Christopher_Shields_on_Personal_Identity

This is philosophy bites with me. David Edmonds I mean and you were better than fluffy but says
Available at W W W dot for mostly bites dot com. Unfortunately I no longer look like I did ten years
ago has fallen out the old to his being kept. Physically we all change all the time. What's more our
memories of our earliest selves are both finally able and incomplete. So what is it that makes me the
same person I was a decade or two decades or three decades ago. The question has profound
implications in many areas for example in religious belief and Mobley sponsibility. Krista Shields has
achieved the impressive feat of moving from the University of Colorado to Yale to Stanford to Oxford
what always remain in Christa the shields. Christopher shows welcome to flustered by it's good to be
here thank you. The topic. We're going to talk about today is personal identity. Could you tell us
what personal identity is and why it matters that So it's one of those topics in philosophy that takes
some motivating precisely because it seems not to arise in our day to day life but it really is at the
margins of the way we think about ourselves as responsible beings we don't hold people responsible
for things they didn't do. And so we expect to think that someone can exist from one moment to the
next it's as easy as that and it's obviously correct at the same time many people are in one way or
another religious they think that they're responsible for their deeds in this life in the next all the
same they think their bodies. Don't go with them into the next life if they think that way then they're
already thinking about personal identity and making a substantive assumption with respect to it.
Namely that bodies are necessary for personality. Whereas in the normal judicial context. That's
precisely what we believe. So when we talk about identity would talk about being in some sense the
same thing over a period of time. Exactly. So I may use the phrase diachronic identity and all I really
mean is that something can we. Main the same from one moment to the next. Now if you think of it
as a philosopher might think of it. There's already something peculiar about saying something stays
the same while changing. After all if something changes it's not the same him if something is the
same it doesn't change yet we seem to be the kinds of beings which we may numerically one in the
same through time. Well changing in small in little ways and the question of person identity is at
root the question what does it take to be the same person through the kinds of changes that all of us
experience and undergo in the course of our lives or one approach might be to say that I am the
same person that I was as a child because this physical constant you would see that I didn't cease to
exist at any point physically the natural thought is of course I am my body and I'm precisely the
same person I was when I was a boy because in some sense there is one of the same body existing
through time. But let me begin by illustrating with a simple story which takes right back. Twenty
quickly. Most people today maintain that the proper person identity got its first crisp formulation in
the English philosopher John Locke. In fact I think it's an older problem and we can see what the
problem is in its essence if we go right back to the fifth century B.C. where philosophers were
already being lampooned by the comic playwright epic Karmazin the fifth century Syracuse and
probably. We have a fragment of a comment he wrote in which he's making fun of philosophers for
retailing the so-called growing argument. We don't have the names of the characters unfortunately
but let's call them alpha and beta alpha is a debtor alphas borrowed say five drachmas from beda
beda comes out and says Give me my five drachma and Alpha says what five drachma let me ask you
a question if we had a pile of pebbles with three pebbles and we took one away. Would we have the
same pile or different and base as well. Different this way and if we added a pebble would we have
the same pile of different. Well different and Alpha steps to Beta one ha. You see a human being is
like a pile of pebbles. There's. Matter flowing in and out and each time the quantity changes we have
a new and different person. Therefore it was not I who borrowed the money but someone else
altogether. So you can't possibly ask me to pay you the five drama that the other owes you at which
point beta frustrated smacks Alf in the face and Alpha says Why did you do that and beta says who
beat. Now we are inclined to say that a human being is not like a pipe pebbles in a very real sense
namely we sustain material replenishment through our lives. One question for person identity then
becomes how is a human being not like a pile of pebbles which is to say what are the conditions
under which one of the same person exists through time and when we appealed in that innocent way
as you did quite recently a moment ago to the Bali continuity theory a person identity saying same
1

Christopher_Shields_on_Personal_Identity
body same person. We were already presupposing something which is problematic mainly what it
takes for something to be the same body through time. So to where we presuppose ing something
problematic from the religious point of view which denies precisely the thought that the same body
is necessary for the same person. So when we first addressed the question how does a human being
not like a pilot published we move in the direction of someone like Locke who quite rightly noticed
something about human beings to wit that human beings are among other things psychological
beings when obviously the example you gave is a bit of sophistry with the guy hitting the right. The
other bot it seems to me there is something going on there which is right that probably comes near
to he has to be an aspect of as much density. But don't look didn't put so much weight on the body.
