Personal Identity

Minds and Persons

• If the mind = the brain, and the mind is the seat of personal identity, does this mean that you are a brain?

• What is the self?

• More perspicuously: what do we really mean by the term “person”?

• Do minds have moral standing, or only persons?

Locke

• When we think of a person we may be thinking of:

• A soul united with a particular body.

• A rational animal (Aristotle).

• A conscious being.

• Locke: “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 that is inseparable from thinking.”

A Person

• Possession of a self concept.

• Self consciousness.

• Reason.

• Memory.

• Continuity.

Various Criteria

Locke’s View

• Consciousness is essential to thinking.

• We cannot perceive or think without thinking that we perceive or think.

• Consciousness is the essence of personal identity.

• Same consciousness = same person.

• Insofar as my consciousness reaches back historically, I am the same person.

A Problem

• If I am unconscious, am I no longer a person?

• Isn’t the continuity of consciousness rather patchy?

• Locke: These are questions about whether we are the same substance. They have nothing to do with personal identity.

• Locke: Consciousness is all that matters. Different substances can manifest the same person, and the same person as a material being can be made up of various substances.

• e.g. A person does not become someone else by changing a coat (something inessential to his or her identity).

• The Prince and the Cobbler: a prince whose consciousness was swapped with that of a cobbler would still be a prince.

• Must there be one thing or some determinate collection of things that makes something a person? (Essentialism)

• What about unconscious desires? Is the self really as transparent as Locke thinks?

• Is such a conception of the self necessarily dualist?

• Must thinking be conscious? (AI)

• The conviction of a self is necessary to the function of reason (my chains of reasoning must all be mine to have any point).

• There can be no genuine memories of events that occur before one exists.

• But I may have existed before any events of which I could possibly have a memory.

Reid

• Reid: Identity is a special relation between a thing that exists at one time and a thing that exists at another time: a relation of sameness.

• Identity requires a continuous existence. Once a thing ceases to exist, if something similar in all respects comes into existence, it is not the same thing.

• Personal Identity requires continuity.

• Reid: our identity is not constituted by our sensations. These are always coming into being and passing away.

• Reid: persons are partless.

• It makes no sense to divide a person (recall Swinburne’s argument).

• Persons are indivisible.

• “My personal identity implies the continued existence of that indivisible thing I call myself.”

• It is this which is the subject of my thoughts, desires, sensations, etc.

• The evidence of this identity is fundamentally different from our evidence in other cases (e.g. the same car).

Reid’s View

• In many cases our criteria for saying something is the same allow all its parts to change, while it stays the same thing (e.g. a regiment, an oft repaired ship).

• This is different from the absolute identity manifested by persons.

• Against Locke: our consciousness is continually changing, but we do not.

• An even more starkly essentialist view than Locke’s.

• How can we know that we are the same being without appealing to our consciousness, even though this is changing?

• Hume exploits this view.

Problems

Hume

• “There are some philosophers, who imagine that we are every moment intimately conscious of what we call our Self.”

• Hume: from what impression is this idea derived?

• The self is supposed to be that to which our impressions and ideas “have a reference”.

• Hume: if we did have an impression of the self, it would have to be constant through our whole mental lives, because the self is supposed to be constant.

• We do not have such an idea.

• When I go looking for “myself”, I always come across some particular impression or idea, but never myself.

• We are nothing more than a “bundle of perceptions”.

• Example: the frames of a film.

• Hume: we confound the notions of identity and related succession. This gives rise to the myth of personal identity.

Hume’s View

Problems

• If Hume is right, then the self is really a fiction. Perhaps a fiction we cannot help but believe in, but a fiction nonetheless.

• Perhaps the notion of an individual is merely a cultural construct.

• It helps to have persons, because then there is someone to blame.

Daniel Dennett

• 1942-

• Teaches at Tufts University.

• A prominent figure in Philosophy of Mind.

• Champions a mechanical explanation of consciousness.

Where Am I?

• If my brain was removed from my body, but connected to it by wireless technology, where would I be?

• It would seem that I would naturally believe I was where my body was.

