Questions/Susan Fleck’s answers: re – Persistence in Personal Identity presentation (draft paper) © Susan Fleck

Suzi, you summarize some of Parfit's main views about personal identity, a few of them being "personal identity just consists in physical and psychological continuity," and that deep chains of psychological connectedness (called Relation R) "are what counts for [being] a continuous person."

Now, you highlight that Parfit's view on what constitutes personal identity is considered a reductionist one, meaning that self-identity can be reduced to a set of criteria that do not depend on/get their validity from whether or not a "person" or a "unified identity" actually exists. In other words, our concept of self-identity is not as determinate or assured as we think; and according to Parfit, what we believe we have for a personal identity is actually an impersonal mental continuity of memories and experiences; a linear psychological chain based on survival as opposed to an immeasurable and irreducible self based on a unique character.

Parfit’s view of P/I is just the Relation R, or as you say, linear psychological chain. It is not based on survival, but survival of the psychology, if it were possible as in the various experiments, would be more important than strict personal identity, if the original person were to expire.

One’s Character, to a reductionist, . . . I would substitute the word ego and say that Parfit denies that there is an irreducible ego, or soul, apart from the brain as the carrier of our psychology, memories, intentions, etc.

Parfit states: "It becomes more plausible to claim that, just as we are right to ignore whether people come from the same or different nations, we are right to ignore whether experiences comes within the same or different lives" (Personal Identity, rationality 321). Christine Korsgaard points out the circularity in Parfit's theory: "If you begin with the view that a person is a subject of experiences, and take away the subject, you are indeed left with nothing but experiences. But you will begin with that view only if you assume from the start that having experiences is what life is all about" (338).

To strengthen Parfit's view on identity, you bring up the teletransportation example. Simply put, Parfit thinks that if my body and brain are exactly replicated on Mars out of new material and my original body and brain are destroyed, then under the criterion of having a reliable cause/vehicle of continuity, that replica on Mars would still be ME; since my physical and psychological components have survived and been copied precisely, the same I still exists on Mars. But the question is, is it the same ME?

Parfit claims that a person would continue to exist if his body were annihilated and subsequently perfectly replicated even if the switch occurred by sheer accident. This claim is supported by the feeling that "the switch would be of no practical or emotional significance" and therefore, the replicated person should continue on the life and be treated as if there had been no switch. Frederick Doepke argues that we cannot infer whether the same person exists based on our attitudes and feelings, but, more importantly, he questions the plausibility of the assumed attitudes. Someone once said to Doepke: "Although we may not care whether our accountant is a mere replica, we certainly do care in the case of a spouse.” Jomil, you are demonstrating Doepke’s case!

Is it possible to "replicate" exactly what we are, for everything we are and are not was caused by moments in time and actual places in time that can never happen again in the exact same way? Isn't Parfit discounting the importance of actual past and particular physical environments and our relations to them in determining the nature--or at least notion--of personal identity? Are we not relativity and not just continuity; contextuality and not just replication?

I don’t think Parfit discounts anything in particular phenomenological experiences. The physical environment and one’s relationship to that environment at a particular time would naturally be a part of the context of any experience. His point is that he thinks we can explain the experience by what is going on in the brain, including multiple perceptions at any given time, without having to say that these experiences are owned by a substantial, or soul-person. I am not sure what you are mean by ‘are we not relativity,’ but Parfit would say that what a person is is someone who is consciously aware of the continuity and contiguity of day-to-day experiences, intentions, etc.

The important part of your question is: “Is it possible to “replicate” exactly what we are . . .?” – there may be physiological or physics reasons why this is impossible; or, if there is really some further fact involved in personal identity, then that would preclude the possibility of replication.

Science-fictionally, many of us have seen Captain Kirk beamed up from one place and transported to another, and in turn, understood that it was the same Captain Kirk; the same man; the same exact person we saw just before the transportation. But despite the more plausible real-life cases, I just don't think Parfit's identity view can hold, or at least I can't grasp it in an actualized way.

Thomas Nagel stated: "It is therefore hard to internalize a conception of myself as identical with my brain: if I am told that my brain is about to be split, and that the left half will be miserable and the right half euphoric, there is no form that my subjective expectations can take, because my idea of myself doesn't allow for divisibility—nor do the emotions of expectation, fear, and hope" (Self 185-86).

Susan’s further comments: It takes a whole lifetime to be who one is;

Humeans would say that who one thinks he or she is, is a result of constructing a fictitious ego from the resemblances of contiguity of perceptions.

