C3.CONCEPT.PER
file c3.concept.per 8:26 am October 31, 1994 spell checked 8:49 am Nov 28, 1992 12:01 pm Mar 30, 1992 / 10:31 am Jan 13, 1992 11:20 am Oct 31, 1991 / 12:41 pm Jan 18, 1989
CHAPTER 3
CONCEPTS OF PERSONAL IDENTITY
Purpose of this chapter:
To define the concept of personal identity so that the identity theory can build from it.
Topics in sequence to cover: What are we? What is our personal identity? Why is our personal identity important to us to laws
to others
Why is the concept of personal identity important to the identity theory?
The concept of personal identity is at the basis of morals, ethics, law, government, religions, psychology, and plays a major role in many other sciences. The concept of personal identity is important to laws because of property rights, personal, moral, monetary, and legal, obligations. Examples of legal needs for personal identity are Which person owns which piece of land or other valuable objects.
If we can not determine a personal identity for people we would not be able to determine who owns what and who is responsible for what action or deed good or bad. In legal circles, the mentality of a person is often not he, it is the continuation of a body with a history testified to by other people. If we can not identify ourselves in relation to other people we can not establish ownership of things. A birth certificate is an example of a history that is testified to by people in legal form. It gives a person a legal starting point. A person can not be accused of or take credit for an action if he has not been born yet. Why is the body the important aspect to a person and not his mentality? One reason is that we do not have ways to tell peoples different mentalities apart like we can with the body. Peoples identity can be hidden by changing their appearance, removing the finger prints, plastic surgery, changing accents, and many other ways. When we want to change our appearance we want to hide but some times we want to prove our identity so that we can benefit from it; for example, from an inheritance. For a person his mentality is the most important aspect for and of himself. To other people the most important aspect is his body and that bodies behavior. We have developed the concept of the soul to define the unique aspects of a persons mentality. The body certainly is connected to the mentality of a person. However, the mentality of a person transcends the body. An example of this is when we dream. At these special times we can seem to have no awareness of our bodies or to any particular body, yet we have a concept of ourselves as an entity not tied to any particular body. With in our dreams we can even imagine that we have different bodies.
A persons mentality is supposed to be part of that body but in some cases like temporary insanity the mentality is supposed to be a variable aspect of that person. We can not easily look at a personality or mentality to see how unique it is. What we know comes from what science has found and the theories that have been developed that deal with our mentality. Why are theories about personal identity important to us? They are important for proving guilt of a crime, membership in a family or group, ownership of property, fame, inheritance, and other objects and valuables. Why is our mentality important to us? What we experience, what we think, and feel. Is our mentality more important than our bodies? Are they the same? Is there some thing about our bodies that survive death? Many religions purpose a higher level of existence than the body. Many religions believe that when the body dies there is still in existence the essence of ourselves; the soul or equivalent. There has never been found a soul or higher form of life than the body. There is spurious evidence for it but there is spurious evidence for many things that do not exist. From personal experience we believe that there is more to the body than just the body, at least for ourselves. We may not see this inner self in others but we can believe that if we have it then they can have it also. With an understanding of computers we have come up with the idea of hardware and software. The analogy to people is that the hardware is the body and the soul or mentality is the software. The computer does not function without both. The software can be either hard wired as in the original computers or soft wired in the sense of changeable programs. It seems that in people that it is hard wired that we have a lot of flexibility to change the program through feedback in the brain processing the sense data that the brain receives.
Personal identity is not only important to other people it is important to the original person. He may see some one else that looks and acts exactly like the original but the original would say that it was not the original because the original is not controlling actions and experiencing what the look alike replica is. He is not experiencing what the look alike is experiencing. The original would not believe that the look alike was in fact him and certainly would not be. But he may be confused as the original by others that did not know better. What if this look alike was made by a group of scientists from the exact same DNA as the original at the same time? Would the original think that it was him. No because the look alike and the original would have had different experiences through their lives. Now what if the scientists tried to make the experiences of the look alike to be like the original? Would the original think that they we the same? No again, because the experiences could never be exactly the same. There would be no doubt that they could be very closely alike but they could go off and lead different lives at any time, consequently, being different people. No matter how exact the two are and how closely alike their experiences have been, they will always be two separate people.