• I know when it is that I am thinking, just not where the thinking is.

In My Body?

• No. We could switch brains and bodies. Having this particular body is not essential to being me.

• What if we kept our brains in our own bodies, but wirelessly connected them to the body of the other?

In My Brain?

• If Dennett committed a crime, would the authorities merely incarcerate the brain and let the body go free?

• No. It would seem then that locating where I am with the brain doesn’t work either.

Wherever I Want?

• I am wherever my “point of view” is.

• But can’t I be wrong about this? (Virtual Reality)

• I can believe I am somewhere and be wrong about it in normal cases.

• Dennett: the content of beliefs does not fix one’s location.

What if?

• What if the connections between the brain and body failed?

• Dennett: we would immediately say that we were where the brain was.

• Would this mean that we (our souls) had moved faster than light between the locations.

• Is this a proof of an immaterial soul?

• Dennett: what if a synthetic copy of my brain was also hooked up to the same body?

• Dennett: I would not notice the difference if they were switched between each other.

• It would be like having a spare brain.

• What if it was then hooked up to a different body? Would there be two Dennetts?

• Many philosophers (notably Plato) have believed in personal immortality.

• Does personal immortality require a soul or an immaterial mind that is identical with the person?

• If memories were not transported with the soul, would it still be the same person?

Immortality

Worth It?

• Is immortality all it is cracked up to be?

• Would we not become bored eventually?

• Is anything really solved by the idea that we live forever?

• Would anything we did really matter if we were immortal? (we could always make amends)

Perry on Immortality

1. Proof of identity with an immaterial soul is perhaps sufficient to establish the possibility of immortality.

2. Proof of non-identity with the physical body is perhaps sufficient.

• Perry: perhaps the demonstration that immortality is possible is enough to give us hope.

• In this case it must be personal immortality.

• i.e. not just survival of the matter that makes me up.

• It cannot be someone that is specifically identical with me, but must be someone that is numerically identical with me.

1. Can we prove immortality by proving that there is an immaterial soul?

• Might my consciousness be the immortal part of me?

• Perry: “to be conscious” is a verb. The subject may well be the destructible body.

• Perry: We cannot ever directly experience an immaterial soul, nor can we infer its existence (Problem of Other Minds).

• If we follow Hume’s reasoning, it seems that we cannot even identify a unitary soul. Our minds are constantly changing, much like the waters of a river.

• We cannot infer the existence of a unitary soul from the existence of our psychological states (Hume)

• The evidence we have is consistent with one soul or many (no sense can be attached to “soul”) (Hume)

• Can we prove that we are not identical with the physical body?

• I can know I exist independently of knowing I have a body (sensory deprivation).

• I would know I was the same person even if I woke up in a different body.

• It is the unity of conscious states that is the person (like the unity of river parts).

• If personal identity is just the connection between various stages of mental life (memories) rather than bodily identity, then it is possible that such stages continue after death.

• If it is possible that somebody in Heaven could remember being me, they are me.

• NB: All that is required on this view is continuity and the ability to remember past conscious states. That does not require the sameness of a body or anything else (Locke).

• Perry: but it is possible for someone to think they remember without actually remembering anything real.

• So it does not follow that the prospect of someone having apparent memories of my life now in the future ensures that the person is really me.

• The notion of identity through memory is flawed. Locke’s idea does not guarantee the possibility of a future person who is actually me. It seems I have to assume identity to distinguish between real and apparent memories (circular argument)

• Perhaps we could save the memory theory of identity by specifying that it is not just the content of memories, but their causes that are relevant.

• Thus I am the same person if I have a particular memory and if that memory was caused by the actual event (this avoids the problem of apparent memories).

• In this case Identity is explained by memory, which is explained by apparent memory + cause.

• If the causal theory is true, immortality is possible because God could ensure the causal connections between my earthly memories and my heavenly self.

• Perry: but God could do this with any number of heavenly persons. Which one would be me? Both cannot be.

• It seems that both would be similar to me, but not me. Thus immortality of the person is not possible on this account.