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Would it have been me?Robert Elliot a & Andre Gallois aa Brisbane College of Advanced Education ,University of QueenslandPublished online: 09 Jan 2007.

To cite this article: Robert Elliot & Andre Gallois (1984) Would it havebeen me?, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 62:3, 292-293, DOI:10.1080/00048408412340083

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00048408412340083

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Australasian Journal o f Philosophy Vol. 62, No. 3; September 1984

WOULD IT HAVE BEEN ME?

(Against the Necessity of Origin)

Robert Elliot and Andre Gallois

Saul A. Kripke claims that, necessarily, an object cannot have had an origin other than its actual origin.~ He suggests that this principle entails that one's parents could not have been other than those individuals they actually are. He also suggests that the principle entails that if one began life as a human being then, necessarily, one began life as a human being. We have no quarrel with the second of the claims that the necessity of origin principle is said to entail. However we believe that there is a counter-example to the first. Like Kripke, we shall make use of an example suggested by Timothy Sprigge and ask whether the Queen could have been the child of Mr and Mrs Truman.

The question, as Kripke is at pains to point out, is not whether the indi- vidual who is the Queen could turn out to have parents other than those two individuals commonly believed to be her parents. The question is rather whether the Queen, the very individual at present on the throne, could have had parents other than those, whoever they may be, she actually has. Kripke is also careful to exclude 'such recherche possibilities as transplants of the sperm from the father, or the egg from the mother into other bodies, so that in one sense other people might have been her parents'. 2 We do not think that our counter-example falls into this category.

The zygote from which the Queen developed was formed from the fusion of two gametes. These gametes were constituted from certain elementary particles in a particular complex configuration. Now the history of these particular particles could have been different. They might have become incor- porated in different human bodies to those in which they were actually incor- porated. The particles which constituted the gamete provided by the Queen's actual father could have become incorporated in Mr Truman and could have arranged themselves in exactly the way in which they were arranged in the Queen's actual father. A parallel story could have been true of the particles forming the gamete provided by the Queen's actual mother, finding their way into Mrs Truman's body.

The story fills out in the obvious way. Mr and Mrs Truman copulate and a zygote forms from the gametes just described. The zygote develops in the normal way and a child is born. Moreover, we can imagine that the particular constitution and structure of the Trumans' child at any given stage of its life

Saul A. Kripke, 'Naming and Necessity' in Gilbert Harman and Donald Davidson (eds.) Semantics of Natural Languages (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1972) pp. 312-314.

2 Ibid. p. 313.

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Robert Elliot and Andre Gallois 293

is the same as at the equivalent stage in the life of the Queen. The history of the universe would have to have been very different from its actual history if all this were to have happened. However it does not obviously involve any metaphysical impossibility. Moreover it would seem that the Trumans' child in the possible world we have described would have been the very same indi- vidual as the Queen. As Kripke remarks of his own conclusion on the same question, 'One can only become convinced of this by reflection on how you would describe this s i tuat ion ' ) This may not in the end be a very sound philosophical method but in such cases it seems the only method available. We believe that when it is applied it yields our conclusion.

Our thought-experiment shows that anyone could have had parents different from those he or she in fact has. Nevertheless something remains of the necessity of origin principle. Our thought-experiment does nothing to over- throw the claim that, necessarily, one develops from a particular configuration of particular elementary particles. If this is all the necessity of origin principle comes to it does not entail, contrary to Kripke's suggestion, that one could not have had different parents. Indeed if our thought-experiment reveals a genuine possibility then we shall have brought the necessity of origin for organisms closer to the necessity of origin for non-organisms. In the case of non-organisms it is true that, necessarily, an object must have been orig- inally constituted out of the very same elementary particles out of which it was actually, originally constituted. For example, a block of wood, if it were to be the very same block of wood, could not have been originally constituted from elementary particles other than those from which it was in fact originally constituted. The same requirement is all that must be satisfied by persons, except that tighter constraints have to be imposed on the subsequent history of the elementary particles that are involved at the beginning of an individual's career. However this does not entail that an organism's parents could not have been different individuals.

Perhaps the point at which we disagree with Kripke needs high-lighting. Kripke distinguishes between the necessity of origin thesis and two other related theses; the thesis that 'if a material object has its origin from a certain hunk of matter, it could not have its origin in any other matter '4 and the thesis that the substance of which an object is made is essential: Our thought- experiment contradicts neither of these two theses. The only obvious way of differentiating them from the necessity of origin thesis is to take the latter to include the claim that an organism necessarily has the parents it actually has. It is this additional claim that is false.

Brisbane College o f A d v a n c e d Educat ion University o f Queensland Received 12 September 1983

3 Ibid. p. 313. 4 Ibid. p. 350 fn. 56. 5 Ibid. p. 351 fn. 57.

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