I ran across this philosophy paper that I wrote for my metaphysics class in college.
This paper aims to look at the question of personal identity and identify elements that can better explain the survival and continuity of a self. While traditional arguments on personal identity assume personal identity to be objective and unique, the key idea behind this paper is that personal identity should be viewed from a subjective point of view and within context. On top of that, personal identity should take into account physical connectivity as well as psychological connectivity.
Premises and Assumptions:
I will begin with the following premises:
I will be using two forms of continuity when it comes to personal identity and survival: psychological continuity view and physical continuity view.
In psychological continuity view, a person is a series of person-stages that are psychologically connected in the “right way”. For the scope of this paper, it does not matter what the “right way” is. We could just assume the right way is some sort of cause-effect relationship where a current mental-state (or psychological state) of a person causes the future mental state to exist. What is important is to note that the psychological continuity view depends on the mental states of the person rather than what the physical state is.
In the physical continuity view however, a person is a series of physical bodies (or under P1, just a series of physical brains). Each physical body is connected to the previous physical body in some manner. There has to link connecting each physical state to the previous one. For the matter of this paper, I would describe this link as a step by step change in the physical body (the brain) by small magnitudes.
A few more claims and assumptions follow from this:
At this point let me clarify that I am not making the claim that internal view of personal identity is any more “real” than the external view or the other way round. More concretely, my point is that identity itself is not an objective truth in itself, but rather subject to the context. And hence it is important to see it in the two context that seem the most obvious and relevant (namely the internal and external view).
Thought Experiments:
I would apply some of the thoughts experiments described by Parfit in “Physicalism” and “Divided Minds and the Nature of Persons”.
Let’s consider the case the case of the teleporter. The teleporter scans the original person, makes an identical physical copy of that person in Mars (or any other location) and then destroys the original person. We will call the person entering the teleporter “A”, and the person who emerges on Mars as “B”. It can be claimed that the moment “A” is destroyed, “B” is created on Mars. B clearly has psychological continuity with A as the mental state of B comes right from the mental state of A. Hence from an external point of view, B and A are treated as the same people and as indistinguishable. However, from an internal point of view, there is no physical connectivity. All of the atoms in B, while identical, are not the same as the ones in A. Hence, from an internal perspective of A (or even B), B is different from A. Hence, A walking into the teleporter should expect that he will be killed in the process. However, for everyone else, A will survive as B, and they should treat B as A.
Consider now a different machine, similar to the teleporter. This machine takes the original body and one by one picks the atoms of that body, destroys them and replaces them with new identical atoms. At the end, the original body is completely destroys and replaced by new atoms. However, the final state of the body is connected to the original state of the body through a series of physical-states. Hence, even though the final body is completely new, unlike in the teleporter case, it is physically connected to the original body. Hence, from both the external and internal points of view, the original person has survived.
Now, let’s consider the case of cloning. A person “A” is cloned into “B”. At the moment of creation of B, B’s mental state is psychologically connected to A’s. Hence, from an external point of view, it is irrelevant to ask which of them is the real A. From an external point of view, B should be considered the same as A. Now considering that in internal point of view, while A and B have psychological connectivity, they lack the physical connectivity because B comprises of completely different atoms and there is no transition that connects B’s physical body to A’s physical body except for the fact all the atoms are identical (but not the same).
Let’s now look at the following two cases. Case 1: A man has a disease where by one half of his brain is slowly dying. Over the course a certain time period (let’s say week), one half of his brain will be completely dead, and he will be functional on only one half. Case 2: A man has one half of his brain removed in an operation. In both these cases, psychological continuity exists, as the remaining half comes from the original psychological state. However, my claim would be that physical connectivity only exists in case 1 and not in case 2. In case 1, his brain cell are slowly dying, and it is possible to connect the final state of the brain to the initial state where in each intermediate state a few of the brain cells have died. However, in case 2, there are only two states, one with complete brain and one with half brain. There is no “smooth” connection between the two states. As a consequence, from an internal point of view the original person “survives” only in case 1, and not in case 2. Again, from an external point of view, the original person is considered to have survived in both the cases.
Objections:
A very obvious objection will be at the intrinsic ambiguity in the definition of states being physically connected in the right manner. Unlike psychological states which can change continuously over time, physically states can only change discretely (at best an atom at a time). The question then becomes what counts as a change appropriate enough that two physical states can be said to be. We know a change of one atom counts. But what about two atoms? Three atoms? More? Whatever number we end up deciding would be too arbitrary; hence, seems like there is no way of deciding where to cut off for the physical-state connection.
