Identity: How do you define it?
- Thread starter PapillonT
- Start date
It depends so much on what we mean by identity. For example I am uniquely identified in the UK by my social security number - it's an arbitrary label which unerringly points to my physical self and to no other. This is generalisable - anything that uniquely points to me is my identity, for example a photograph if taken carefully will do the same, though it may not be so easy to actually locate me from that and may only be valid for a particular time of my life. All partly or wholly objective ways of expressing my identity are going to be like this, even when extended to expressing what I am like as well as who I am.
If you are asking what it is that these labels are pointing at, and trying to understand who I am, then it's a very different story indeed. Each person is likely to have a different interior experience of their own identity, and it would appear that this experience is determined partly by their human nature, and partly how far they have developed in response to their circumstances (Jung expressed this as individuation, but there must be countless other ways of referring to it, many expressed in spiritual terms). Personally, I find my own identity only by stripping away things that are not me. I am not my body, nor am I my thoughts or feelings - these happen to me, and are not me. I am not my history and upbringing, again these are what has happened to me. It seems to me that my identity is bound up with freedom of choice in an important way because the important choices I have made in life say something significant about me. I am not these choices, but I am who made them, so they reflect indirectly my innermost being, like the light of the sun is reflected by the moon, and this is like a sort of ragged mirror in which I can catch a glimpse of my innermost self. If others would like to understand my deeper levels of identity, look at my choices, but as signposts not as the actual thing. Even if you catch a glimpse of that it is not the heart of me though - it's inexpressible outside myself. I just am, but these words are just a placeholder for the intuition which is wordless, precise and accurate.
Now these thoughts are personal to me - others may experience their own identity in other ways, and of course we all identify other people than ourselves from the way they present themselves in the world we share. It's perhaps one of the things that for me comes with Ni that I often get an inexpressible feel for other people's inner core as well as my own, and it can be very different to the face they show the world.
There will be a fundamental difference between myself and someone who does not accept free will of course - they will not see choice as a way of penetrating into their own or other people's identities in the way I describe, because there is no choice.
D
Deleted member 16771
To be tangential for a moment, something interesting happens to the understanding and recognition of self when we see ourselves reflected in others. Looking in those mirrors can be a shocking experience, especially if one has not experienced 'alikeness' before in any serious capacity.
True. Also the experience of seeing ourselves interacting socially in video when we're not aware we're being filmed.
Spooky.
D
Deleted member 16771
Oh I don't know who that guy in the videos is. Different bloke.
This is particularly so when it’s our children doing the reflecting.
Do you think that identity changes with time? Are we the same person at 30 as we were at 5 or will be at 75?
Yes, it changes.
To the extent that both facts and self-perceptions change over time, identity (however interpreted) changes also.
(Note that metaphysically, the concept of essence facilitates this idea of self-identity over time less smoothly than ouverture.
)
That raises an interesting question - does it mean that someone later in life, and now with a different identity, is not accountable for their actions when they were younger? Or is there something that persists beyond identity, and in a sense more fundamental than it, which retains accountability?Yes, it changes.
To the extent that both facts and self-perceptions change over time, identity (however interpreted) changes also.
(Note that metaphysically, the concept of essence facilitates this idea of self-identity over time less smoothly than ouverture.
This presupposes that identity is destroyed by change, but I don't think that's the case.
Consider tearing a page off a book: it's changed in that sense, yet it's still the same book.
I think the notion of change is fundamental but it takes place within identity; identity must facilitate it. This is why the concept of essence is inadequate—it does now allow for self-identity over time/change.
That said, I certainly don't want to suggest this is an easy puzzle to solve. The example of the Ship of Theseus is illuminating for those not familiar.
Last edited:
I'm fully on board with the idea of identity as process, but I'm more uncertain about it being a choice. As John pointed out, it depends on whether or not you think there is such a thing as free will.
To complicate things, process and free will are difficult to reconcile, because if you have free will then there must be (arguably) an unchanging self that is the 'locus of choice' underneath all that changes around it. In this sense essence/substance/soul are easier to reconcile with self than process. If the very locus of judgement and choice was constantly changing, would we really be free?
Does this suggest that you believe in the existence of something like the soul?
Last edited:
D
Deleted member 16771
This was the innovation of Geist.
That the universe's 'subjective observer'/cogito/I Think/solipsist is the general point of reference. It has no individual identity.
Arguably as the Geist, I can make choices independently of any 'identity' my body might possess.
