A philosophical critique of Menkiti’s human memory-dependent ancestral persistence thesis

Abstract

In this article, I contribute to the debate on the “human memory-dependent” ancestral persistence thesis of Menkiti by showing that the frame upon which the ancestral persistence thesis is constructed makes it not easily refutable. As I will argue, such a thesis might not be acceptable to would-be objectors who might feel that ancestral persistence might be accounted for differently. An alternative perspective would be to argue that ancestral persons are human memory-independent beings, perhaps because they are facts which might not depend for their existence on this or that person. However, such a position is similarly saddled with problems of justifying such mind-independent “facts” outside what human persons still remember of them, unless perhaps, if we are to sustain their human memory-independent existence on DNA-inspired ancestral tracing. With this in mind, it would appear that one cannot reasonably choose one position over the other given the respective merits they have and the challenges that seem to undermine them. Nevertheless, on the grounds that the decisive position that human persons have in determining the range of ancestral persistence, it would appear that the human memory-dependent ancestral persistence thesis slightly holds sway and is worth defending based on its founding frame.