Personal identity concepts and philosophical foundations

Person Identity

Weirob believes that she is only her body because her identity is uniquely tied to it. Her body is what has experienced (i.e., seen, smelt, tasted, felt, etc.) the world; it is that to which she has attachment. Her body is the only constant in all of the arguments of identity. She was unconvinced by appeals to theories of identity tied to souls (which are unknowable, she argues) or memory (which, she says, is fallacious and must be actual to even be relevant). She believes that she must be able to anticipate the feelings of a future self, that self must be intrinsically significant (i.e., her identity is not dependent on outside forces, such as the creation of two of her via God's will), and her memories must be real (and not fabricated or otherwise not directly related to the actual experiences that caused the memories in the first place). Because only the body-identity theory meets these criteria, she believes that she is wholly her body.

However, I do not agree that sameness of body is all there is to personal identity. I find the memory arguments more compelling than Weirob. There might also be more to the "person-stages" than Weirob was willing to concede; I also think that there is less to the body-identity theory. The body is the vessel by which the identity is carried, and Julia North case was probably actually Julia. I understand that she (Julia in the body of Mary Frances) could be seen as a delusional Mary Frances, but the fact that person could remember and explain events that did not happen to her (and in fact did happen the a part of her) is significant. Further, there is a causal relationship between the events and the memory (i.e., there is a direct, traceable line of events that goes back from the event to Julia currently). These events are not only explainable but also understandable.

I will give an example. Right before the accident, Julia might have had a chocolate ice cream that she paid for with money given to her that morning by her mother for washing the dishes. Julia's brain moved her arms to wash the dishes because she knew that she would get the money and would be able to buy the ice cream. The body, then, was a vehicle, a machine that the brain uses. That same brain (regardless of having been seen or felt, as per Weirob's argument) is now in a different vehicle, Mary Frances' body, by way of surgery. It still remembers having that ice cream, and it still is the same brain that moved that last body to get the reward. It is the brain that had been taught to act that way. I would not be so quick to say that because I am change cars, I am not the same driver. The ability to change bodies may be rare, but if possible, does not seem to indicate a change of person or identity.

Further, in argument with Weirob, I would wonder where and when the body stops being the body (and therefore one stops being herself). For example, let us say that there is a new technology that allows us to have our broken or lost body parts replaced. Let us also say that I get in an accident, and I loss my leg. A cybernetic leg using this technology then replaces that leg. It would be hard to argue that this is no longer me. Then an arm is replaced because of another accident. It would still seem to be me. Then an eye is replaced, and then a leg. Then my stomach is replaced, and a lung. This goes on until the only thing left is the brain. Is this still me? If not, at what point did I "die?" It would seem that only after the brain is replaced (that organ which holds the memories and impressions, as well as wants and desires) is the person no longer me. Certainly, it would not make sense to say that if my brain were replaced straight away, and the rest of my body were left, that this would still be me. The animating mechanism would be missing; the cornerstone would have been removed.

Therefore, I think that one's identity is bound up in the brain. Now, I am not inclined to agree that duplication of the brain indicates sameness. There is no longer an unbroken chain of experiences in this case. When one's brain is copied (say either by God or by mad scientist), the copy is not the original, just as the copy of a CD is not the original. It may play the same and have the same information, but the original is the original.