Indeed in fact when we ask ourselves how human being is not like a polyp pebbles we end up
thinking as Locke thought a human being is centrally a psychological subject luck. Asked the
following simple question. Suppose you woke up one morning and looked into the mirror and so I'm
not your face but someone else as his example is the famous case of the prince and the cobbler the
prince wakes up in the morning and like any. Morning feels the same things his princely thoughts
looks in the mirror and sees the face of a humble cobbler the natural thought would be something's
amiss something's wrong. This isn't me. The copper does the same now they both after reckons out
themselves to the fact that looking in the mirror. They see not what they normally see Locke thought
the natural and appropriate and in a Skateball conclusion would be that they had swapped bodies.
Now if you think that it's possible to swap bodies and you think that a person is something which
isn't a body. So in this lucky in thought experiment. We're decoupling two things that naturally come
together in the real world that is to say the same midst of bodies and the same is of psychological
subjects' lock then thought. A ha. This shows us that what actually is required for personal identity
isn't the same as a body but rather sameness of psychological continuity in fact he said which shows
the prince that the prince has swapped bodies is that he remembers being the prince. So what a way
the notion of memory becomes central to all discussion of person identity because it looks like I'm
the person I am just in case I can remember the experiences of my earlier self. But look was
motivated not just buying up struck question about identity he thought that person was what he
called a forensics. Yeah that's incredibly important because Locke famously says that the notion of
person identity is a friend's issue and he is rightly it seems to me making the following observation
persons are the kinds of things to which we ascribe responsibility persons are the kinds of beings we
blame and praise. So there's a so for sitting in front of us what's a lovely sofa expensive soap of
valuable hideous What have you. But no one would give it any praise or blame because it's not the
kind of thing which can receive that predicate something about human beings makes them able to
receive the predicate being responsible. Now what is that the thought is that somehow we are
persons. And persons are psychological subtext capable of being doing acting suffering and
interacting with other psychological subjects and all of this tapestry of intellectual psychological
interaction for as a basis for the ascription of responsibility. The point about its being a forensic
notion is that we would never ever hold someone responsible rightly for something that they didn't
do let us suppose you have a twin brother he's committed some hideous act. You look just like him.
Of course it would be wrong and inappropriate and we wouldn't dream of holding you responsible
for what he had done. Why because you weren't the agent so agency is what's at the core of personal
identity and at the core of its being a forensic notion where he talks about a twin and it would
obviously be wrong to punish the train but what about if I commit some terrible crime in my youth
and then as an old person I've completely forgotten what would look said by that sort of case it looks
like luck is constrained to say that if you genuinely forgot not now imagine that you're feigning or
pretending or you're a charlatan. But you've genuinely forgotten. Then if memories are necessary
condition for person identity and you don't have a script of responsibility without person identity
then you can't be held responsible for what you genuinely forgotten this seems to be a problem with
the locking approach for a lot of people and in fact it was elevated to a very clear problem which
gets a little bit technical by the philosopher Reed who point out that if we really take seriously the
thought that members and guests are insufficient condition for person identity we wanted to puzzles
2

Christopher_Shields_on_Personal_Identity
which we can't really extricate ourselves from Looks to me said Read that if we have memories
which are bonafide then obviously their memories of your earlier self once memories are if you say
unnecessary sophist condition for being the same person and having memories of your earlier self
then you're invoking the very notion of trying to explain. So let's say you made no progress but
there's a fancy a problem. Suppose you entered into a brain state transfer device. Let's just imagine
ourselves a little bit into the future where a cancer would. Body can be duplicated perhaps grown
from a clone however tell the story doesn't much matter and the normal thought is that you can have
a regenerated body and you leave behind the diseased body and favor a new one and as you walk in
and walk out all of your memories are preserved because they're read off your old neural system and
implanted on the new one now. One day one of the attendants is a bit black and he absentmindedly
presses the button twice and outcomes two so now we have two figures both of whom are
psychologically continuous with the earlier figure they cannot both be the earlier figure that would
violate the logical principle the transitive identity which holds. If A is the same as B. and B. is the
same A C. than a is the same A C. Now in this case we can't have both of them being identical with a
because they're manifestly different. It looks like the Lockean memory criterion both entails and
denies that those are the same it entails of the same because it's supposed to be a sufficient
condition but it denies it because it makes them turn out to be identical with one another which they
cannot be so what you're saying is they can't be the same person because they've got different
bodies one's got cancer one hasn't. But on looks criteria they are the same person because they've
both got the same memories it's not it that makes the sort of problem Reed says Suppose a play of
officer to have been floated when a boy at school full of thing and watch it to have taken a stand out
from the enemy in his first campaign. And to have been made a general in advance life. Suppose also
which must be admitted to be possible that when he took the stand he was conscious of his having
been flogged at school and that when made a general he was conscious of his taking the standard
but it absolutely lost the consciousness of his fellow King. So now it looks like the corpus identical
with the boy because he remembers the experience of the boy the colonel is identical with the
corporal because he remembers the experiences of the corporal but the Colonel is not identical with
the boy because he doesn't remember those experiences these puzzles point out that there's
something gone wrong when we focus too narrowly and elevate just the psychological factors.