I think that this amplifies the problem - what is it that persists through the changes so that we can say it's altered identity is still referring to same thing as before the change took place? A book with a page torn out is physically not the same thing as before, so what is it that retains it's identification with the intact book? In fact when we talk about a book, what do we mean? It very rarely refers to a particular copy but to the abstraction that relates to every physical copy in whatever form it is presented physically. Theseus's ship is very striking because by all accounts the atoms that make up our human bodies are replaced many times over in our lifetimes - our identity is the same as that of a flowing river, with never the same water flowing past, yet always the same river - but without the river bank to shape us. Let's suppose that Theseus never took that ship, and by chance the components that would have been used to repair it were used to construct another ship instead - are the two ships the same one? Clearly not. There's something strange about this - I don't like the idea of using a duality explanation, but there's feels like a software / hardware link of some sort which is very much not duality.
I don't think that appeal to some kind of essential explanation is adequate for this, very much along your lines of thought, but all the same there seems to be something non-material which persists even when all physical aspects have changed completely.
Edit: Sorry Ren, posted before reading your last comment - I'll follow up in a bit
Absolutely. I think there are problems with the concept of Geist but it was undoubtedly a tremendous innovation.
I ask myself these same questions. I think they are some fundamental interrogations when it comes to identity through time/change.
A philosopher whose name I can't remember right now had an interesting physicalist argument where he defined identity in terms of continuity of space-time paths. This dispenses with the notion of self altogether, at least ontologically speaking.
Did you mean very much like duality? Otherwise I'm not sure I understand the first sentence here.
The dualist interpretation avoids some of the problems associated with the non-dualist ones (which you listed above), but maybe would leave us wondering what is the causal relationship between the physical realm and the non-physical. Of course you could say the interaction in question is purely God-willed, as Descartes did, but this seems like a somewhat unsatisfactory fix.
No problem
Last edited:
I'm very much opposed to the idea that there are two different natures at work in the world with some weird spooky connection between them, though that's a combination of perception and gut feeling rather than something I could argue well. It's seems to me far more sensible to think of the world as being far greater metaphysically than it seems in everyday terms. But this idea of something immaterial yet objective and real in common sight doesn't need a specialists powers of abstraction to experience: any computer software is exactly that. I've never gone into the philosophy of computer software but it seems to illustrate some of these issues - like what exactly is it? It isn't the computer on which it runs though it can't be manifest without one. It certainly isn't it's symbolic representation, because those are just the rules for setting it up, they don't actually execute. The symbolic representation is designed to allow people to create software, but it has to be translated into terms that a computer can act upon before it executes, and this is still not the program. It only becomes real in a sense when it is executed and this is a dynamic, changing thing that is expressed over time only within the controlled and ever-changing pattern of electronic activity of the computer - yet it isn't the electron patterns either but the ghostly significance given to them - yet it works, and can interact with the physical world. The program can be executed on any computer that has the ability to convert the symbolic form into one that fits the structure of the hardware and the environmental software that governs that hardware. I don't think this is an exact description of how people work, but I think it's an excellent metaphor for it.
Which leads nicely into
Yes I do, but not necessarily as something of a different nature to the world. At the very least, the above shows the minimum of how this might work. Though I do not think our psyches are software like a computer program, I think they are not tied to a single physical structure: our physical bodies and brains. This is self evident from the fact that all the biological material that makes us up is replaced, some of it many times over our lives, yet we do actually feel we are always the same person. So it's obvious that the same software-analogue that makes me a continuous person over my lifetime is independent of the physical stuff that hosts me. An interesting experiment that may be possible in the next few decades is to see if we can create artificial brain plug-ins that increase our brain capacity, and which even provide artificial experiences and prefabricated learning. It would be only another step from there to see if we can move our sense of identity out of our bodies and into such devices - if it were possible, then this would prove that we have a soul in a particular sense.
Of course as a Christian I hold that we all have immortal souls that are independent of our physical earthly life, but it really isn't helpful to this sort of discussion to appeal to that, because it's axiomatic rather that reasoned, and that really closes the discussion for anyone who doesn't accept that sort of initial condition.
The philosophy you're referring to is called the computationalist theory of mind—which is a fascinating field and still influential, though maybe a bit less than it was in the 80s and 90s. (A philosopher called John Searle, whom @Deleted member 16771 is well familiar with, offered a number of arguments against it that were seen as devastating by some, most famously the Chinese Room.)
Software is indeed a brilliant example of what you might call 'higher-order emergence' from the physical. I'm in complete agreement with you regarding the fact that it strongly suggests we need not go into dualist metaphysical territory to account for certain immaterial processes.
