Problems of Identity

Let's talk about identity.

By "identity" I don't mean some part of a person which remains ever-constant. I mean "that by which one person identifies another person, or even zemself."

Some people will say that the body is the root of identity. As the body is in a constant state of transition, they will say that continuity is important. Others will say that it is the spirit by which identity is assigned. To go with either of these approaches is to say that identity is based on substance. In practice, however, it appears that most people care about something else.


Imagine yourself to be a student in a class. Suddenly, Teacher's mind is reformed so as to hold the memories, personality, and so on of Fellow Student, while Fellow Student's mind is likewise changed so as to be a replica of Teacher's memories, &C. Where will your attention be directed to, to the body of Fellow Student with the mind of Teacher, or the body of Teacher with the mind of Fellow Student?

As another example, consider that the mind of your loved one was swapped with that of a complete stranger. Toward which of these will you direct your attention?

At this point I will cease with the broad summaries and describe only myself: You may be different, and all of your friends may be different, but as for myself, I identify a person, whether myself or another, by the personality.

Imagine that we could take a screenshot of a personality as it exists in a single moment of time. The screenshot of my friend's personality as it exists in this present moment is what I call my friend. Take the screenshot which directly preceded it by ten years and I may not consider this screenshot to be my friend, because the personality it contains is so radically different.

Or if my friend is hit on the head, and suffers a total loss of memory, then what I valued and assigned identity to is gone. My friend is dead, as surely as if slain by a bullet, because the personality, which is the only thing that I cared about, is gone.

But if you are the sum of your parts then you are not wholly the same from moment to moment. Each screenshot is ever-so-slightly different from the one before. If we are to hold to an exact definition, then just as the cat which jumps is not the cat that lands, so too is the one who began writing this post not the same as the one which is writing now. There have been innumerable deaths of personality since that first moment. More poetically, you are a dying-and-rising god-- one that stands on a mountain of corpses, even as that one gives birth, dying, to the one that will follow it.

But that's okay. Except in extreme circumstances, the personality that emerges immediately in the wake of the previous is close enough to its predecessor that there are still all the same reasons that we forged that friendship or became attached. For most intents and purposes, I'm only technically long if I say that these are the same people, but it's important to remember that I am still, technically, wrong.

What this means is that I don't have a choice about living. Even if my personality only dies from day to day or as little a three or four times every eighty years, it is still dying and what I have is only the illusion of a continuous personality, thanks to physical continuity and the possession of a significant amount of the experiences of previous personalities. I don't get to choose whether I live or die, but only whether the New Me, as it were, is better or worse than the one which preceded it.