Memory and so those working a lock in tradition have therefore broaden that to think in terms of not
just memory but crisscrossing overlapping psychological continuity and connectedness. So the
thought would be that what we have is a stream of different kinds of interrelated psychological
states and those I would constitute that any of persons through time. So if I take that line in the near
lucky and knowing I'll probably say as a forty six year old I can't now remember much about being a
five year old when I was seven I could probably remember a lot of things that happened to me and
those memories then I think seven have a continuity with being ten because of these overlapping
memories. It makes sense. Still to use that memory criterion to say facts is what makes some of the
the same person. Indeed that's exactly the way things have gone and the details when you say in a
more sophisticated way in what more sophisticated way and what precisely are the connections that
need to obtain and whatever those are how do they avoid running afoul of the brain state fish in case
that we're looking at a moment ago. So in the cases you talk about a fish and where there's a split.
That's really just like science fiction. We're not going to end up with a situation where one person
like some kind of amoeba breaks down the middle and suddenly there are two well in fact already it
looks to me like there are cases which are today. Analogous. So for the treatment of certain kinds of
epileptic conditions neurosurgeons will sever the corpuscle awesome which is a series of neurons
which connect the two hemispheres of the brain and when that happens there are these rather
sophisticated interesting and telling experiments which show that we have two parallel sets of
processes going on simultaneously such that we immediately integrate and form a unified synthetic
consciousness which seems to be the persons we are but we're not very far from the thought that we
are integrating disparate hemispheres and different streams of awareness. So I am not myself
disinclined to think that such a thing could be in the offing. And in way though I want to say
3

Christopher_Shields_on_Personal_Identity
something else. Suppose that you're right that it just is not going to happen doesn't matter in a way
from the standpoint of thinking about how we make progress in. Reflecting on these difficult issues
of person identity my religious friend tells me she hopes to exist after she's dead. And I think how
could that be. And she will tell me a story about the immortal immaterial soul and so forth in which
she supposing that it's not a necessary condition of being the same that you have the same body
again this may be true may be false. I'm not passing judgment on that now or even considering it
just pointing out that there are implications for how we think about persons and that's not science
fiction. Whether it's fiction or not let others debate but we see that there are direct and immediate
implications for thinking about the same as a self through time the way you describe it looks
approach and the neo lucky in approaches seems to me fairly obvious that you don't endorse that
view you think there's some other way of giving an explanation of how we continue to be the same
person over time right things grow complex pretty quickly here. There has been a backlash to sort of
locking psychologic continuity theories and they take us right back to where we were when we
began namely the bodily continuity theory here. The thought is look when we fasten upon the
psychological to the exclusion of the body. We lose part of what is normal the constituent of the
same person through time namely having the same body. So the way the debate has gone since
roughly the one nine hundred seventy S. and these two main schools of thought I.E. the psychologic
continuity connect this model or the Bob the continuity model. I say a pox on all of their houses and
part of the reason I say that will sound like because I'm rather abstruse metaphysical concerns but
one of the things which got Locke motivated was I think a lack of understanding about the theory of
substance in contemporary English the word substance tends to mean something like it's stuff but
that's not what we're on about that's part of the mistake that Locke made in fact the word substance
came to be the English word which did in for the traditional Greek phrase protein which means basic
being and so if there are basic beings of the sort that I can. Persons to be then Samus of person will
be precisely the same mist of substance. Now that postpones the question because in one match you
want to know what is it to be the same substance through time and that requires a rather long and
complex analysis but once one begins to make progress there. It becomes immediately apparent that
some of the things that everyone has said I.E. the psychologic continuity connects people the bomb
economy people are all correct but no one gets the whole picture right because they're just fastening
