Personal Identity Debate Guide

From PhiloWiki

Personal Identity is whatever it is that makes you you. Is it your body, your mind, your personality, your memories, or something else? In an important recent use, this term refers to the problem of (re-)identifying a person – that is, of telling whether this is the same person as that. For example, what makes it the case that some person you saw yesterday is the same parson you see today? Is it that he or she has the same continuing body? Or Mind? That the later temporal stage remembers what happened to the earlier?

Historical Perspectives

Below are summaries and quotes of views about personal identity from philosophers throughout history.

Descartes – The "I" is an immaterial substance whose essence is thought.

"Immediately I noticed that even while I thus wished to think all these things were false, it was absolutely necessary that I, who thought then some thing; I observed that this truth - I think, therefore I am - was so certain and so evident that no ground of doubt, however extravagant, brought forth by skeptics, could shake it. I concluded that I could without scruple accept it as the first principle of the philosophy I was seeking... I concluded that I was a thing or substance whose whole essence or nature was only to think, and which, to exist, has no need of space or of any material thing or body. Thus it follows that this ego, this mind, Even if the body did not exist, the soul would not cease to be all that it is now. "

Hume – There is no personal Identity.

"There are some philosophers (e.g. Berkeley) who imagine we are every moment intimately conscious of what we call our self; that we feel its existence and its continuance in existence, and are certain of its identity and simplicity... For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call my self, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure, color or sound, etc. I never catch my self, distinct from some such perception... I may venture to affirm of the rest of mankind that they are nothing but a bundle or collections of different perceptions which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity and are in a perpetual flux and movement. Our eyes cannot turn in their sockets without varying their perceptions. Our thoughts are still more variable. And all our other senses and powers contribute to this change... The mind (or self) is a kind of theatre where perceptions make their appearances, pass, repass, glide away, and mingle in an infinite variety. But there is no simplicity, no one simple thing present or pervading this multiplicity; no identity pervading this process of change; whatever natural inclination we may have to imagine that there is. The comparison of the theatre must not mislead us: it persists, while the actors come and go. Whereas, only the successive perceptions consititute the mind... As memory alone acquaints us with the continuance and extent of a succession of perceptions, it is to be considered, on that account chiefly, as the source of personal identity. Had we no memory, we should never have any notion of that succession of perceptions which constitutes our self or person. But having once acquired this notion from the operation of memory, we can extend the same beyond our memory and come to include times which we have entirely forgot. And so arises the fiction of person and personal identity."

Locke – Personal Identity is defined by consciousness and is persisted by memory

"This being premised, to find wherein personal identity consists, we must consider what person stands for; — which, I think, is a thinking intelligent being, that has reason and reflection, and can consider itself as itself, the same thinking thing, in different times and places; which it does only by that consciousness which is inseparable from thinking, and, as it seems to me, essential to it: it being impossible for any one to perceive without perceiving that he does perceive. When we see, hear, smell, taste, feel, meditate, or will anything, we know that we do so. Thus it is always as to our present sensations and perceptions: and by this every one is to himself that which he calls self: — it not being considered, in this case, whether the same self be continued in the same or divers substances. For, since consciousness always accompanies thinking, and it is that which makes every one to be what he calls self, and thereby distinguishes himself from all other thinking things, in this alone consists personal identity, i.e. the sameness of a rational being: and as far as this consciousness can be extended backwards to any past action or thought, so far reaches the identity of that person; it is the same self now it was then; and it is by the same self with this present one that now reflects on it, that that action was done."

Kant – A Summary of Kants Notions of Personality as relayed in Heidegger’s “Basic Problems of Phenomenology”

For Kant, the self or the person exists in three respects. The logical self, the apprehended self, and the practical self. For Kant, the ego’s determinations are representations. In each representation the subject does not simply experience the representation, but experiences the representation as its own. Because of the logical ego, each thought is simultaneously an “I think”. The ego knows it’s self as the ground of its determinations. What’s more, it knows its self as the ground of its own unity in the multiplicity of these representations. For Kant, logical ego is, as he refers to it, the “Synthetic Unity of Apperception” which means essentially what gives unity to the “manifold of representations”.

“I am conscious of myself” is a thought that already contains a twofold ego, the ego as subject and the ego as object. Although it is an indubitable fact, it is simply impossible to explain how it is possible that I who am thinking myself can be my own object (of intuition) and thus can differentiate myself from myself. The self of apprehension is the self in as much as it appears to its self. It means the factual faculty, grounded in the logical self, in the I think, to become conscious of its empirical states, of its representations as occurrences that exist and are always varying. This is in essence the psychological person. However, Kant does not think that this self can ever be known in its self. For Kant, psychology is at best an Anthropology.

