The Fission Problem and the Indeterminacy of Personal Identity

Chapter 2 offers the Boolean many-valued solution to the Fission Problem for personal identity; and, in the process, the chapter delineates the basic ideas of the Boolean many-valued approach. Suppose that person a goes into surgery, in which his memory is transplanted to two cloned bodies of his while his original body is destroyed, and that two persons, b and c, come out of the surgery, each thinking that he is a. In this situation, it is reasonable to say that while a is identical with either b or c but not both, it is indeterminate which one. A Boolean 4-valued model is given that supports this claim. Then it is shown that if a splits into not just two, but 3, 4, \(\ldots \) , n persons instead, the number of Boolean values necessary for the models will increase to at least 8, 16, \(\ldots \) , \(2^{n}\) , respectively. The pros and cons of using a single large Boolean algebra for a uniform treatment of all those cases is discussed. The same models are applied for a (partial) solution of the Problem of the Many, and some outstanding issues, to be resolved in the subsequent chapters, are spelled out.