on one part of what it is to be a substance of this in through time while ignoring some other features
which require I think attention if we're to go forward and so one question just becomes this. What is
it to be a continuing psychological subject not a series of experiences. Right. Not a discrete series of
experiences but a bearer of experiences and once we begin to ask that question we move forward
toward a proper account of person identity but it's one which will remain neutral at least so far
between some of our religious friends and some of our materialist friends because it opens up the
possibility that there is a category of being namely basic being a basic substance which is such that
by its very nature is in divisible and so these somewhat fast the pictures that we're looking at turn
out to be just that pictures of possibilities which tried not to be genuine possibilities upon reflection
analysis. So I'm not play where this leaves this in relation to people who have religious beliefs about
the possibility of life after death. Well the view I favor actually is consistent with that but doesn't
require that some people think that you are a soul. This seems to be one strain of Christianity this
seems have been a pre-Christian view as well it seems to have been Plato's view the view I favor is
that a substance a basic being is a certain kind of individual life direction ality it then becomes an
open question whether or not a life directionality requires material embodiment some people say yes
and some people say no. And it's a question which takes us into metaphysics outside of person
identity but which will inform our theories of personal identity in a fairly real way but just to see why
I favor the sort of view. Let's go back to where we began on the one hand we think that we have
same as a person we have same as a body that's a natural deflationary position that someone will
adopt without thinking about it and I said the notion of the body wasn't innocent and that we would
need some complicating facts and begin to think about that. And when we think that a body is the
kind of beating which is stains material punishment that it's a bounded into space and time which
4

Christopher_Shields_on_Personal_Identity
gets bigger it gets smaller in changes and also the way the question just reemerge is what is it for
something to be the same body through time. Now the view I favor gives us an answer to that
question what it is to be the same body has to be the same material stuff serving the same individual
life direction which is the matter of an individual substance. Now looked at that way we can see that
we elevated the psychological criterion too far. We ignored the normal material body meant of
persons when we focused on the body. We helped ourselves something we weren't entitled to namely
what it was for one body to be the same through time. So the view that I myself am advocating then
leaves open certain questions about post-mortem existence. So it's consistent with their possibility.
It's also consistent with their Him possibility that however is an issue. Not for I think person identity
but for metaphysics. He is a necessary condition of life direction out of life in general that there be
material embodiment do you think that these abstract questions about personal identity have any
direct relevance to people living their lives in them. I think they have to immediate forms of direct
relevance. The more pedestrian ones are really these points about the courts that we're talking
about a little bit earlier if we think as I myself continue to think with Locke that psychological come
to. Nudity is somehow implicated in person identity and we think that person identity is at its
inception a forensic matter then we really do need to think about what it takes for one person to be
the same through time when someone shows up in court with a will probate court saying the person
who signed this had lost his senses. He was no longer the same person he was not himself all these
locations all ways of appealing to what it is to be the same person through time and they are
philosophical questions. The court has to decide them in a practical way but it ought to decide them
an informed way and to do so by reflecting on what it takes for some person to be the same through
time the rather more elevated way takes us back to these religious considerations those who think
that there is post-mortem existence of those who believe in reincarnation in a rather radically
different ways far as I can see all are taking stands of one form or another on these issues a person
identity very often their stance which are incompatible with stance they take in their non-religious
modes if they think What's the problem same body same person in another mode they say yes but I'll
exist after I die then there seem to be denying the very thing. And so like a lot of other unreflective
but perfectly earnest thought about persons it's problematic quite near the surface. Christopher
since Thank you very much pleasure. And you can hear more from bites at W W W dot for most
people like Still to come.