To complete the concept of personality belongs not only rationality, but responsibility. The practical self is a particular kind of self consciousness. It is the moral self-consciousness that characterizes the person in regard to what the personality is. This moral-self consciousness is mediated by feeling. Much like representation or thinking, feeling too reveals the subject to its self. Take the way in which the human being, turning with pleasure toward something, experiences himself as enjoying – he is joyous. The essential nature of feeling is not only that it is a feeling for something, but also that this feeling for something at the same time makes feelable the feeler himself and his state. Feeling expresses a peculiar mode of revelation of the ego. In having a feeling for something there is always present at the same time a self-feeling and in the self-feeling a mode of becoming revealed to oneself. Respect for the moral law in the respectful ego must simultaneously become manifest to its self in a specific way. This specific type of revelation of law as the deterring ground of action and is as such conjointly a specific revelation of my own self as the agent. This moral feeling is a distinctive way in which the ego understands itself as ego directly, purely, and free of all sensuous determination. The feeling of respect for the moral law is a self subjecting self elevation. This feeling of respect is the true mode in which man’s existence becomes manifest. Respect reveals the dignity before which and for which the self knows itself to be responsible. Thus the moral law can be articulated as , “Act so that you use humanity in your own person as well as in the person of everyone else never merely as a means but always at the same time as an end” It prescribes what man can be as defined by the essential nature of his existence. It is not subject to an if-then. The acting subject is of its own nature itself an end, the end of and for its own self, not conditioned by or subordinated to another. The realm of end is the being with one another, the commercium of persons as such, and therefore the realm of freedom. To this being belongs purposiveness, more precisely, self-purposiveness. Its way of being is to be the end or purpose of its own self.

Daniel Dennett

Homunculus basically means little man. In a philosophical context, it is often used to refer to a theory of mind or soul that supposes that the mind is explained by having a center of intelligence that simply observes perception. Theories such as most notions of soul or of Descartes thinking substance, in essence suppose a homunculus, or little man in the mind that gives intelligence to perception. The question becomes, what gives intelligence to the homunculus? Is it another little man? The answer will give rise to an infinite regress of homunculi. In the quote below, Dennett succinctly articulates how cognitive science, by breaking up mind and consciousness into its constituents, dispels the problem of the homunculus

"Homunculi are bogeymen only if they duplicate entire the talents they are rung in to explain ... If one can get a team or committee of relatively ignorant, narrow-minded, blind homunculi to produce the intelligent behavior of the whole, this is progress. A flow chart is typically the organizational chart of a committee of homunculi (investigators, librarians, accountants, executives); each box specifies a homunculus by prescribing a function without saying how it is accomplished (one says, in effect: put a little man in there to do the job). If we then look closer at the individual boxes we see that the function of each is accomplished by subdividing it via another flow chart into still smaller, more stupid homunculi. Eventually this nesting of boxes within boxes lands you with homunculi so stupid (all they have to do is remember whether to say yes or no when asked) that they can be, as one says, "replaced by a machine" One discharges fancy homunculi from one's scheme by organizing armies of idiots to do the work." "

"The strangest and most wonderful construction in the whole animal world are the amazing, intricate constructions made by the primate, Homo sapiens. Each normal individual of this species makes a self. Out of its brain, it spins a web of words and deeds, and, like the other creatures, it doesn't have to know what it's doing; it just does it. The web protects it, just like the snail's shell, and provides it livelihood, just like the spider's web, and advances its prospects for sex, just like the bowerbird's bower. Unlike a spider, an individual human doesn't just exude its web; more like a beaver, it works hard to gather the materials out of which it builds it's protective fortress. .. This 'web of discourses'… is as much a biological product as any of the other constructs … in contrast, we are almost constantly engaged in presenting our selves to others – in language and in gesture, external and internal… Our human environment contains not just food and shelter, enemies to fight or flee… but words, words, words. These words are potent elements of our environment that we readily incorp"

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1. Why does Descartes think that he is not something physical? Is he correct? If one is not something physical, does that mean that one is, as Descarte's presumes, a non-physical substance?

2. Does Hume really think there is no personal identity? If this were really the case, what would this imply? Would it imply that you don't exist?

3. Lock writes, "Consciousness makes personal identity" Can you imagine a consciousness without personal identity? If so, what else, besides mere consciousness is required for personal identity? If not, what about consciousness gives rise to personal identity?

4. If, as Dennet seems to presume, consciousness is a composition of intelligent parts, what gives it it's apparent unity?

5. What role does language play in personal identity? Would it be possible to have a personal identity without langauge?

The Philosphical Problems

1. What is necessary and what is sufficient for something to count as a person?

  a. Is it reason, language, emotion, consciousness, self consciousness?   
  b. Does consciousness presuppose self-consciousness?  Is it possible for something to be conscious without 
     being self-conscious? 
  c. What would it take for a chimp, alien, or computer to become a person? 

