Neo-Confucianism Is a Philosophy Which Was Born TEST1

Memory, Identity, And Body

In a hypothetical situation, Barack Obama and Miley Cyrus are both involved in a horrific accident. As a result they are both horribly injured and only one can live. They undergo an operation wherein the parts of the brain that support specific episodic memories, but only those specific parts, are transferred. The body of Miley is given the brain pieces of Obama and the body of Barack Obama is given the brain pieces of Miley. The person who is now in Miley Cyrus's body awakens and the doctor states that Miley has survived. While the body is now that of Miley Cyrus as well some would say is the soul, the memories she has, memories which shape personality; are those of Barack Obama. The doctor makes this supposition only because of how Miley looks, but does not consider the impact of the inclusion of a brain which functions very differently from her own as well as the inclusion of memories which are very different from the type society associates with a person like Miley. However, he does take into account the amount of brain left that is controlled by Miley Cyrus. Obviously, it is a complicated hypothesis. Philosophers Locke, Sacks, and Williams would argue the point with some arguing one way and some the other.

The doctor's opinion of the situation is that the body and potentially the ethereal soul if he is a spiritual or religious man is still inside the physical being and therefore the person is Miley Cyrus. The philosopher John Locke might disagree with him. According to John Locke's memory criterion would suggest that the body of Miley Cyrus should now be considered to be Barack Obama. The criterion, which is often expressed as "(M) A= B if and only if A can, at least in principle, remember thinking, doing, or experiencing something thought, or done, or experienced by B" (Nimbalkar 268). Consciousness is the most important component in determining identity. A person's life is defined by what they have done and what they have experienced, something that can only matter if the person has memories of those moments. Each experience contributes to his or her personality and to their future actions. In this case, the brain's consciousness determines identity and, when able to speak, the body of Miley Cyrus will be most likely to sit up and self-identify as Barack Obama, according to Locke's criterion. He does not believe that the body is integral to identity. Further, he believes that the soul within a body can be transferred along with consciousness. Once a new consciousness takes over the body, the soul modifies itself to match this new identity. "If the same Substance which thinks be changed, it can be the same person, or remaining the same, it can be a different person" (Locke 272). The mind of the person is all that matters according to Locke's theorem. Since, in this case, the mind's conscious parts and the ones that control all the person's unique memories belong to Barack Obama; this person is now Obama and not Miley Cyrus.

Philosopher Oliver Sacks famously asked "What sore of a life (if any), what sort of a world, what sort of a self, can be preserved in a man who has lost the greater part of his memory and, with this, his past, and his moorings in time?" (23). In Sacks's opinion, a man is essentially his memory. This is called the "memory view theory." According to this theory, a person's life is what he believes it to be. An example is a case of a man who had been involved in World War II and had then incurred brain damage. When he awoke, he believed the year was 1945 and that he was still only 19 years old even though this was far from the truth. The reality of the world at the time was irrelevant to this man. For him, he was 19 and it was 1945. Nothing that doctors or psychologists or family members or friends could alter the man's sense of reality. He had no memory of them from the period after 1945 and therefore what they were saying could have no emotional impact or change his perception of the world. Such cases tend to prove that a man or woman's view of the world will be determined by their consciousness and memory. If a person has only limited memories, then their life is altered based upon the memories they hold even if the memories are not active. Given the information provided by the hypothetical situation, it would seem that Miley would have at least the same amount of memory of her old life as the man in Sacks's experiment. Although she might have some memories that are incongruous with her own innate ones and her personality might change a bit to reflect the change in her brain,

Unlike John Locke, Bernard Williams would probably agree with the doctor's findings. It is very likely that he would say that the person in Miley Cyrus's body is in fact Miley Cyrus. This assertion would be based on his bodily continuity theory of personal identity. In his essay "Self and Future," he describes another hypothetical experiment, similar to the one described above. Williams asserts that even if during the experiment wherein two people exchanged parts of their brains and when awoken seem to have characteristics of the other person, they will not in fact be different people. He posits that there will always be "certain limitations, particularly with regard to character and mannerisms, to our ability to imagine such cases even in the most restricted sense of our being disposed to take the later performances of that body which was previously A's as expressive of B's character" (Williams 161). From his descriptions in the essay, it would seem that Williams believed that the new being would be something of an amalgamation of person A and person B, in this case a mixture of Barack Obama and Miley Cyrus. However, he stated that the person whose body it was would be the primary identity and it would be this person's mannerisms and character traits that would be most obvious. If Williams theory is correct, then the Miley body with the Obama brain might have a few Obama-like tendencies, but it would be predominantly Miley Cyrus-like in demeanor, personality, and behaviorally.