Objectivism and Persistence.

[TheEgoist]

So, I've been pondering for two months now since writing a term paper on personal identity about what a strictly Objectivist answer would be to the problem of persistence/personal identity. How do we identify the numerical identity of person X through time? I expect some intuitive answers to come about that some people often come back with, that have been shown to not be a logical basis for what we can call the essential of an individual through time. I actually think a very refined and interesting response flows very nicely from the principles of Objectivism, but I'd like the thoughts of the forum first.

[dream_weaver]

So, I've been pondering for two months now since writing a term paper on personal identity about what a strictly Objectivist answer would be to the problem of persistence/personal identity. How do we identify the numerical identity of person X through time? I expect some intuitive answers to come about that some people often come back with, that have been shown to not be a logical basis for what we can call the essential of an individual through time. I actually think a very refined and interesting response flows very nicely from the principles of Objectivism, but I'd like the thoughts of the forum first.

From a little investigation, the problem appears to be rooted in what the nature and identity of consciousness is. The Objectivist view of consciousness as the faculty of awareness, does not permit it to go drifting off into the aether upon death. After birth, a human being is an existent, thus identity as well. The volitional nature of the conceptual consciousness endows the power of choice to each and every one. The choices selected, the conclusions drawn, by their nature do not happen instantaneously nor simultaneous rather across the span of time. A being of self-made soul, continues to develop their personal identity over the span of their entire lifetime should they so choose. Only in viewing consciousness as something that it is not, do the problems appear to arise.

[khaight]

So, I've been pondering for two months now since writing a term paper on personal identity about what a strictly Objectivist answer would be to the problem of persistence/personal identity. How do we identify the numerical identity of person X through time? I expect some intuitive answers to come about that some people often come back with, that have been shown to not be a logical basis for what we can call the essential of an individual through time. I actually think a very refined and interesting response flows very nicely from the principles of Objectivism, but I'd like the thoughts of the forum first.

Back when I was a child, it always seemed to me that no matter what topic came up my mother had a book on it. I'm feeling very much like her right now.

The Rand-influenced philosopher Carolyn Ray wrote her dissertation on identity theory: "Identity And Universals: A Conceptualist Approach to Logical, Metaphysical, and Epistemological Problems of Contemporary Identity Theory". If you're interested in the topic you might want to check it out. There's a copy available on the web here.

[TheEgoist]

From a little investigation, the problem appears to be rooted in what the nature and identity of consciousness is. The Objectivist view of consciousness as the faculty of awareness, does not permit it to go drifting off into the aether upon death. After birth, a human being is an existent, thus identity as well. The volitional nature of the conceptual consciousness endows the power of choice to each and every one. The choices selected, the conclusions drawn, by their nature do not happen instantaneously nor simultaneous rather across the span of time. A being of self-made soul, continues to develop their personal identity over the span of their entire lifetime should they so choose. Only in viewing consciousness as something that it is not, do the problems appear to arise.

So it seems you take the position of Locke: that the continued maintaining of consciousness is how we identify any given individual. Are you then willing to bite the bullet and say that when someone permanently loses their memory that they are now a different person? Memory may not be a sufficient condition for consciousness, but it certainly is a necessary one. Obliterate that necessary component, bring a man's memory back to 0 or there abouts and you have then created a new man, on this view. There is Bob and then there is Bob*. You might be willing to bite the bullet on this one, but it leads to some counter-intuitive conclusions about identity and responsibility. Say Bob kills a man. He flees from the scene of the crime only to fall down a flight of stairs, bash his head and severely damage his temporal lobe. Astonishingly he loses all his long-term memory. He doesn't have any grasp on who he is or what he had done. He is in a new state of consciousness. The police find him at the scene of the crime, arrest, try him and find him guilty. I guess it just so happens that the Jury was stacked with Monists. Bob* is sent to prison for the crimes of Bob. It seems right that Bob* is punished, but on the view of consciousness as the essence of personal identity, Bob* should go free. That's a big bullet indeed, especially for Objectivists who are so firm on punishment for a crime.

There are other problems with consciousness as the sole criterion for personal identity. What do we say of one personal with dual memories: he has the memories of what he did and what Bob did. He doesn't simply know of what Bob did, but experiences the memories as though he were the one that had done the things that Bob did. That's certainly more science fiction than you may like, but it's a conceivable problem.

[Eiuol]

One thing that should be considered is if there's a difference between how you define yourself to be, and how others define you. I would think a self-identity is how you describe yourself to be, primarily based upon memories of your actions, including feelings. If you had severe memory loss, as far as YOU are concerned, you are entirely new. What you used to be would be irrelevant, because it has no bearing on what sort of person you are now. However, you would still have a particular kind of person, a particular kind of entity, to other people. This can be thought of as personal-identity (if you have a better word in mind, please suggest it). You have a specific history, including the cause of the memory loss.

The relationship between what you perceive yourself to be, and what others see you as, seems to be quite confusing. That seems to be the main issue in discussing one's identity as an individual. If what I *understand* myself to be is the essential, then the state of my consciousness defines what I am, and severe memory loss does indeed make you a new person. What you are as an entity, though, is not dependent upon the state of your consciousness, or what you remember. It would *only* be the sum of your actions, regardless if you realize or remember all the things you did before memory loss. Still, there can be some confusing considerations with non-physical sense of self. Say, one can say they have a particular sexuality, but does the absence of any sort of relationship make them outwardly asexual? Is a person who says they are bisexual actually just heterosexual if they've only had relations with the opposite sex, regardless of what they understand themselves to be? That may seem offtopic, but I think it does pertain to "the essential of an individual through time." Does the way that other people define an individual matter? Does one's individual identity *only* consist of their actions?

