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I don't see why it being a consequence of biology is relevant. My point is that people really do consider their personalities to be their souls, so changing your personality is ripping out a piece of your soul. I think this is basically the correct way to look at it too. Let's assume for a second that people do have souls. Which would you prefer: to have your personality changed drastically, but your soul remain the same, or to have your personality remain the same, but your soul damaged somehow?
My view of the "soul" is that the latter hypothetical is impossible, precisely because the very most important thing about one's soul is their personality.
I didn't claim that the cause of your detail-oriented personality is your soul. The cause doesn't matter. What matters is how much you value that personality now that you have it. Changing it via a pill on a whim seems like a very drastic decision akin to replacing yourself with a similar person. Like I said, I'd feel comfortable doing so if that other person is very similar to me in the ways that matter to me, but if they're drastically different then that starts looking more like "tearing off a part of my soul."
You seem to be expanding on the very implicit belief in dualism that I mentioned before here. I'm not sure where you disagree with me, based on reading this. Yes, many people do consider their personalities to be their souls, and that implies that they believe in a sort of dualism. Many people are attached to their personalities and would prefer not to take such a pill, and that in itself doesn't require a belief in an immaterial soul. But to believe that taking such a pill - assuming the personality change is drastic enough -is partial murder would require an at least implicit belief in dualism.
Well to be clear when I say "many people consider their personalities to be their souls" really I'm just trying to emphasize how much people value their own personalities, though I suppose the literal interpretation of that statement is true as well. I think it's perfectly reasonable to care a lot about your personality with or without dualism. I guess if you go really far in the other direction, towards the camp of people who say that "you" only exist for a few minutes at a time, then who cares whether "your" personality changes, but that seems to be too far to me. Why define yourself as "the current cognitive process I experience" when you could define yourself as something more like "the being with my body and personality"? The former inevitably leads to conflict with a lot of our basic intuitions like self-protection, valuing people's lives, planning for the future (so that WE may eventually experience a better one), etc.. The latter fits perfectly with normal human cognition.
And if you do subscribe to the latter belief, that "you" are something like body + personality, then a drastic change in personality could well look something like death. I think many people would rather actually die than become [insert evil thing here] even if [evil thing] doesn't lead to much harm. At a certain point, if your personality changes drastically enough, that's not "you" anymore, regardless of whether you believe in dualism.
No, that is the belief in dualism. Believing that the "you" is some set of personalities and a body that goes along with, rather than the set of personalities that arise from the body is dualism. Of course one can and does care about one's personality regardless of dualism; one's personality, to a large extent, determines the level of suffering one experiences, among other things. But that's a separate question from whether changing one's personality through a pill is something that partially kills you or tears away your soul versus just another intervention that manipulates your body in some way, in this case as to change your personality.
Pretty sure this is a highly noncentral definition of dualism. Most people think of dualism as "matter and spirit". Even if you define it differently, the word itself refers to something having two elements or components, and if you define "you" as your personality then that's only one component. Let's say you are deleted and in the very next instant, an identical copy of you is created in the same spot you were. Is that person you? Some people would say yes, others would say no, but I don't think your answer determines whether you're a dualist; there are plenty of other philosophical stances leaning one way or the other. Give me your own definition of dualism though and we can go from there.
Dualism in this context is generally taken to mean the belief that there is a 2nd "realm" of reality beyond physics, and usually that our conscious minds are are somehow connections to that "realm" - usually that connection being to our "soul" that exists in this non-physical "realm."
If you believe that the various sets of personalities that arise from your body are "you" such that if your body changed causing your personality to change, then that would no longer be "you" or that "a part of you" was "killed," that means you believe in some cluster of personalities that forms "you" that exists independently from your body. That's an implicit belief in a non-physical "realm" where your "soul" (i.e. the cluster of personalities that you identify as "you") resides. If you in this hypothetical didn't hold an implicit belief in dualism, then you would accept that whatever changes to your personality that arises from changes to your body is still "you," because you identify "yourself" as the physical and experiential consequences caused by the interactions of particles in and outside your body. Rather than some specific set of personalities that exist independent from your body.
Not really, unless you count ideas as reality, in which case everyone is dualist. Those ideas don't exist, they are just ideas. Does the word "purple" exist? Because really there are no words, there are just vibrations travelling through the air and patterns on screens and on paper.
The word "purple" exists because we have simply defined the concept to include the vibrations and the patterns. This has nothing to do with some immaterial realm of meaning or anything related to dualism. Deny this and you essentially dismiss meaning itself as dualism.
Similarly, the category of "me" is whatever I want it to be, within reason. I think it makes sense to identify as "body, including brain, including thoughts arising from brain" but it also makes sense to identify as "body and personality." Creating a category doesn't mean implicitly endorsing dualism.
Yes, words are many things, including vibrations traveling through the air, patterns on screens and on paper, and probably most importantly, experiences that come about as a consequence of atoms behaving in such a way as to cause neurons to fire in people's brains.
Exactly. It has nothing to do with some immaterial realm of meaning or anything related to dualism. The word "purple" exists because a bunch of atoms interacting with each other caused the experience of "knowing" what "purple" is (or perhaps more accurately "agreeing" on what "purple" indicates).
"Within reason" is doing a ton of work here. Yes, it makes sense to identify as "body and personality," but when that "personality" is separate from the physical body that is the cause of that personality, then that's breaking the bounds of reason. Creating a fantastical category that's unbounded from physical reality and then identifying oneself - the literal human being operating in reality, not just some abstract concept that is free to explore the multiverse of fantastical fiction - as fitting that category is implicitly endorsing dualism.
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