Daniel Dennett has a fascinating account of personal identity. A fundamental difference between humans and other animals is that humans talk. Dennett reminds us that we use language to present ourselves to others and to ourselves. He construes that we use words “weaving them like spider-webs into self-protective strings of narrative.” Dennett suggests that our fundamental method of self-protection and self-definition is telling stories and controlling the process as we tell others about ourselves. Just as spiders do not have to consciously think about how to spin webs, we do not deliberately construct the narratives we tell others. These tales are spun by our consciousness, our narrative selfhood. From these words one speaks, others posit a unified agent, what Dennett calls a “center of narrative gravity.” Possible evidence for this theory comes from Multiple Personality Disorder patients who seem to have multiple selves sharing the same body, each with a distinct name and separate autobiography.

Dennett reflects on an analogy of a termite colony that accomplishes such clever projects with no such chief executive (Origins 360-61). To use another analogy, we personify the USA as if it had an inner self or being. There is no one agency that embodies all of the qualities of the nation. However, the president, as Head of State, is meant to represent different parts of the nation to each other, to advocate a common value system, and to be the spokesperson for the USA in dealing with other nations. Through the political process, the population, mostly through the news media, tries out various fictive versions of what they would consider to be an “ideal president.” Because there is more than one dominant ideal version, various candidates tend to mold themselves to these views. In the end, only one survives the process to become the Head of State and claim the right to speak for the whole nation (150). An individual human being in an unconscious manner creates one or more ideal fictive-self and elects one to become her Head of Mind. The main difference is that in the case of individuals there is considerable outside influence such as from parents, friends, and even from enemies. With this analogy, one does not start out with any definition of “what it means to be me,” but, eventually a version of selfhood that “makes sense” emerges until one that seems to be “the real me” is elected.

An enduring concept about consciousness is that of what Dennett calls a Cartesian Theater which acts like an imagined control center. This image comes about because of a seemingly unshakable concept that there is some kind of self that experiences an experience, one that imagines a purple cow when instructed to do so. Most events going on in one's brain are not normally witnessed by anyone, just like events that go on in other parts of the body are not usually witnessed. But conscious events are, by definition, witnessed by somebody. Since no particular part of the brain, such as the pineal gland, is the thinker that does the thinking, and it does not seem plausible to attribute that role to the whole brain, these ideas of a self (or a person or a soul) and of the mind stuff of consciousness that are distinct from the brain or the body are deeply rooted in our ways of thinking (28-9).

It is also common to think of vision as pictures in the mind. Are there mind's eyes to see these pictures? If not, why would there be pictures in the head? However, since there is no reason to believe that the brain has any central headquarters, a view Dennett calls Cartesian materialism, then an observer's subjective sense of sequence and simultaneity is determined by something other than "order of arrival." In order to understand how things like sight and sound become phenomenologically "centrally available" we are forced to replace the Cartesian Theater with a new model (107-8). Something like the Cartesian Theater is in view when neuroscientists and philosophers discuss "the binding problem" where it is often presupposed that there is some place in the brain where various discriminations "are put into registration with each other" such as getting the sound track in sync with visual stimuli, coloring in shapes and filling in blank spots" (258).

and it took eons multiplied by eons to even have a human lifetime as we know it.

Dennett: Through three evolutionary forms—genetic, phenotypic plasticity, and memetic—human consciousness has arisen and developed at increasing rates of speed. During the Great Encephalization period, completed about 150,000 years ago and prior to the development of language and agriculture, the brains of our hominid ancestors grew is size to be four times as large as chimpanzee brains. Those brains are comparable to ours in size and shape. It is now understood that this enormous growth was not a response to complexities arising from the use of language: brain specialization for language was a very recent add-on. The most rapid and remarkable expansion of human mental abilities has taken place since the end of the last ice age only a mere 10,000 years ago, an extremely short time in evolutionary terms. Since we were born with brains containing very few if any additional powers compared to brains 10,000 years ago, then the tremendous advances in culture must be due to, according to Dennett, "harnessing the plasticity of that brain in radically new ways—by creating something like software to enhance its underlying powers" (189-90). Thus, cultural evolution and the transmission of its products through the medium of memes have enabled humans to use the plasticity of their brains not just about how to learn, but to learn how to learn better. A meme is a unit of cultural transmission, like an idea, a tune, or a way of making something, that propagate themselves from brain to brain through a process of imitation or by learning things from others. (Dennett reports that Richard Dawkins coined the term meme.) This is the second new medium of evolution (193-208).

