Theories Of What Makes You, You

From 3 Quarks Daily, Nov. 27, 2023, by TIM SOMMERS*

One time, this man handed me an image of him and mentioned, ‘Right here’s an image of me once I was youthful.’ Each image is of you whenever you had been youthful. – Mitch Hedberg

You might be your soul

The difficulty with this principle is not that it normally has a spiritual foundation. That may be hassle later, however initially the difficulty is that it isn’t very useful. I’m my soul. So, what’s my soul? Is the soul some mysterious, ghostly factor or a Platonic type or is it simply no matter is crucial to who I’m? If the reply is that the soul is no matter is crucial to who I’m, this looks as if only a restatement of the query.

Have in mind, the nice innovation of Christianity was not the soul, an concept that’s been round at the very least since Plato and Aristotle (who thought we had three souls). The Christian innovation was bodily resurrection.

You might be your ego.

The ego may be the secular soul. Descartes’ model of the ego principle, probably the most influential, is that an individual is a persisting, purely psychological, factor. However just like the soul it’s arduous to unpack the ego in an informative means. It’s no matter unifies our consciousness. We survive because the continued existence of a specific topic of experiences, and that explains the unity of an individual’s life, i.e., the truth that all of the experiences on this life are had by the identical particular person. That is round, in fact. Additional, on this view, what occurs if I fall right into a dreamless sleep? Or get hit on the top and black out? Go out and in of a coma? Am totally anesthetized? After I get up and begin having experiences once more, how do I do know I’m the identical ego? How do I do know that the ego is a persistent factor in any respect? Later, we are going to see what Hume has to say about this.

Within the meantime, we’re going to want a greater principle of the ego or soul earlier than both goes to be helpful as a principle of private id.

You might be your physique.

Consider it or not, in Trendy Philosophy, “animalism” – the view that you’re your physique – is a latecomer to the get together. It’s best to clarify by comparability. Suppose we take the anti-animalist view that id is a few form of psychological, reasonably than bodily, continuity. Right here’s one animalist counter argument. Fetuses, at the very least early on, don’t have any psychological capacities. You’ll be able to’t be psychologically steady with a being that has no such capacities. However you was once a fetus. So, no matter you’re, it’s not a matter of psychological continuity.

I’m not positive about this argument. Carl Sagan used to say, “We’re manufactured from star stuff…The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our enamel, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies had been made within the interiors of collapsing stars.”  However discover, he doesn’t say that we used to be star stuff. Did we additionally use to be an unfertilized egg and a sperm on the identical time?

I’m not positive that settles the argument, however right here’s a broader problem.

You might be your mind.

I wish to name this view reductive neuro-animalism. However nobody else on this planet calls it that, so I in all probability shouldn’t.

Suppose an identical twins are in a automobile crash collectively. Twin A has their physique destroyed, besides for his or her mind, and Twin B has their mind destroyed, however their physique is ok. Surgeons handle to place Twin A’s mind into Twin B’s physique and save one in every of them. However which one?

By quantity, Twin B makes up the majority of the survivor. However the mind is A’s mind. When you suppose that A is the survivor, that implies that you just consider that you’re not your physique as a complete, however one particular subpart. You might be your mind.

You might be your recollections.

There are a selection of fairly science-fictional challenges to the view that you’re your mind. When you could be uploaded into a pc, teleported, or bodily resurrected, then you’re in all probability not your mind. However let’s preserve it easy.

Suppose sooner or later we are able to deal with sure mind points by swapping out some organic neurons with artificial ones. Suppose over a protracted time period you’re handled till the purpose the place none of your neurons are your unique neurons. When you stay psychologically an identical (or differ solely in small, pure methods), are you continue to the identical particular person? If that’s the case, you aren’t your mind.

Essentially the most influential psychological principle of id is John Locke’s reminiscence principle. You’re the identical particular person over time due to your recollections. They make you, you. Listed below are two issues with that.

You don’t keep in mind a lot. You in all probability don’t keep in mind being 5, perhaps, not even twenty-five (if you’re sufficiently old). We may simply say in case you lose sufficient recollections, you aren’t you. However one fear is that the majority of us don’t have sufficient recollections to depend as a steady particular person over our full life. A doable repair is the thought of chain-connectedness. I don’t have to recollect being 5 to be that particular person. I can keep in mind being a twenty-five-year-old one who remembered themselves as 5.

There’s a weirder drawback. Because it stands, the reminiscence principle, just like the ego principle, is round. What makes me, me, is the recollections that I have. Discover the “I.” I want the recollections to be mine. However meaning I have to outline “mine” earlier than I attribute recollections to me.

One of the influential responses to this drawback remains to be weirder. Psychological continuity may be primarily based on quasi-memories. Quasi-memories present information and/or acquaintance with previous experiences with out assuming that the rememberer and the experiencer are the identical particular person. Possibly, all quasi-memories are additionally, in reality, common previous recollections. Or perhaps sooner or later we will share recollections not directly. Both means, it’s not round to say that psychological continuity relies on quasi-memories, reasonably than recollections. Or, anyway, that’s what I’ve been advised.

So, lets say…

You might be your chain-connected, quasi-memories.

However recollections hardly exhaust the classes of psychological continuities plausibly related to our id, together with fundamental wishes, character traits, tastes, ideas, beliefs, and intentions. Since we don’t must kind and pare this checklist down at this time, let’s preserve it imprecise and say…

You might be your chain-connected, quasi-psychological continuities.

So, there you go. That wasn’t as arduous as you thought, proper? Wait. Hume desires to say one thing.

“In my view, once I enter most intimately into what I name myself, I all the time come across some explicit notion or different, of warmth or chilly, mild or shade, love or hatred, ache or pleasure. I by no means can catch myself at any time with no notion, and by no means can observe something however the notion…. If anybody, upon severe and unprejudiced reflection thinks he has a unique notion of himself, I have to confess I can motive not with him. All I can enable him is, that he could also be in the best in addition to I, and that we’re basically totally different on this explicit. He might, maybe, understand one thing easy and continu’d, which he calls himself; tho’ I’m sure there isn’t any such precept in me.”

Derek Parfit calls this view the Bundle Concept. Buddha might have been the primary bundle theorist. He taught “anatta” or the No-Self view.

The bundle principle doesn’t deny that we’re the confluence of numerous chain-connected, quasi-psychological continuities. They deny that these persist over a whole human life and that we are able to all the time distinguish continuities throughout particular person. We’ve quasi-psychological chain-connections with people who find themselves not us, in spite of everything. Which signifies that there’s not all the time a solution (a lot much less a binary reply) to the query of whether or not you’re the identical particular person over time. The truth is, being you seems to be a matter of diploma.

I’ve mentioned extra about this elsewhere. However I’ll finish right here now. Or anyway the person who changed me whereas I used to be writing this can finish it right here.

• Reprinted with Permission