I still think it leaves a number of problems to resolve though. To begin with causation: I think we would ideally want to say that the 'mind' is causally efficacious on the physical, and not simply the reverse. That is, our mental states are not just higher-level manifestations of a subvenient physical substrate which is itself the only causally efficacious element. Critics of computationalism usually put it like this: they say it leads to mental epiphenomenalism. The mental is a kind of higher-level expression of the causal power but does not itself have independent causal powers.
The second problem has more directly to do with identity. Plausibly it's possible to produce exact copies of the same software, indeed an infinity of copies.* So if we stick to the metaphysical analogy of self with software, how is the self individuated? I think that what does the individuating is yet higher-level than the software stuff, or yet different from it. The analogy gives a functional description but does not, it seems to me, account for the actual self. By contrast, the soul offers a solution to both problems: it is already individuated and has causal powers. I'm not saying I'm on board with the concept of soul but I do think it emphasises that if we truly believe in free will the merely physical (higher-order or otherwise) won't do.
If anything the above shows that 'the soul' is much more than a fancy metaphysical or religious idea. It is actually extremely difficult, even by the purely rational and agnostic mind, to do away with it. To this day I don't think it has been effectively superseded in giving a metaphysical grounding to the self. Those who reject the soul usually end up having to reject the self (at least the self as the locus of free willing) as well.
*Note that you could say each copy has its own unique identity, but the cost might be unwittingly bringing the concept of soul back in the picture. That is, you might have to say that each exact copy of the software is individuated by something that is not 'in' the software itself, i.e. the soul.
Last edited:
I was not familiar with the Ship of Theseus, thank you @Ren. When I've read about it, I've found that their example illustration of the gradual loss of identity is quite similar to the understanding of authenticity in heritage conservation (many significant elements never received recognition of their universal value, for the reasons of even a minor form of change). It is intriguing, though, how in Asian concepts this differs. In Japan they "fix" objects, while in China, especially, one can find replicas of heritage monuments quite often (due to their particular way of understanding of past). Sorry for this digression, but it was an interesting parallel to me.
Definitely - I think software is a manifestation that gives an clearly observable example of an in-the-world immaterial thing in two way interaction with the apparently material. It is a good signpost, but isn't the same as consciousness and human identity and probably not even on a spectrum that leads to them.
There are all kinds of ideas that hint at how the connection could be possible between the substantial and insubstantial within our developing understanding of the nature of the contents of our world. If we take the idea that matter itself is actually made up of energy distorting space in little persistent knots of standing waves, then it starts to look a lot more insubstantial itself and therefore it may well be that mind interacting with matter is simply the interaction of two different manifestations of the same thing. Perhaps the challenge then is how nature has endowed these interactions with meaning.
Yes and I think this is a paradox concerning the StarTrek transporter too - because as far as I can see it could be used to duplicate someone rather than simply relocate them. Is the output the same individual as the input, and if you make several copies do they all share the same identity? Suppose that in the future we could all make backup copies of ourselves and be resurrected from these into a new body after we die? I think that terms like soul have become too cliched under mountains of religious and colloquial imagery to see things clearly - my gut tells me that there is something insubstantial that persists and is me. This would retain that sense of me-ness even if my history were different, if I had been born in another time and place, or even in a different world. How I experienced myself would depend on the capabilities and experiences I was given in order to experience of course. My gut tells me that it cannot be duplicated - a copy could be made, but it would not be me but someone else, but on the other hand it seems possible it could be relocated to a different host. There are other possibilities that feel less plausible but worth playing with - for example that there is only one 'soul' that is sequentially living through the lives of each living thing and when we encounter them it is ourselves we meet, living out every single life. Another is that our sense of personal identity is an illusion created by our mind from moment to moment - a useful fiction that helps our psyche govern itself in each moment, but this 'self' dies moment by moment and is replaced by a new one who is not the same self but who has the illusion of continuity. I'm sure there are other possibilities, such as from the rich complexity of Eastern thought, but I feel most sure when I look at the idea of a core immaterial something that carries my identity, which persists and which cannot be duplicated.
That doesn't surprise me. I do wonder, as I was hinting above, if the problem arises from a misunderstanding of the objective / physical as I suggested above. I don't have anything but native wit and gut feeling to go on though lol. It's interesting to do some thought experiments with the idea that we live within a virtual reality because that would no doubt offer some radical alternative ways of tacking things - it would be much easier then to see that both the objective and the subjective, mind and matter, are essentially expressions of the same underlying reality and the laws that govern it. I'm not suggesting that we are in a VR, just as a way of experimenting with the concepts.