It’s quite possible, and, if the Bundle Theory of personal identity is correct, it’s true.
Tomorrow there will be one person in the world, and only one person, who is identical to you. How should we determine who that is? Possible answers include:
- It’s the person with the same mind. This is the Ego Theory.
- It’s the person whose memories, beliefs, desires, intentions, and other psychological items are continuous with yours. This is the Bundle Theory.
On the Ego Theory, there is one and only one correct answer to the question of whether anyone in the world of tomorrow will be identical to you. Either there is, or there isn’t. On the Bundle Theory, however, identities can’t always be definitively distinguished from one another.
We tend to think of personhood as a “further fact” in addition to the facts about our experiences and actions, a substantial self that is the inner cause of our actions.
But philosophers such as Derek Parfit argue otherwise. Parfit explains his view by means of thought experiments, one of which concerns fission.
- Consider a surgical procedure in which one hemisphere of a person’s brain is removed. We don’t regard the survivor of such an operation as a different person from the one who chose to undergo it. The person may be very different after the operation from the way the person was before the operation, but the person after the operation is the same person as the person before the operation.
- If someone’s brain were transplanted into a different body, we would say that the person whose brain it was is now in a different body. The brain is essential to our identity in a way that other parts of the body are not.
- Assuming (1) and (2), if we were to destroy one hemisphere of a person’s brain and transplant the other into a similar but different body, the person in the new body would be numerically identical to the person before the operation. The survival of half of your brain in a new body is enough to constitute your survival.
- Assuming (1)-(3), imagine that the two hemispheres of your brain are divided and each hemisphere is transplanted into two different bodies. This is what Parfit calls “fission.” Which person is you?
There are three possibilities:
- You do not survive.
- You survive as one of two people.
- You survive as both.
None of these possibilities can be right:
- We agreed that when one hemisphere is destroyed and the other is transplanted into a different body, the surviving person is the person who chose to undergo the operation. If it makes sense in the case of one transplant to say that you survive, how can you not have survived in the case of two transplants?
- On what basis can we choose between the two? Designating either as you is arbitrary.
- This is logically impossible. Survival involves identity, and nothing can be numerically identical to more than one thing. Identity is a one-to- one relationship, not a one-to-many relationship.
In the case of fission, there doesn’t seem to be a determinate answer to the question of identity, but there must be a determinate answer to the question of identity – mustn’t there?
This is what Parfit denies. In the fission case, everything that matters about you is present, and if everything that matters is present, it doesn’t matter that identity isn’t present. The problem is that we confuse identity and survival or persistence. We think that answering the question of whether you survive is the same as answering the question of whether what survives is identical to you. That’s almost always the case, but not always. Although identity is a one-to-one relationship, survival can be a one-to-many relationship. Whereas identity is all-or-nothing, survival is a matter of degree.
To put it differently, survival in fission can be “branching”: each of the two new persons with one half of the original’s brain forms a branch of the original person, and since what matters is present in each branch (even though the original person is not), each branch is as good as the survival of the original.
Some more illustrations:
- After it returned to Athens, the ship of Theseus was kept as a monument in the harbor. A few years went by, and some of the wooden planks that were rotting were replaced. This continued and after 100 years, none of the material originally used to build the ship was left, although the ship was exactly like the ship of Thesus 100 years earlier. What happened to the ship of Theseus?
- Imagine a club that disbands but later is re-established. Is it the same club? Or is it a new club that is just like the earlier club?
- Imagine a series of cases in which 1 percent of your cells are replaced with duplicates, then 2 percent, up to 99 percent. Which is the case where you cease to be and your duplicate exists?
Parfit’s point is that there is no determinate answer because there is no fact of the matter, so these are empty questions. But he also points out that in the case of ships and clubs, we don’t care. Are Puerto Rico or American Samoa part of the United States? In some ways they are and in other ways they aren’t. There’s no determinate answer. But that doesn’t threaten our concept of the American nation. Why, then, do we care when people are concerned? Because we think there’s a “further fact” to account for – a substantial ego or mind or person that exists in addition to the facts about an individual’s beliefs, intentions, values, and so on. But there isn’t. The numerical identity of persons is just like that of ships and clubs.
Parfit draws some more interesting and counter-intuitive conclusions from the Bundle Theory. If he’s right that personal identity doesn’t matter, then we have far less reason to prioritize self-interest than we ordinarily think we do. For example, we believe that we have duties to ourselves such that we should not do in the present things that are likely to harm our future self. This makes sense on the Ego Theory, for my future self is the very same person I am today, and to cause it harm is to harm myself. On the Bundle Theory, however, it’s possible that little of what matters to a person in the present will survive into the very far future, so that self-interest will not apply. On the Ego Theory, a rational person discounts the value of pleasures that are likely to harm one’s future self, but such considerations may be relaxed on the Bundle Theory.
This may seem like a recipe for license, but Parfit draws a different conclusion: if our far future self is to us as another person, then the moral principles that govern our relationships to others ought to govern our relationship to our future self. An implication is that we should treat ourselves as no less, but also no more important than anyone else, and that self-interest should therefore play less of a role in our considerations than it ordinarily does. Since what matters is connectedness and continuity rather than strict identity, another implication is that morality should govern considerations about the consequences of our actions now for all future persons.
Against the Bundle Theory.
There are plenty of reasons to reject the Bundle Theory, some of which were formulated by the eighteenth century Scottish philosopher Thomas Reid (whom Parfit discusses). Reid objected to a version of the Bundle Theory formulated by John Locke. According to Locke’s version, personal identity consists in the continuity of memory: identity is constituted by a set of overlapping memories.