2. Who am I? What makes you, you? There are two ways to take this question. On the one hand, one can ask, what makes me, me to others. What qualities make me different from others? The answers to this question are innumerable. Your appearance, your demeanor, ways of speaking, particular habits, etc. However, you can also ask, what is essential to you. Should your appearance change, should you break your habits or change your ways of speaking, would you still be you? Your individual psychological identity is a property (or set of properties), and presumably one that you have only contingently: you might have had a different identity from the one you in fact have. Likewise, it is a property that you might have for a while and then lose. What makes you, you essentially can not be taken away.

   a. What is essentially you? Are you essentially your reason, your memory, your will, your     
      consciousness?    
   b. Is it possible for there to be a self without another?  

3. What sort of things, metaphysically speaking, are you and I and other human people? What is our basic metaphysical nature?

  a. Are we something immaterial, a soul? If so, how does this immaterial thing interact with our bodies to 
     both perceive the material world and to cause our physical bodies to act within it. Our eyes decode and 
     transduce light with elaborate complexity and turn it into an electrical signal which travels into the 
     even more elaborately complex organization of matter, our brain. At which point and how does this signal 
     reach the soul? How could a physical signal effect something immaterial? 
  b. Are we our bodies? What part of our bodies is essentially us? Could we replace a leg, a lung, a liver 
     and still be ourselves? Could we replace our entire body and still be ourselves? 
  c. Are we our brains? If we are our brains, what about our brains are we? Is it just the matter, the 
     neurons, of our brain that makes us what we are or is it the relationship among the neurons? If it is 
     the relationship among the neurons, could that relationship be duplicated? If so, would that duplicated 
     set of relations be you? 
  d. How could our consciousness and self consciousness be caused by something physical? 
  e.Given what you are, is it possible to survive the death of your body?

4. Persistence. What does it take for a person to persist from one time to another — that is, for the same person to exist at different times. What is it that makes you the same you that existed five, ten, or twenty years ago?

  a. Psychological Approach :  some psychological relation is necessary or sufficient (or both) for one to 
     persist. You are that future being that in some sense inherits its mental features — beliefs, memories, 
     preferences, the capacity for rational thought, that sort of thing — from you; and you are that past 
     being whose mental features you have inherited in this way. 
     Problems for the Psychological Approach:  For the memory criteria specifically – One does not remember 
     or have any connecting memories to much of ones past.   Does it follow that one is not identical with 
     what one does not remember?  Am I not the man who slept in my bed last night?   Fission – See thought 
     experiment 3 below.  Duplication. – See thought experiment 1 below. 
  b. Somatic Approach: our identity through time consists in some brute physical relation. You are that past 
     or future being that has your body, or that is the same biological organism as you are, or the like. 
     Whether you survive or perish has nothing to do with psychological facts. 
     Problems for the Somatic Approach:  The somatic approach is, to many, counterintuitive.  Suppose Adam's 
     brain is transplanted into Sam's body.   The somatic approach implies that the survivor of the 
     transplant would be Sam who has just been lucky enough to get a new brain. 
  c.  The Simple View:  There is something other that the psychological or physiological constituents which 
     are required for personal identity.   This view is often held by those who point to a soul as the 
     criteria for personal identity or by dualists such as Descartes. 

Thought Experiments

1. Duplication: A common device in science fiction is a transporter. Imagine a transporter which works by taking a scan of the exact physical makeup of your body, breaking your body completely down and reassembling it exactly at another transporter. If the transporter uses different mater, does that make the being that gets reassembled on the other side someone else? Does that mean that what makes you you is the particular mater you are made of? Or are you simply something caused by the structure of that matter? What if the transporter malfunctions and fails to destroy your initial body. Imagine that a second you was created beside you, would that you be you as well?

2. Where Am I? http://instruct.westvalley.edu/lafave/where_am_i.html In this thought experiment, Daniel Dennett’s body is sent on a mission to retrieve a warhead which destroys brain tissue. His brain is removed from his body and is allowed to control it by elaborate radio transmission receivers hooked up to the remaining nervous system. His brain is kept in a vat and he is allowed to actually view it with his radio controlled body. During the mission, his body is destroyed and he comes to find out that the scientists controlling his brain duplicated it in a computer. When he is finally given a new remote controlled body, the output of it’s nervous system are sent both to his biological brain and his computer brain and each is found to be perfectly in sync. Dennett is given a switch which he can use switch back and forth between his computer brain and his organic brain. He finds he can do this even mid-sentence and notice no change. After a few years of not flipping the switch, he discovers one of his brains (he has lost track of which is which) has gotten out of sync. Now he has two brains and he has to find another body for one.

3. Fission:

Though not an overly common practice, there are occasions such as cancer or injury where one half of a patient’s brain is removed. Frequently, especially in younger patients, the individual can regain nearly full functionality using only half of their brain. They are generally taken to be the same person. Imagine a brain transplant (not an actual practice) where half of the brain dies. Is the surviving person the same person who contributed the whole brain? If so, what would happen if two hemispheres of the brain were transplanted into two different bodies? Would there be two of the same individual?