Identity Dialogue Cinemacrates Bob: Why,

Identity Dialogue

Cinemacrates

BOB: Why, Cinemacrates! What are the odds of seeing you walk by? Where have you been this fine afternoon?

CINEMACRATES: I've been at the movies, and I swear I had an out of body experience. I'm still not really feeling like myself.

BOB: Well who are you feeling like? How it could it be possible to feel like anything but you? If you feel different now than you did before the movie, doesn't that just show a shift in you, without your needing to experience this sudden (and apparently uncomfortable) change in identity?

CIN: Oh, you're in one of those moods. Look, all I meant was I got so involved in the movie that I forgot where I was for awhile and actually felt like I was in the movie, like I was one of the characters, you know? I guess its just something that can happen with a really good actor -- the way they really embody the part and transform themselves has a really similar effect on me.

BOB: But do you really think that you didn't feel like yourself, as you just now said, therefore implying that you felt like someone else? Exactly what part of your identity did you feel you had lost? For that matter, how much of the actor do you think is left behind when they transform? Do they have a similar experience as you, only deeper perhaps? Do the actors literally become the character when they are doing their job correctly, or they really still the actor?

CIN: Obviously they're still the actor, and I am still me. Our bodies didn't change, or anything; we still have the same height, proportions, and everything. They go home from the set, I go back to my house from the movie theatre -- or I stop an have weird conversations on the streets of Athens, Texas that always seem to get too intense too quickly -- and everything ends up normal.

BOB: What you're saying, then, is that the body is what forms identity, and that although your mind (and possibly the actor's) was transformed for a time, you retained your identity throughout. In other words, the mind has nothing to do with identity, but only the collection of atoms that is your body.

CIN: You're jumping ahead of me again. The mind certainly has something to do with identity. I don't know...maybe I really wasn't myself for awhile in the movie. Or maybe -- and this is more likely, because the actor was speaking and moving as someone else, whereas I was just sitting there watching -- maybe actors really does transform when they are doing their jobs well; maybe the change in their mind makes for a true shift in their personal identity, if only for a time.

BOB: Then identity is not permanent.

CIN: Well...no, I guess not. I mean, its always changing, isn't it? Especially if identity is connected to the mind and emotions, as in the case of the actor. Human beings go through many different phases of mind and emotion, translating into a wide range of interactions with the world that aren't always alike, and therefore cannot be said to be consistent with one identity...right?

BOB: Perhaps. But what you are saying is that personality and identity are identical. This raises many further questions. First of all, if what you are saying is correct and all shifts in personality correspond to shifts in identity, then the entire concept of identity becomes meaningless -- as you say we go through many such shifts every day, and therefore any concept of identity or sense of self would either be false or completely temporary. I cannot believe that you truly mean you do not have the same identity as you had before the movie, or yesterday.

CIN: No, I guess that isn't what I really meant...I just didn't expect a sort of Spanish Inquisition.

BOB: Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition. Luckily, I don't speak Spanish. But back to the issue at hand -- if personality is identity, but minor changes in personality do not correspond to true change sin personality, the identity is truly a complex thing indeed, encompassing all of our moods no matter what they are in response to. This seems more reasonable. But in cases where personalities go through dramatic changes, such as in major traumas to the brain, would you consider the identity of that person altered -- remembering we have already determined that identity does not reside in the body?

CIN: Yes. I think I could definitely say that if one's personality were completely changed, then one would cease to function as the same identity and would instead be someone new, even in the same body. And -- to head you off before you ask -- yes, I believe the reverse is also true: the same personality (that is, the same mind) transferred over to a new body would retain the same identity that had previously occupied the original body.

BOB: Now you've complicated things -- is identity of the personality or the mind? Or is the mind the seat of the personality, and also identity? In our first supposition of one who suffers a trauma and undergoes a personality change, suppose also that the memory is unaffected. Would identity have changed here, even though the two personalities share a consistent history?

CIN: Yes, I think that would be a fair assessment -- if one perceives the world differently, and interacts with the world differently (and after all, what is personality but perception and interaction?) than they used to, then it would be reasonable to say that one had changed identities.

BOB: Then if you were (fortune forbid) to suffer a personality-changing trauma that kept your memory completely intact, you would not consider yourself you?

CIN: No.

BOB: So you would have memories of having been someone else, but would not actually be the same person -- thus two identities would have occupied your body at distinct times? I see you hesitate, which makes me glad, for though I do not wish to think that our identity is tied solely to our bodies, there is obviously more to this question than simply what lies beneath the surface. Let's see; so far we have established that identity is not fully dependent on the physical body, and yet is in some ways attached to it -- namely, we have discovered that the personality is detachable from the body, but the inverse of this is not true. So far, however, our discussion ahs been limited to ideas of discrete identities existing within discrete bodies, but what of multiple simultaneous identities in a single body, or a single identity in multiple bodies?

CIN: Would it surprise you to hear that I don't quite follow you?

BOB: I don't even know where I'm going; it certainly wouldn't be wise to follow me. But at least play along -- suppose your mind was somehow projected into two different bodies, neither one of which was the one you now occupy. Would either of those two bodies be you? Or would they be new identities? Or would they both be you? Could they both be you?