There is [a] consequence of this doctrine, which follows ... necessarily, though Mr. Locke probably did not see it. It is, that a man may be, and at the same time not be, the person that did a particular action.
Reid’s argument runs as follows:
An army officer had been punished for robbing an orchard when he was a child, had taken a standard from the enemy in his first campaign, and had been made a general later in life.
When he took the standard, the officer remembered having been punished at school, and when he was made a general, he remembered having taking the standard, but had lost the memory of being punished at school.
On these assumptions, it follows from the continuity version of the Bundle Theory that the person who was punished at school is the same person who took the standard, that the person who took the standard is the same person who was made a general, and that the general is the same person as the person who was punished at school. Yet the general has no memory of the punishment, and so according to Locke’s doctrine he is not the person who was punished. Therefore the general both is and is not the same person as the person who was punished at school.
Reid has other objections to the theory:
It ... is not my remembering any action of mine that makes me to be the person who did it. This remembrance makes me to know assuredly that I did it; but I might have done it, though I did not remember it. That relation to me, which is expressed by saying that I did it, would be the same, though I had not the least remembrance of it. To say that my remembering that I did such a thing ... makes me to have done it, appears to me as great an absurdity as it would be to say, that my belief that the world was created made it to be created.
We can also ask whether having a certain history matters for identity. For Parfit, only psychological continuity and connectedness matter, and the cause of these qualities is irrelevant. In other words, how someone came to be is irrelevant to who they are. Is that plausible? Consider Robert Nozick on love:
[L]ove is ... [a] relationship that is historical, in that it depends upon what actually occurred. An adult may come to love another because of the other’s characteristics; but it is the other person, and not the characteristics, that is loved. The love is not transferable to someone else with the same characteristics, even to one who “scores” higher for these characteristics. And the love endures through changes of the characteristics that gave rise to it. One loves the particular person one actually encountered. Why love is historical, attaching to persons in this way and not to characteristics, is an interesting and puzzling question.
If we love the person not just the qualities, it must be that there’s a “further fact” about identity beyond psychological continuity and connectedness, and that personhood isn’t a concept we use to unify a collection of qualities but rather a substantial thing that exists in addition to the qualities.
In response to this objection, Parfit bites the bullet: we have no legitimate grounds for preferring the original loved one over an exact duplicate. He imagines a case in which a woman uses a replicating device to create a duplicate of herself. The woman’s name is Mary Smith:
I fall in love with Mary Smith. How should I react after she [has been replicated]? I claim both that I would and that I ought to love her Replica. This is not the “ought” of morality. On the best conception of the best kind of love, I ought to love this individual. She is fully psychologically continuous with the Mary Smith I loved, and she has an exactly similar body. If I do not love Mary Smith’s Replica, this could only be for one of several bad reasons.
On Parfit’s account the causal connection is less important than psychological continuity and connectedness. The actual history and identity of Mary Smith are unimportant in themselves.
As another illustration, consider the difference between Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam in the Sistine Chapel and an exact duplicate. Is the latter really as good as the former? Modern art provides many real-life cases of this sort. To all appearances, there’s no aesthetically important difference between Andy Warhol’s Brillo Boxes (1964) and any number of Brillo boxes in commercial warehouses. Yet Warhol’s boxes are on display in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. A similar point applies to the sculptures of Dan Flavin, which are made by combining unaltered industrially produced fluorescent tubes. Anyone could buy these items and make their own “Flavin.” But would it have the same artistic value as a real Flavin, or does how a work came into existence partly determine its identity (and value)?
For the discussions summarized and quoted above, see:
Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974), 167–68.
Derek Parfit, “The Unimportance of Identity” in Personal Identity ed. John Perry (2008).
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Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi has said that four desires can be safely satisfied by every seeker—hunger, thirst, sleep and attending the calls of nature. Anything other than these four, he says, is bondage.
Elimination of vasanas will reveal the ever present Moksha.
To eliminate all desires, eliminate the “I"!
Thanks for reading
Nirvritananda
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The ‘I’ that comes every morning and leaves at every night.
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IS THERE A PATH TO GLORY?
Yes, verse 30 of Hanuman Chalisa mentions the glorious path of Hanuman’s effulgence known throughout the world in all 4 cosmic cycles
“CHARON JUG PARTAP TUMHARA
HAI PARSIDH JAGAT UJIYARA”
In this world, it is almost impossible for an individual to lead a perfect, blemish-free life – a life that is above criticism.
However, there is one character in the Ramayan whose actions are beyond reproach – Sri Hanuman, one of the greatest devotees of the Sri Ram We do not find a single incident wherein Sri Hanuman has committed any mistake or incurred blame and censure. He is the very embodiment of devotion, wisdom and service.
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I understand what you are asking and so, yes, you have caught the gist of it.
What we associate with as “me,” in other words, my thoughts, my opinions, my ego, and my self-identity, is often called the lower self or small self.
“That” in us which is our conscience, our higher power, our essence, and consciousness is often called our Higher Self with a capital “S.” This is also when we are in touch with our soul.
So, when our awareness becomes able to rest more in the soul than on our thoughts and ego, you can say, as a way of expressing it, that you are now aware, or have awareness in the Higher Self.
It is a bit more churchy to say spirit instead of soul, and more appropriately we would say “subtle body.”
However, I could say, yes, you’ve caught the “spirit” of it!
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