Follow up to: “The ‘Why Do We Care?’ Test”

Editor’s Note: I was without internet access for awhile, so even though I did write one essay per day as I wanted to for NaNoWriMo, the essays weren’t able to be uploaded until now. I will solve this by changing the publication date of each essay to the date I intended to publish the essay on.

There have been many problems in philosophy surrounding the issue of identity.

“Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You.” – Dr. Seuss

Who am I, that is the “you” in this quote? In what sense am I me, and in what sense are others not me? Can someone really be sort of me, but not me-er than me?

Specifically, what is the “I” that I experience? Who am I, distinct from all other objects? Do I have a self? Am I the same person I was yesterday? Am I the same person I was a decade ago? Who was I a millennia ago? Would I be the same person if I got brain damage and my personality radically changed? Would I be the same person if my legs were amputated and I got a new hairstyle?

Many of these questions are explored by the philosophy of identity, a part of philosophy of mind. In this essay we will attempt to look at the problems head-on and see if we can answer these questions.

Williams’s Switching Experiment

This gets even more complicated when we explore some of the study of philosophy’s trademark bizarre hypothetical scenarios. Specifically, consider one of the scenario in “The Self and the Future” by Bernard Williams, slightly modified for ease of reading:

Imagine that we have two people, Alice and Bob. Then imagine that they undergo an experiment where they are swapped in such a way that there are now two entities: one with Alice’s brain — and therefore her personality, memories, thoughts, character, beliefs, dispositions, habits, mentalities, propensities, desires, preferences, tastes, etc (collectively Alice’s personstuff) — contained within Bob’s body; and one with Bob’s personstuff contained within Alice’s body.

Who is who? Which entity is properly considered Alice and which entity is properly considered Bob?

Given the huge amount of movies and TV shows dealing with identity swaps (Wikipedia has catalouged a list with over one hundred instances and the phenomena has a TVTropes article), the answer seems to be obvious and intuitive: in this situation, identity rests with the mind and personstuff. We see Alice in Bob’s body and Bob in Alice’s body, not Bob with Alice’s brain or Alice with Bob’s brain.

If we were to ask Alice prior to the experiment which resulting entity should be smacked in the face and which entity should be given $1000 (and instructed Alice only to act in her immediate self-interest when deliberating), she would very likely say that the $1000 should be given to the Alice-mind/Bob-body entity and the smacking should go to the Bob-mind/Alice-body scenario.

Thus we appear to be primarily concerned with what we experience, and less so with what will actually happen to our body. The intuition here seems to be that personal identity and association is found in the mind, and not in the body.

Williams’s Very Unexpected Torture

But perhaps this isn’t the only way we see our intuitions — perhaps they can be reversed if were made to think of the problem from another angle. Williams has another scenario from the same article in which he seeks to do just that and turn our intuition upside down.

In this scenario, you have been captured by a mad scientist. The mad scientist says that in one hour he will torture you in several nasty ways, which I will leave to your imagination and need not elaborate upon in a friendly essay. Just assume that this torture will be maximally unenjoyable.

However, the mad scientist still has a tiny thimble-worth of pity and decides to make the torture easier on you. First, he offers to erase any memory you have of him telling you about the torture, so that when the torture happens you will not expect it. Would you take the scientist up on this offer? If so, how relieved would it make you feel?

Seeing as that might be enough, the scientist then offers to give you complete amnesia prior to the torture, so that not only will you not expect the torture, but you won’t even know who you are. Would you take the scientist up on this offer? If so, how relieved would it make you feel?

Thirdly, the scientist offers to not only give you complete amnesia, but to completely replace your personstuff with that of someone else’s personstuff — so that not only do you not expect your torture and know who you are, but you’re utterly convinced that your Louis XIV, King of France. Would you take the scientist up on this offer? If so, how relieved would it make you feel?

Fourthly and lastly, the scientist offers to erase your memory of being told that your being tortured, and then remove your brain from your body prior to torturing you, and put it back in after the torture is over. Would you take the scientist up on this offer? If so, how relieved would it make you feel?

Williams argues that most people would not be reassured by the third suggestion, even though it would constitute the destruction of you as a person and the creation of a Louis XIV, such that it is not you who is being tortured, but instead Louis XIV who is being tortured — it just so happens that Louis XIV will have your body.

In fact, even the second suggestion should dramatically reassure you — if your identity is solely located in your brain as it appears to be from the Switching Experiment, then giving you complete amnesia should mean that you no longer have the same identity. It should be equivalent to switching identities with another person, except that after switching you are instantly killed and you switched with what basically is a blank slate.

The new you?

Dennett’s Hamlet-Yorick Separation Trilemma

Daniel Dennett poses some additional identity problems in his essay “Where Am I?” in which he tells a story about his body and brain being separated and connected by radio links. His body is then, still controlled by his brain, free to wander around, while his physical brain remains in a specific vat in a specific location. Daniel Dennet, unsure whether to personally identify more with his brain or his body, decides to name his body “Hamlet” and his brain “Yorick” to remove some of the confusion.