A response for this could be found by looking at two cases. In first case a physical body is completely destroyed and replaced by a completely new physical body, and in the second case only one atom of the physical body has been replaced by a new one. We can intuitively tell that in the first case there is no connection between the final physical body and the original, while in the second case, we can intuitively tell the two physical states are connected. Now while we might not be able to determine where the cut-off happens (if at all), we know that it is possible (from intuition) for states to be not-physically connected and also for the states to be physically connected. Hence, for this paper, we can assume we are taking for granted that we can tell whether two states are physically connected or not. We can just assume there is a “right way” for the physical states to be connected in a series. While this response is certainly not enough, I believe it is adequate for this argument.
Another objection could be how can we have two views on personal identity where in certain situations, a person survives in one view and doesn’t survive in another view. The response would be that in this paper, I have assumed that personal identity is not an objective fact/truth but rather subjective and dependent on how it is viewed/perceived. Hence different views could yield different answers.
Another related objection could be that in the external view, in certain cases (such as cloning), it seems like we have two person at the same time. And we cannot have same person as more than one person. A possible response to this is that identity in strictest of sense is not objective and hence in cases it is irrelevant to try to distinguish between two persons, and hence multiple persons can be treated as same, even though that might seem absurd by conventional standards.
Conclusion:
To conclude, personal identity is not an objective concept. Instead it should be considered from different viewpoints (external and internal). In addition to psychological continuity between person-states it is important to also note the physical continuity between the states as well, as this is an important consideration for the internal view. While conventional thoughts view personal identity as unique, with this paper, I have attempted to show that personal identity is not unique but rather very context dependent.
References:
Personal Identity: Psychological and Physical continuity view
Premises and Assumptions:
I will begin with the following premises:
- [P1] Personal Identity is physically confined to the existence of a brain rather than a complete body. Under this premise, if my body is destroyed but if my brain is still function (and running) then I am still alive and I have survived.
- [P2] It can be thought that there are two perspectives for personal identity: an internal view and an external view. The internal view is from the perspective of a particular consciousness. That is, the internal view of personal identity is when I think of myself or how a person “X” views himself/herself. The external view on the other hand is how a person is viewed from outside. This entails how others (outsiders) view a particular person.
I will be using two forms of continuity when it comes to personal identity and survival: psychological continuity view and physical continuity view.
In psychological continuity view, a person is a series of person-stages that are psychologically connected in the “right way”. For the scope of this paper, it does not matter what the “right way” is. We could just assume the right way is some sort of cause-effect relationship where a current mental-state (or psychological state) of a person causes the future mental state to exist. What is important is to note that the psychological continuity view depends on the mental states of the person rather than what the physical state is.
In the physical continuity view however, a person is a series of physical bodies (or under P1, just a series of physical brains). Each physical body is connected to the previous physical body in some manner. There has to link connecting each physical state to the previous one. For the matter of this paper, I would describe this link as a step by step change in the physical body (the brain) by small magnitudes.
A few more claims and assumptions follow from this:
- [P3] In the internal view of personal identity (from P2), for a person to be the same, his person stages have to be linked in the proper way under both the psychological connectivity view and the physical connectivity view. If person-states are only fulfilling the psychological connectivity, then under the internal view, we cannot say that the person at the beginning of the person-stages series is the same as the person at the end of the series.
- [P4] In the external view of personal identity, for a person to still be the same, the person-stages have to be linked under just the psychological connectivity view.
At this point let me clarify that I am not making the claim that internal view of personal identity is any more “real” than the external view or the other way round. More concretely, my point is that identity itself is not an objective truth in itself, but rather subject to the context. And hence it is important to see it in the two context that seem the most obvious and relevant (namely the internal and external view).
Thought Experiments:
I would apply some of the thoughts experiments described by Parfit in “Physicalism” and “Divided Minds and the Nature of Persons”.