Nevertheless, the computer analogy is "tantalizingly suggestive" to Dennett for these reasons that he has postulated: consciousness (1) is too recently engendered to be hard-wired within the brain; (2) is a product of cultural evolution that gets ingrained in brains through training; (3) is successfully installed through innumerable microsettings within the plasticity of the brain; and (4) creates the user illusion derived from the various data inputs from the senses (201-20). (review more of Dennett’s theory.)

Dennett cites philosopher Robert van Gulick to bolster the conception of the self that Dennett is providing: “I, the personal subject of experience, do understand. I can make all the necessary connections within experience, calling up representations to immediately connect one with another. The fact that my ability is the result of my being composed of an organized system of subpersonal components which produce my orderly flow of thoughts does not impugn my ability. What is illusory or mistaken is only the view that I am some distinct substantial self who produces these connections in virtue of a totally non-behavioral form of understanding.”

Susan Fleck:

Most arguments I have found in the literature are narrow views based upon one methodology, a limited set of case examples, and usually constrained by an assumptive metaphysical world view such as materialism or reductionism. The methods I have encountered in my readings are: (1) Thought experiments using imaginary cases; (2) Real unusual human case studies; (3) Introspection; (4) Phenomenology; (5) Simple meditation; (6) Disciplined meditation based on various eastern methods that take years of practice; (7) Psychological experiments and studies of dissociation cases like multiple personality disorder; (8) Scientific cognitive studies and quantum mechanics theory.

In thinking about highly abstract conceptual questions such as is there really a God? or really personal identity? philosophers should be going through a rigorous analysis using a procedure such as is explained in the logic textbook Thinking With Concepts. Perhaps framework is not a good word for what I would like to see. I am looking for a comprehensive overview and analyses of all major theories and viewpoints on personal identity. The analyses would include examining these questions about each theory: What are the strengths and weaknesses of the methodology used to come to conclusions? What are the assumptions about the metaphysics underlying the viewpoint? What are the implications of the account? And what can be learned when one attempts to apply various types of puzzle cases within a specific paradigm of personal identity. It would be interesting to see if one could synthesize some of the viewpoints by doing such a study.

My concept of personal identity is eclectic, borrowing on the notions of various philosophers and traditions. I could take the easy way out and identify with Socrates and simply say ‘I don’t know the answer’ and continue to be a gadfly by examining others’ methodologies and conclusions, posing questions that need further answers. It is true that I don’t know, but I do have my own conceptual framework. Time does not permit a full explanation, as that could fill another several hours, so I can only give you a brief skeleton. Since I have not come to any definitive metaphysical conclusions, I agree with the Kantian position Christine Korsgaard argues for: ““I . . . have reasons for regarding myself as the same rational agent as the one who will occupy my body in the future.” I believe myself to be a unified agent based on practical grounds, even though there are conflicting desires and beliefs in my psychology. My unity is implicit in the standpoint from which I choose; I deliberate as if there was a unified ‘I’ that expresses my will and ultimately chooses how to act. I also agree with Husserl that our self is much more than a mere biological animal entity. The foundation for a sense of self for Husserl lies in one’s sphere of ownness, a sphere that requires a distinction from all that is alien. This kind of self is more than a ‘thinking principle,’ and more than a living organism. Along with one’s perceptions and sensations, one has the power to govern within one’s sphere of ownness. As such, then, a self is a psycho-physical unity.

If you would like to put a label on my view of personal identity, you can call me a Postmodern, Existential, Buddhist, Randian, who subscribes to the philosophy of Science of Mind in the form that the Church of Religious Science teaches. I said I was eclectic!! In a nutshell, I believe that there is a deep further fact to our identity; I have just not figured out exactly what that fact is or how it works; nor do I ever expect to. This belief is grounded in a metaphysical viewpoint that says that Aristotle’s Prime Mover, or God, is a combination of Pure Energy, Pure Intelligence, and Pure Consciousness. What else could have started the Big Bang and the material universe, and individuation, and provided for all natural laws, and enabled forms of life to evolve? The atheist viewpoint can only be ‘it just happened.’ And now, we humans have evolved to not only partake in consciousness, but also self-consciousness. What happens to our essential consciousness-mind-soul after we die? Does our identity end there at the death of our brain and body? Does our further fact essence get enfolded into the ONE in a Spinozean manner? Is our individuality preserved such that we go to some different universal plane?

That is just one aspect that would need to be addressed when trying out my concept within the framework of a comprehensive analysis on this subject. I will have lots of problems addressing many of the cases apart from ‘normal’ human beings. Once I have figured all of that out, I will probably be able to answer the question, ‘what is the meaning of life?’