The question then remains where “Daniel Dennet” is specifically located — is he Yorick, Hamlet, or some combination of the two?

Dennett specifically poses the question as so:

While I recovered my equilibrium and composure, I thought to myself: “Well, here I am sitting on a folding chair, staring through a piece of plate glass at my own brain . . . But wait,” I said to myself, “shouldn’t I have thought, ‘Here I am, suspended in a bubbling fluid, being stared at by my own eyes’?” I tried to think this latter thought. I tried to project it into the tank, offering it hopefully to my brain, but I failed to carry off the exercise with any conviction.

Dennett also poses some amusing additional questions to further draw out the problem:

Suppose, I argued to myself, I were now to fly to California, rob a bank, and be apprehended. In which state would I be tried: in California, where the robbery took place, or in Texas, where the brains of the outfit were located? Would I be a California felon with an out-of-state brain, or a Texas felon remotely controlling an accomplice of sorts in California? [...] Was it likely that California would be satisfied to throw Hamlet into the brig, knowing that Yorick was living the good life and luxuriously taking the waters in Texas? Would Texas incarcerate Yorick, leaving Hamlet free to take the next boat to Rio?

Dennett then considers three possible theories about his personal location: that he is his brain (Yorick), he is his body (Hamlet), or that he is both people at once.

However, he decides to reject all three theories:

He is his brain: Rejected because it implies that he wouldn’t be to blame for the actions he commits with his body. Additionally, having his brain be recreated on a computer was not at all troubling for Dennett’s identity.

He is his body: Rejected because he only cares about his body as long as he is personally connected to it and experiencing through it — the strong commonsense notion of identifying by the brain as seen in the body-switching problem of Williams. Additionally, getting a new body was not at all troubling for Dennett’s identity.

He is both his brain and his body: Rejected because it doesn’t make any sense (how can identity be in two spacial locations at once) and that point-of-view can only be anchored in one at a time, though Dennett has no idea what is “switching” when point-of-view changes.

It seems that Dennett is befuddled.

The Problem of Four-Year-Old Identity

While Dennett does a good job of making the brain-body identity problem compelling, there are some ways where a dilemma can be made even more specifically, with our intuitions brought to clash head-on. For instance, how do we reconcile the following two positions?

Identity is located in the brain: when we swap bodies or get a new body, our identity moves into the new body and nothing is lost. Additionally, we are the same person we were when we were 4-years-old (4YO) despite our body now being made out of completely different cells and having a dramatically different appearance.

Identity is located in the body: when our brain is replaced by a computer simulation, our identity is now manifested by the simulation and nothing is lost. Additionally, we are the same person as when we were 4YO despite our brain having an incredibly different set of beliefs, having dramatically different personstuff.

How can we solve this problem? In what way are we really the same person we were when we were 4YO?

Won't be long until he's reading about thought experiments in philosophy of mind...

The Language of Identity

Williams mentioned in talking about his first identity problem (the one where Alice and Bob undergo an identity switch) as a “body-switch problem” begged the question by automatically assuming that what was going on was a body-switch and not a mind-switch. In this situation, the use of language automatically answered the question the moment it was being posed.

Likewise, we can see this taking place in Williams second identity problem (the one with torture) which says “the scientist offers to not only give you complete amnesia, but to completely replace your personstuff with that of someone else’s personstuff” — note the use of “you” in this sentence.

Saying so completely begs the question by indicating that you keep your identity even after getting a new character, which might not be true. (Note that this is an objection that Williams himself raises, and not an oversight in his work.)

So there is definitely a strong sense in which our own words are making it far more difficult to solve dilemmas about identity. Dennett tried to solve this by using the terms “Yorick” and “Hamlet”, but even saying that this was subdividing his identity or two different ways to refer to himself would automatically assume that Dennett’s identity is a combination of Yorick and Hamlet, which may not be true.

Could it be possible to solve problems about identity and reconcile our apparently conflicting intuitions if we recognize and address some underlying problems in our definitions and the way we speak about identity?

No surprise, but I think= the answer is going to be yes. Just like the idea of “freedom”, the idea of “sound”, the idea of “free will”, the idea of “life”, and the idea of a “person”, the idea of “identity” is another problem that arises from improperly employing definitions — another way in which our language betrays us.

In the next part of this two-part essay series, we’ll look to apply the “Why Do We Care?” Test and get an answer to what constitutes ourself, independent from others. We’ll seek to understand and resolve problems of identity, reduce the confusion invoked by Williams’s and Dennett’s dilemmas, figure out how we can be the same as our 4YO self, and answer the questions posed at the beginning of this essay.

Directly continued in: Identity Confusion as Definition Confusion, Part II

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