Let’s consider the case the case of the teleporter. The teleporter scans the original person, makes an identical physical copy of that person in Mars (or any other location) and then destroys the original person. We will call the person entering the teleporter “A”, and the person who emerges on Mars as “B”. It can be claimed that the moment “A” is destroyed, “B” is created on Mars. B clearly has psychological continuity with A as the mental state of B comes right from the mental state of A. Hence from an external point of view, B and A are treated as the same people and as indistinguishable. However, from an internal point of view, there is no physical connectivity. All of the atoms in B, while identical, are not the same as the ones in A. Hence, from an internal perspective of A (or even B), B is different from A. Hence, A walking into the teleporter should expect that he will be killed in the process. However, for everyone else, A will survive as B, and they should treat B as A.
Consider now a different machine, similar to the teleporter. This machine takes the original body and one by one picks the atoms of that body, destroys them and replaces them with new identical atoms. At the end, the original body is completely destroys and replaced by new atoms. However, the final state of the body is connected to the original state of the body through a series of physical-states. Hence, even though the final body is completely new, unlike in the teleporter case, it is physically connected to the original body. Hence, from both the external and internal points of view, the original person has survived.
Now, let’s consider the case of cloning. A person “A” is cloned into “B”. At the moment of creation of B, B’s mental state is psychologically connected to A’s. Hence, from an external point of view, it is irrelevant to ask which of them is the real A. From an external point of view, B should be considered the same as A. Now considering that in internal point of view, while A and B have psychological connectivity, they lack the physical connectivity because B comprises of completely different atoms and there is no transition that connects B’s physical body to A’s physical body except for the fact all the atoms are identical (but not the same).
Let’s now look at the following two cases. Case 1: A man has a disease where by one half of his brain is slowly dying. Over the course a certain time period (let’s say week), one half of his brain will be completely dead, and he will be functional on only one half. Case 2: A man has one half of his brain removed in an operation. In both these cases, psychological continuity exists, as the remaining half comes from the original psychological state. However, my claim would be that physical connectivity only exists in case 1 and not in case 2. In case 1, his brain cell are slowly dying, and it is possible to connect the final state of the brain to the initial state where in each intermediate state a few of the brain cells have died. However, in case 2, there are only two states, one with complete brain and one with half brain. There is no “smooth” connection between the two states. As a consequence, from an internal point of view the original person “survives” only in case 1, and not in case 2. Again, from an external point of view, the original person is considered to have survived in both the cases.
Objections:
A very obvious objection will be at the intrinsic ambiguity in the definition of states being physically connected in the right manner. Unlike psychological states which can change continuously over time, physically states can only change discretely (at best an atom at a time). The question then becomes what counts as a change appropriate enough that two physical states can be said to be. We know a change of one atom counts. But what about two atoms? Three atoms? More? Whatever number we end up deciding would be too arbitrary; hence, seems like there is no way of deciding where to cut off for the physical-state connection.
A response for this could be found by looking at two cases. In first case a physical body is completely destroyed and replaced by a completely new physical body, and in the second case only one atom of the physical body has been replaced by a new one. We can intuitively tell that in the first case there is no connection between the final physical body and the original, while in the second case, we can intuitively tell the two physical states are connected. Now while we might not be able to determine where the cut-off happens (if at all), we know that it is possible (from intuition) for states to be not-physically connected and also for the states to be physically connected. Hence, for this paper, we can assume we are taking for granted that we can tell whether two states are physically connected or not. We can just assume there is a “right way” for the physical states to be connected in a series. While this response is certainly not enough, I believe it is adequate for this argument.
Another objection could be how can we have two views on personal identity where in certain situations, a person survives in one view and doesn’t survive in another view. The response would be that in this paper, I have assumed that personal identity is not an objective fact/truth but rather subjective and dependent on how it is viewed/perceived. Hence different views could yield different answers.
Another related objection could be that in the external view, in certain cases (such as cloning), it seems like we have two person at the same time. And we cannot have same person as more than one person. A possible response to this is that identity in strictest of sense is not objective and hence in cases it is irrelevant to try to distinguish between two persons, and hence multiple persons can be treated as same, even though that might seem absurd by conventional standards.
Conclusion:
To conclude, personal identity is not an objective concept. Instead it should be considered from different viewpoints (external and internal). In addition to psychological continuity between person-states it is important to also note the physical continuity between the states as well, as this is an important consideration for the internal view. While conventional thoughts view personal identity as unique, with this paper, I have attempted to show that personal identity is not unique but rather very context dependent.
References:
- “Physicalism” by Derek Parfit
- “Divided Minds and the Nature of Person” by Derek Parfit
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