Under what circumstances would the original think that he was the look alike or replica? Possibly if the original was crazy he might think that he was the look alike. Emotional, religious or mystical experiences might cause the original to think that he was the look alike. What type of experiences would these be? Many experiences can override common sense or logic. What if the original experienced that he went inside of the original and experienced exactly what the replica did. If the experiences in the replica was exactly like what he experienced in his own body then he might. On the other hand, he might think that his soul went into the replica and what he experienced was himself in the body of this other person. It really depends on what the original wants to believe or has the ability to believe. It is easier to convince some people of certain things than it is to convince other of it. It is a matter of teaching or learning and believing. What makes us want to believe something or not want to believe something? A person that would be difficult to convince of one idea may be very easy to convince of another. In the same way for some people to produce certain ideas may be easy for them and the same ideas may be difficult for others to produce. And people that can easily produce some ideas will find it difficult to produce other ideas. By idea I mean any number of things from relativity to drawing a picture. People are processors of sense information and some things they will be able to do well and other they will not be able to process or they will process it very poorly. The idea of what is a person and what he personally will accept will be different for different people. What they consider as a person will be different. For this reason we will try to compare the different types of views of personal identity and how it compares to the identity theory of consciousness. How will some ones beliefs have to change so that they can accept these ideas or at least understand them? If some one believes that he has a soul how is he going to understand not having one or having one in the sense of the identity theory? What I wish to do is to see where some people are in there ideas of identity and then relate them to the identity theory. As in many cases many people do not know what they think until they have actually thought of the problems. The more that they think about the problems the more advanced the understanding of the problem for them can become. Most people when questioned on these matters have answers that they have not really thought out and they recite them and not how they relate to each other. What is the concept of personal identity that we will go with in this book? It is concatenation of both a scientific and personal view of personal identity not the various legal, religious, or philosophical definitions that have been reviewed. The reason why is that our best source of knowledge comes through personal experience from the sciences. The reason for the review of the different theories is to distinguish them from the one we use in this book. Are concepts of personal identity definitions or theories or both?
What makes one person different from another? Why do we feel that we are unique? Why do many people believe they have a soul even though there is very little evidence for a soul? Why do many people believe that human life is a unique and valuable thing? Why do materialists feel that once that their life is over there is nothing more? These are questions that deal with personal identity. There are many more than these but they all center around there concept of personal identity.
Why do we feel that we are unique? Not everyone does feel that they are unique. In fact some people feel that they are a part of a larger more encompassing whole. Why do people that believe that they are unique believe that they are unique? There are many reasons for this also. First, they may be told this. They can be told this by their religion or by the societies beliefs. If we are unique then we have more importance than if there exists many of us. The christian religion put importance on the individual. Second, is that they do not see any one that is exactly them. Philosophers have been trying to define personal identity since the beginning of recorded history. The best definitions come through two sources: science and personal experience and scientific research. We have always had an idea of our personal identity. We gain it some where in our childhood. I guess that is when we realize that there are other things that are like us, but are not us. We realize that we have an identity that is different than others. The second source of our knowledge about personal identity comes from science. Science tells us two things about ourselves: First, that we are extremely complicated. Second, that we do not know every thing about personal identity but we are learning.
Some philosophers feel that a person is the some total of his life. That life is so complicated that a person and his experiences are unique and unduplicatable. Many thought experiments have been developed by philosophers in order to develop theories about what a person really is. Is a person that is brain dead really a person? Is only the brain the important factor of a person? We have developed many theories of what a person is. These theories are the foundation of our laws and rights that are allowed people. What a person is, is not an obvious as first thought. By law no plant or animal other than a human being is a person. A major factor in law is telling people apart through time. We usually do this through the continuing object theory. A person is an object and that object through time is what a person is. He is distinguished by his looks and what he knows. Even though his looks, thoughts, and memories change from day to day, he is still considered the same person. With the concept of a person being an object that is born, lives, and dies, it is no wonder that we believe that a person is a linear being that travels on the road of life and never traverses the same spot twice. This concept of a person we see all around us all the time. We see people born we see them grow and develop and finally we see them die. We also see ourselves doing the same thing. We see that the people that die don't respond the same way they did before; they act more like the other objects that are all around, that are not human. With all the people that we see we never experience people that are exactly the same. Identical twins look the same and act a lot alike but they are not exactly the same. We make the extrapolation from this experience that people are unique, they are mortal in this world, and ever changing along a unique path of there own.
What aspects of a person are important to that person? Some aspects may not even exist. One such aspect might be a soul. Other aspects are memories, potential, ability to control ones actions, placement in space and time, material make up, ability to use ones senses and other parts of ones body, a persons surroundings and people in that setting. There is an uncertainty in any aspect of a person, but none so much as a soul. Generally, most religions are based on some sort of life after death being achieved through the immortality of the soul. However, the soul is one of the least substantiated aspects of a person. Most people frequently see their bodies but cannot see their souls. Because of the very speculative nature of soul, and some other aspects of a person such as brain substance they will not be considered as such directly. Aspects that we are more certain of are aspects that we have some evidence for, For instance, memories.
What is my definition of personal identity? It is a theory that is very complex and arbitrary that is because there is no clear cut way to delineate one person from another in certain circumstances.
CONCEPTS OF PERSONAL IDENTITY
1. Continuation of a body through time.
2. A continuation of a mental concept through time
3. The unique environment during that person's life
Do we have a personal mind? Is it private to only us or are other people able to experience it?
OUTLINE OF THE CHAPTER PERSONAL IDENTITY