Edited June 27, 2010 by Eiuol

[dream_weaver]

So it seems you take the position of Locke: that the continued maintaining of consciousness is how we identify any given individual. Are you then willing to bite the bullet and say that when someone permanently loses their memory that they are now a different person? Memory may not be a sufficient condition for consciousness, but it certainly is a necessary one. Obliterate that necessary component, bring a man's memory back to 0 or there abouts and you have then created a new man, on this view. There is Bob and then there is Bob*. You might be willing to bite the bullet on this one, but it leads to some counter-intuitive conclusions about identity and responsibility. Say Bob kills a man. He flees from the scene of the crime only to fall down a flight of stairs, bash his head and severely damage his temporal lobe. Astonishingly he loses all his long-term memory. He doesn't have any grasp on who he is or what he had done. He is in a new state of consciousness. The police find him at the scene of the crime, arrest, try him and find him guilty. I guess it just so happens that the Jury was stacked with Monists. Bob* is sent to prison for the crimes of Bob. It seems right that Bob* is punished, but on the view of consciousness as the essence of personal identity, Bob* should go free. That's a big bullet indeed, especially for Objectivists who are so firm on punishment for a crime.

There are other problems with consciousness as the sole criterion for personal identity. What do we say of one personal with dual memories: he has the memories of what he did and what Bob did. He doesn't simply know of what Bob did, but experiences the memories as though he were the one that had done the things that Bob did. That's certainly more science fiction than you may like, but it's a conceivable problem.

Cause and effect. With the loss of memory, comes the loss of the lifetime of conclusions that one has drawn. They are the same entity, but with that necessary component obliterated, comparing before and after would suggest why component was modified by necessary.

Should Bob go free? Can the question of would others be safe be reasonably assertained?

As to schizophrenia and other anomalies, are these to be included with what is considered normal?

[Hairnet]

"A man’s self is his mind—the faculty that perceives reality, forms judgments, chooses values."

"Time is a measurement of motion; as such, it is a type of relationship. Time applies only within the universe, when you define a standard—such as the motion of the earth around the sun. If you take that as a unit, you can say: “This person has a certain relationship to that motion; he has existed for three revolutions; he is three years old.” But when you get to the universe as a whole, obviously no standard is applicable. You cannot get outside the universe. The universe is eternal in the literal sense: non-temporal, out of time."

"Consciousness is the faculty of awareness—the faculty of perceiving that which exists.

Awareness is not a passive state, but an active process. "

All from the lexicon under their respective headings.

When I was reading the original post, I didn't quite know where to start, so I decided to find the definitions of the relevant concepts in the problem. So we have time, self, and consciousness. The problem, as I see it, is how we define the self (consciousness) over time.

What I always found really interesting, is Ayn Rand's basic definition of the self, as shown above. It is very different than how other groups define the self, most of them define the self as some sort of "uniqueness", or as just being an illusion, and often these conclusions bleed into one another. For instance, Max Stirner's concept of the self involves ideas like "creative nothingness" (a completely supernatural idea), and Buddhism, depending on the type, sees the ego as an illusion, one catch phrase being "thought without thinker" (or something to that effect).

Ayn Rand's definition says that you are essentially your faculty of awareness. Now I couldn't find answers to the questions I had about this definition, but I think this includes 1) Your ability to choose ideas, values, and actions, and 2) what you have chosen, as this affects the future choices that the mind can make (new abilities, possibilities, situations). If you include the her ideas about the subconscious, and the ideas about how emotions relate to ideas, we get the whole of what most people think of the self from consciousness.

So if we want to talk about how an ego persists, we talk about how it grows, shrinks, and changes in content over time, compared to the change motion of a defined object.

So my answer is like Locke's/Dreamweaver's. I think that if someone looses their memories, it is like loosing a leg, and that handicaps them and changes them in a very serious manner. There is no intrinsic soul, or uniqueness, or primordial consciousness which makes up for this, what is lost is lost until it is regained.

How this plays into justice is complicated. I would suggest that someone who is an amnesiac who is found guilty, but doesn't remember the crime should be sent to wherever they put the criminally insane. There they can try to figure out who the person is, if they lied, and how similar they are to the person who killed the victim.

[Prometheus88]

Heres a podcast that may contain some insight for you:

http://www.guerrillaradioshow.com/wp-content/uploads/personal-identity.mp3

[Grames]

So, I've been pondering for two months now since writing a term paper on personal identity about what a strictly Objectivist answer would be to the problem of persistence/personal identity. How do we identify the numerical identity of person X through time? I expect some intuitive answers to come about that some people often come back with, that have been shown to not be a logical basis for what we can call the essential of an individual through time. I actually think a very refined and interesting response flows very nicely from the principles of Objectivism, but I'd like the thoughts of the forum first.

For the longest time I couldn't even understand what the question was about. I have concluded that the problem here is that the "Ship of Theseus" conundrum is being applied to a person instead of a ship. The resolution of the Ship of Theseus question is to realize the equivocation on the use of the word 'same' in the two senses of the same physical material or same design. The same resolution can apply here, either the continuity is found in the body or the mind. But for a person (and unlike the case of an artifact such as a ship) selecting one or the other here is simply to fall into the mind-body dichotomy; both are necessary.