I always have issues wrapping my head around how to deal with morality or responsibility-related issues when dealing with memory formation. Like really drunk people that say mean things and don’t remember them after—was that really them being mean? Whatever that means.
I think the best way to look at it is pragmatic (or instrumental or whatever you want to call it) - figure out what behaviour you’d like them to exhibit (e.g. be less mean, generally avoid destructive behaviours), decide whether they can influence it (probably yes, at least by drinking less), and then influence them accordingly. Which is a roundabout way of saying that you should tell them they suck when drunk and you’re unhappy with them so hopefully they’ll act better next time (or get less drunk) and that legally they should have pretty much the same responsibilities. There’s also the secondary question of deciding to what extent being a bad person while drunk suggests that they’re also a (less) bad person while not drunk and have maybe just been hiding it well. I tend to think that it probably doesn’t (the actual evidence of what we know about them when they’re not drunk being more relevant), but I’m not really sure.
There’s also the secondary question of deciding to what extent being a bad person while drunk suggests that they’re also a (less) bad person while not drunk and have maybe just been hiding it well.
But then if they’re a good person while they’re sober but they spend a lot of their time drunk, then they’re really a weighted average of two people that computes more skewed toward their drunk self (who can’t really coherently answer questions about themselves) and their sober self can’t remember what their drunk self did so that self can’t either and omgarghblarghcomplicated. I generally do just short-circuit all of these computations the way you describe and don’t hang out with people like this, but I have one friend whom I’ve known forever who’s generally okay but sometimes acts really weird. And I can’t tell when he’s drunk, so he slowly acts a little weird over a long period of time before revealing that he’s been drinking all day and then I just feel like I don’t know who I’m talking to and whether he’ll be that person the next time I see him.
Anyways, I’m not too interested in the specifics of the instrumental side? I was just mainly wondering if the model of “conscious” “persons” breaks down really quickly once you introduce intoxicants that mess with memory formation. It kinda seems like it, huh?
Worse than that, I think it breaks down even without removing memory formation. If someone takes drugs regularly which make them act very differently, it’s probably best to model them as two people (or at least two sets of behaviours and reactions attached to one person) even if they remembers both sides at all times. On a less drug-related level, for most people, aroused!person acts quite differently from unaroused!person (and while I mainly meant sexual arousal, it’s true for anger and other strong emotions as well). Which is just saying that a person acts differently when experiencing different emotions/mental states, which we really already know. It’s definitely more salient with drugs, though.
I feel like that’s a bit exaggerated, because an angry person will still remember themselves yelling and maybe throwing things. Once they’ve called down, they might still be inclined to argue that what they did was correct and justified, but they won’t have trouble admitting they did it. If a person doesn’t remember having the experience of yelling and throwing things, they won’t know anything about their internal state at the time it happened. So people telling them something happened is evidence that it did, but it was the … conscious experience of someone else? (Blargh, fuzzy wording.)
I think the best way to look at it is pragmatic (or instrumental or whatever you want to call it) - figure out what behaviour you’d like them to exhibit (e.g. be less mean, generally avoid destructive behaviours), decide whether they can influence it (probably yes, at least by drinking less), and then influence them accordingly. Which is a roundabout way of saying that you should tell them they suck when drunk and you’re unhappy with them so hopefully they’ll act better next time (or get less drunk) and that legally they should have pretty much the same responsibilities. There’s also the secondary question of deciding to what extent being a bad person while drunk suggests that they’re also a (less) bad person while not drunk and have maybe just been hiding it well. I tend to think that it probably doesn’t (the actual evidence of what we know about them when they’re not drunk being more relevant), but I’m not really sure.
But then if they’re a good person while they’re sober but they spend a lot of their time drunk, then they’re really a weighted average of two people that computes more skewed toward their drunk self (who can’t really coherently answer questions about themselves) and their sober self can’t remember what their drunk self did so that self can’t either and omgarghblarghcomplicated. I generally do just short-circuit all of these computations the way you describe and don’t hang out with people like this, but I have one friend whom I’ve known forever who’s generally okay but sometimes acts really weird. And I can’t tell when he’s drunk, so he slowly acts a little weird over a long period of time before revealing that he’s been drinking all day and then I just feel like I don’t know who I’m talking to and whether he’ll be that person the next time I see him.
Anyways, I’m not too interested in the specifics of the instrumental side? I was just mainly wondering if the model of “conscious” “persons” breaks down really quickly once you introduce intoxicants that mess with memory formation. It kinda seems like it, huh?
Worse than that, I think it breaks down even without removing memory formation. If someone takes drugs regularly which make them act very differently, it’s probably best to model them as two people (or at least two sets of behaviours and reactions attached to one person) even if they remembers both sides at all times. On a less drug-related level, for most people, aroused!person acts quite differently from unaroused!person (and while I mainly meant sexual arousal, it’s true for anger and other strong emotions as well). Which is just saying that a person acts differently when experiencing different emotions/mental states, which we really already know. It’s definitely more salient with drugs, though.
I feel like that’s a bit exaggerated, because an angry person will still remember themselves yelling and maybe throwing things. Once they’ve called down, they might still be inclined to argue that what they did was correct and justified, but they won’t have trouble admitting they did it. If a person doesn’t remember having the experience of yelling and throwing things, they won’t know anything about their internal state at the time it happened. So people telling them something happened is evidence that it did, but it was the … conscious experience of someone else? (Blargh, fuzzy wording.)