Numerical identity: Two objects are identical if they are one and the same.
Qualitative Identity: Two objects are qualitatively identical if they share the same properties (qualities).
Accidental property: a property a thing can lose without ceasing to exist (losing one's hair).
Essential property: A property a thing cannot lose without ceasing to exist (losing one's mind).
Is numerical identity a necessary condition for qualitative identity? Read p. 246.
The answer is NO.
personproperties= a being with 1. reason, 2. sentience, 3. autonomy, 4. free will?
if so, then a human being (hb) is neither a necessary, nor a sufficient condition for a person. a hb with severe hydrocephanlia may not be a person, a brain-dead hb is not a person. on the other hand, there are non-human persons, ex. dolphins, or aliens (aliens are causally possible persons).Animalism: Identical persons are those with identical human bodies (i,e., "I'm my body").
Problems: two-in-one, (Hensel sisters), the transgender problem (trans people feel "trapped" in the wrong body.
C/E: Locke's tale of the prince and the cobbler (as the cobbler and the prince trade souls, their bodies become redundant).
2. Locke's Memory Theory of Personal Identity: (I am my memories and my memories are the result of my experiences).
Problem: What if one forgets? Is that forgotten part still a part of my identity? Reid’s Tale of the Brave Officer reveals the following: Direct memory: A memory that a person can consciously recall. Indirect memory: A memory that an earlier stage of that person can consciously recall.
Real memory: A memory of an event that was experienced by the person remembering it and that was caused by the event it records. Apparent memory: A memory of an event that either didn't happen or was not caused by the event it records.
C/E The main objection against Locke's memory theory is that Locke's Memory Theory is circular.
Why? It defines memories in terms of the self and the self in terms of its memories.
Could Locke's theory be improved? Yes. But we need to define other kinds of memories. Here is when it comes the concept of quasi-memory.
What is the difference between quasi-memory and real memory? Take a look at p. 275 (5th Ed) :
A q-memory is an apparent memory caused in the right way by an actual experience.
You can also see it as a memory that someone has and it's cause in the right way by an actual experience.
In the end, all your real memories are quasi memories, but the "someone" happens to be you.
Now Locke's theory could be reformulated (he never did it) It would look that this:
You are your quasi memories. Many of your memories from 0-7 are q-memories. They are given to you by your parents, siblings. These are real memories they -NOT YOU- had. Then we have the concept of apparent memory.
An apparent memory is a memory of an event a) that either didn't happen, or b) was not caused by the event it records.
What this means is that the memory of your birth is a q-memory, given to you by your parents. But at the same time it's an apparent memory because it's not caused by your actual birthday but by your parents' memory of your birthday (the causal link is very important here).
So we get the following susprising result: All real memories are quasi memories and all quasi memories are apparent memories. See it as three concentric circles.
Granted, some apparent memories never happened. We called them "fake" memories. Examples are, a memory of a dream, a memory given to you during hypnosis, a dissociative memory, which your psyche creates in order to keep homeostatic balance (the memory of a trauma often becomes a fake memory in order for the psyche to cope with the trauma).
3. Psychological Continuity Theory: Identical persons are those who are psychologically continuous to one another. That is to say, two people are psychologically continuous if they form part of an overlapping series of persons that quasi-remember and quasi desire the same things.
See it as this longitudinal surface representing one's overlapping series of persons:
_____________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
A note about the relationship between q-memories and personal identity:
Can I have a memory of someone else's experience? The answer seems to be yes.
Reciprocally, all real memories are q-memories but not all q-memories are real memories, because people can have q-memories of experiences they didn't actually have. Why is it so important that q-memories are caused in the right way? Because q-memories ground personal identity, though not every way of causing memories is identity preserving. Take hypnosis: the hypnotists may give you a memory that happened to someone else. That doesn't make you identical to that person.
The same applies to desires, so, in the same way we have apparent desires, q-desires and actual desires:
Problems with duplication:C/E:William’s Reincarnation of Guy Fawkes; Williams' Reduplication Argument. The conclusion from this experiment is that psychological continuity is one-to-many, not one-to-one. That is to say, one can be psychologically continuous to many people at once.
C/E Parfit Teletransporter Mind Experiment. Recall that in the second teleporter Po (on earth) and Pc (in Mars) are psychologically continuous, physically identical, but they cannot be the same person (it violates the principle of numeric identity: one person cannot be in two places at the same time). It also suggests that (as when Po dies of cardiac arrest, the Pc survives, which seems to suggest that identity is not necessary for survival.
5. Two different narratives of the self:
1- diachronic: The diachronic presents the different stages of the life as part of a continuous series. 2- episodic. The episodic sees the different stages as discontinuous series.
This doesn't mean that the episodic narrative cannot make sense of one's whole life.
Take a look at the example of Robert and Frank (p. 246 5th Ed.). If Frank and Robert are different persons it would be wrong to punish a person for what another person did. Some in the class affirmed they are the same, but that's what we needed to prove. In any case, the Frank-Robert case points to the self as a process.
Lucifer and Satan case. Are Lucifer and Satan they the same? Qualitatively speaking no (one is good, the other evil), however, they are numerically identical. Plus, Satan has quasi-memories and quasi desires of Lucifer. So, it's possible that another person (let's call it "X") in the future of Satan could repent of Satan's sins. "X" could do it since "X" would be psychologically connected to both Satan and Lucifer.
The same way that a the mind is a property that emerges from a physical thing when it reaches a certain degree of complexity, similarly, the self can be seen as emerging from the mind when it reaches a certain degree of complexity. Not everything that has a mind has a self because not everything that is conscious is self-conscious. And not everything that is self-conscious is self-conscious to the same degree. So, Having a self is not an all-or-nothing affair.
The self seems to be self-organizing. What does that mean? A self-generating process.
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6. Self as PROCESS.
Click here for Sartre's lemma.
7. Relationship between identity and responsibility.
Is personal identity a necessary condition for responsibility? No. Why?
Click here for the discussion of narrative as a necessary condition for moral agents.
8. What is character? Character is function of our beliefs, desires, values, etc.
Can a person change his/ her character? Remember the differences between Frank and Robert. Though Frank and Robert are numerically identical, they don't have the same character (they are qualitatively different). Yes, they are numerically identical, but their degrees of responsibility have to be taken into consideration. This is the idea behind rehabilitation. Parole boards take into account that if the character of a person changes for the better, the individual's so-called righting the wrong.
What matters for responsibility is character. Character being a function of our beliefs, desires, values, etc and our actions being a function of our character. So numeric identity seems to be neither a necessary condition nor sufficient condition for responsibility. What matters is sameness of character.
Click here for our discussion of character and moral responsibility.
What is character?
1- since it's observed behavior, character is public.
2- character can change, but it's more a persistent trait.
3- character is a negotiation between witnesses.
4- character can change (slowly).
Click here for my notes on the identity of history.
