experiences*.