Here's a simple thought experiment for you. When I look back at old photographs of myself from when I was a mere spratling of, say, six months, I'm struck by the fact that every single one of the cells in my body from that age, at some time or other, has died and been replaced. Can I, therefore, look back and say that I am the same person?
5 comments:
worth looking at John Locke's theory of personal identity for this mate. he basically suggests that if you can remember something from your life then it keeps you as the same person. it's the continuity of consciousness that ascribes our sense of identity. though there are numerous problems with it, as with everything.
it's like the theseus' ship example. a ship gets bits replaced over time until it has no original parts left. is it the same ship? well, as a physical inanimate object, no. however, if it could recall and tell us about what it was like to have all the original parts then surely that sense of personal identity would be enough to say that it was the same ship.
i wrote a short essay on it a while ago.
there's another example of the same sort of thing. PG Wodehouse bought a typewriter in 1910 that he kept until his death, but every component of the typewriter had been replaced at some point. is it the same typewriter? obviously not, but this consciousness issue raises some interesting questions. i'm inclined to agree with Locke. send me that essay, mate, i'll have a gander.
will do man, email address?
Locke on Personal Identity
John Locke’s theory of personal identity can be found in the second edition of his work entitled ‘Essay Concerning Human Understanding’ in Chapter XXVII – Of Identity and Diversity. In it he essentially states that the only thing which gives a person their identity that they carry throughout their life is a continuity of consciousness, or what could be more simply described as memory. This theory was revolutionary in the field of psychology, with people even now subscribing to neo-Lockeanism. In this presentation I will look at the theory, and some of the arguments for and against it, and will ultimately give my views as to why I feel it is not a good enough account for a theory of personal identity.
Locke’s view is that the personal identity of someone is contained within their capacity to call to memory their perceptions of previous times in their life, he calls this a person’s consciousness. He draws the distinction between a human being and a person by saying that the actual physical body which our minds inhabit has nothing to do with who we are as a person and where we draw our identity from is in fact from this ability to remember past experiences. This seems to have a basis in modern biological knowledge in that due to the fact that all the cells in our bodies die and reform, as not a single cell in my body today was contained within ‘me’ 7 years ago; if personal identity were to be contained within us in a physical sense then surely we would have a constantly shifting sense of self. A modified version of the Theseus’ ship example could be used here to show how Locke’s theory fits in with us as constantly renewed physical beings yet with a sense of identity specific to each and every one of us. Locke gives the example of if you were to cut off one of your fingers then it would make you have no less of a sense of personal identity just because you had removed part of your physical existence. This would imply that you could essentially still hold the same sense of identity if you were just a brain in a jar, just being kept alive. So long as your mind survives and you can remember things that you have perceived, it would be no less ‘you’ than the form which you hold now.
There appear to be some obvious problems with this theory so I will proceed to state them how I, and others, see them. If you imagine for example that you have a memory of being 6 years old, a very specific and vivid memory. By Locke’s theory you would hold the same sense of personal identity now as the 6-year old you. Further suppose that all of a sudden you lost every memory from that moment up until now. You would still share the same identity as the 6-year old you but would not, by Locke’s logic, share the same identity as you without having lost the memories despite the fact that you with all of your memories would be classed as the same person as the 6-year old as well. If you were to state it in algebra it would be something like A=B, A=C, B does not = C. A similar example to this reductio ad absurdum is given by Thomas Reid, whereby he suggests the following thought experiment:
“Suppose a brave officer to have been flogged when a boy at school, for robbing an orchard, to have taken a standard from the enemy in his first campaign, and to have been made a general in advanced life: Suppose also, which must be admitted to be possible, that when he took the standard, he was conscious of his having been flogged at school, and that when made a general he was conscious of his taking the standard, but had absolutely lost the consciousness of his flogging.”
The emphasis Locke puts on being able to directly call a past experience to memory, with it being the only factor for considering someone to hold the same personal identity, seems counter-intuitive with modern knowledge of psychology. What about sub consciousness? All of the determining factors in how we are as people which lie well below the depths which our memory can reach down to and recall. Another issue would be that of broken consciousness, for example being asleep or in a coma. Would you not say that you in these situations, which you may have absolutely no memory of, would still be you?
A slightly modified example of one which Locke gives where a person’s identity changes, despite still being conscious in the immediate sense, i.e. awake, would be if someone was very drunk and committed a crime. The person would have absolutely no memory of doing the action and therefore, according to Locke in a prescriptive sense, should not be held accountable for their actions and only those which they can remember. He seems to believe that on the ‘Great Day’, as it is referred to, people will only be punished for the sins that they, as sober, conscious, thinking, rational beings can remember and have knowledge of.
In conclusion I would say that whilst memory seems to be inherently involved in someone’s sense of personal identity, it is not as integral as Locke seems to imply. There are many factors involved in making someone who they are and to put it down to one single cause seems to ignore other factors in the construction of the sense of self.
Interestingly, the first premise in a lot of this is completely false.
Some cells are never replaced in our life time. News just recently on this is that it has been proved that heart cells - previously thought never to be replaced - do actually at a top rate of about 1% a year, when in your prime. However, at such a low rate you will die with some of your original heart cells. I can’t find the article I read, but I easily found the article it referenced – Bergmann, Bhardwaj et al, Evidence for Cardiomyocyte renewal in humans, in Science 2009, Apr 3, 324: 98-102. Other cells never replaced are brain/neural cells, this is part of the reason strokes etc are so bad.
Saying all that, it is completely irrelevant. Sticking one part of Theseus’ ship on the HMS Belfast doesn’t make it Theseus’ ship. Even one small replacement would be an issue a personal identity theory would have to deal with.
Losing a finger may be more an issue than thought too. Certainly a brain alone isn’t going to capture identity. More random crap: other interesting studies on heart transplants led to the knowledge that the heart has memories, and memories encapsulate a lot more than you might think… the fact that I like ice cream, is a memory. Or maybe its best put a more intuitive way, the heart has more than just ‘memories’.
There are also issues with the fact we change memories. An awful lot. And what we remember is never accurate anyway, except in very simple circumstances.
I do think Locke has something in that ‘great day’ though. It would be tough shit to get punished for a crime you had no knowledge of ever committing, and it was something like – killing your mother. Oop, hope that wasn’t Freudian.
Identity is very complicated.
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