Williams presents two possible responses to his compelling argument that we should fear for our bodies regardless of whatever drastic psychological changes they might undergo, including a complete change of character and memories. These he terms "conceptual undecidability", in which the question remains open, and "conventionalist decision", in which the matter is resolved with practical criteria. In this paper I will discuss the latter, outlining the case for this sort of decision and the reasons Williams gives for rejecting it. In the end, I will attempt to provide further support for the conventionalist decision which Williams does not consider and show why it might be more plausible than he admits.

As we have seen, Williams gives two presentations of changes of character and memories which lead to contradictory conclusions. In the first presentation, the A body and the B body switch characters and memories and we are led to the conclusion that A should fear for the eventual torture of the B body person. The second presentation leads to the same situation, albeit six in different steps, but a different conclusion, where it seems A should definitely fear for his own body, even if it is inhabited by wholly different memories and character traits.

The conventionalist decision could be used to reject the second presentation. As we have said, it relies on a number of steps, wherein A is told in the penultimate step that his present character and memories will no longer exist and his present body will house another’s character and memories, and in the last step, he is told that his present character and memories will inhabit another body. Williams argues that this last, "extrinsic" fact should not affect A’s fears. In other words, what happens to another body should be irrelevent to A in the sixth step, if A had reason to fear for his present body in the fifth step. The conventional decision rejects this last claim, saying that the fifth and sixth steps do in fact represent different situations which call for different interpretations.

The reason they are different, one might argue, is that in the fifth step A is still the best "candidate" for being considered as identical to the person who underwent all these changes in character and memories. In other words, since there is no one else around who could reasonably be called A, the changes A undergoes should not make us stop calling him A, and he himself should still fear torture to his present body. On the other hand, in the sixth step, where A’s character and memories exist in another body, B, this other body becomes a better candidate for A’s identity.

Williams compares this view dismissively as one appropriate only to "lawyers deciding the ownership of some property which has undergone some bewildering set of transformations." (page 196, lines 27-29) Such a situation has a number of characteristics which Williams argues are inappropriate to matters of personal identity. First, in the case of a lawyer making a decision, a decision has to be made, for reasons of practicality: property must belong to one person or another. Personal identity, on the other hand, is less clear cut for one thing, especially in such bizarre cases, and just making a decision about it does not make the problem go away. Whereas a lawyer (or more probably, a judge) making a declaration about ownership makes it the case that the property belongs to whomever he says it belongs to, such declarations cannot be made about matters of identity. Whatever the lawyers base their decision on becomes irrelelvent once a settlement has been reached. However, declaring for practical reasons the continued identity of a person in a new body does not make it the case that identity has been decided.

Moreover, Williams argues, such a decision could not have any effects on A’s original fears. Telling A that someone has grounds for declaring that the B body is now going to be called A, since new evidence has been introduced, so to speak, should not give A rational grounds for dismissing his fears. Especially since this "new evidence" has only to do with the fate of another body. For Williams, the fact remains that nothing changes for A between the fifth and sixth step and no amount of "reasonable" decision making can change that.

Williams rejection seems weak for two reasons. He says, "If A’s fears can extend to what will happen to the A-body person in (v), I do not see how they can be rationally diverted from the fate of the exactly similar person in (vi) by his being told that someone would have a reason in the latter situation which he would not have in the former for deciding to call another person A." (end of page 196) First, the "someone" who Williams refers to could be A himself. In other words, Williams makes it sound like a conventionalist decision can only be made by a third party and rejects it for that reason. But I think A himself could come to the same conclusion. As I argued in the last paper, A’s fear in the fifth step may already be somewhat undgrounded, and being told that his character and memories would be transfered to another person could completely alleviate those fears. In other words, A could tell himself that in the sixth step, the B body person is in fact a "better candidate" for being called A, and thus the B body is also a better candidate for directing his hopes and fears. A could argue to himself, quite rationally, that B’s thoughts after the operation could be something like this: "I am A, I remember being told that the A body was going to be tortured, and I am glad I am not experiencing that torture right now." The fact that A can imagine these thoughts in another body might convince him to make the conventionalist decision and his fear might pass.

This brings me to the second weakness in Williams argument. Not only does he dismiss the conventionalist decision because it would be someone else making it, but he then describes the decision as having reasons for calling "another person" A, despite the fact that the A body has not changed between the fifth and sixth step. Calling the B body "another person" and saying that A should not change his feelings based on that which will happen to someone else seems to beg the question, as does calling what happens to B "extrinsic".

In conclusion, Williams seems to reject the conventionalist decision because personal identity is not like a land dispute in which a) a decision has to be made and b) such a decision is made by a third party and the decision made settles it for all parties involved. Instead, Williams argues that in the case of personal identity, this type of decision could have absolutely no effect of the person involved, and who is experiencing certain fears. I argued instead that A himself could make a conventionalist decision, and having made that decision, he could conceivably convince himself that he need not be afraid. Of course, his decision may be wrong in the end, but this does not prevent the possibility of making it.