I don't think Dennett's thought experiment is a very good one. Identity is an always changing, never ending tapestry.

He then gives a thought experiment to show this where a man has his brain put in a vat but it is still connected, so his body is moving with out the brain in it. — Lexa

I don't see this as anything but me.

Then he pushes it further by copying the mans consciousness onto a computer and then downloads it into another person. — Lexa

The moment the consciousness changes mediums, from biological to electronic, it is no longer the same consciousness. What you upload to another person will not be what was in the original. Plus, each body's chemistry is different. And our personalities are strongly influenced by things like hormones and neurotransmitters.

So it is you, except you are going through a different life experience than the other you. So, it would just be a different you, not in the sense of function, but in the sense of experiences, where one you would think one way going through one set of experiences, and the other would think in the exact same way (functionally not content wise), but having began to lead a different life with different experiences. — Lexa

Even if not for the chemical differences, they would be different people. Just as identical twins are. How we think is influenced by our experiences. Different experiences means different ways of thinking.

I don't see this as anything but me. — Patterner

That's kinda the point the brain in the Vat is basically just a Skull for two conscious bodies -- what remains the same between them both?


What I absolutely hate about this thought experiment is that, In a way, Dennett is proposing a mind body dualism -- even though he's not a dualist. The Brain is highly dependent upon the body for growth and function, removing it and putting it in a VAT is highly reductionist on the Body's influence on the brain. To me it feels like Dennett is probably too heavily influenced by Hegel who says everything stems from the geist.
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What is this problem even attempting to solve? Where the "I" comes from? Because it certainly isn't the solution to someone having a personal identity crisis.

The problem with personal identity is that it's a garden that requires cultivation and most people can't spend 10 minutes cultivating their mind by reading something that challenges them and pushes them to grow. Most people buy fake plants and put them in their garden, saying, "I am these labels!" Which generally amount to what they are fans (favorite characters from some type of media, favorite team, favorite musicians etc etc).

I think the least problematic answer to these type of thought experiments is that the object goes where the parts go, and only where the parts go. However if consciousness is not an object, it is more difficult.

So, it would just be a different you, not in the sense of function, but in the sense of experiences, where one you would think one way going through one set of experiences, and the other would think in the exact same way (functionally not content wise), but having began to lead a different life with different experiences.
what do you all think of this? — Lexa

I think we need our bodies to experience life and that every cell in our body is part of our consciousness, so if our consciousness were transferred to a different body we would have a problem identifying that different body as who we are.

There are several fun movies about people whiching bodies. In one such movie a grandfather and grandson trade bodies. In another a mother and daughter trade bodies. I think there are a couple where and man and woman trade bodies. However, my reply also comes from what I have read and experience. We know who we are by checking in with our bodies that hold our memories.

I don't see this as anything but me. — Patterner

Ah, a brain in a vat would not get essential information without a body. What are you without a body? What is your body without a brain? People with Alzheimer's Disease have a sense of who they are but they may not remember anyone around them. They are not exactly in the here and now, but often in the past.

Possible solution to the personal identity problem

The government solves it by issuing a unique personal identification document to every person.
It's how we are formally forced to maintain a personal identity, in real terms.

I think we need our bodies to experience life and that every cell in our body is part of our consciousness, so if our consciousness were transferred to a different body we would have a problem identifying that different body as who we are. — Athena

Indeed - enactivism and embodied cognition.

Regarding the nature of the self, the enactivist approach, as I understand it, implies a view of the self as dynamically emerging from the ongoing interactions between an organism, its body, and the environment. The self is not considered as a static entity or an isolated internal entity, but rather as a process that is continually shaped by the activities and relationships of the organism.

Dennett is nonsense here, IMO. What is needed is a member of this forum who has multiple personality disorder to speak up. Or possibly this condition only magnifies the "problem" of personality.

We are pre-conditioned genetically and then further conditioned by our environments.

In a meditative state some time back I shifted to another personality briefly. It's an experience ineffable and lasting.

Hi Vaskane,

I take you to be speaking about social identity, and not numerical identy.

From my understanding the identity problem is one of what makes you 'actually' you across time - not your subjective identification, which you're right to point out is a constantly changing chimera of various elements in various ratios.

But how you are yourself (i.e, the person who is you - not the person you think you are) across time is entirely askance from your subjective understanding of yourself.

I think your terms a little muddled here but i could be fully misunderstanding you.

I believe you're referring to what Parfit thinks 'matters' after deciding there's no such thing as personal identity. Which is to say, the psychological continuity is what matters, and that your actual identity (i.e the state of being identical with oneself) isn't important.

I take that to be somewhat a way to comfort himself after realizing we may not actually 'be' any 'one'. Which is daunting to some degree, i feel.

This speaks to, but doesn't answer the problem. Multiple personality disorder is, even on a laymans interpretation, many 'personalities' within one 'person' which is why it's a disorder.

Does this entail that there are multiple persons? Or multiple personal facades?

Well, I certainly won't be identifying as a number any time soon. Kidding aside, I was speaking of how the person derives "I" (identity) from "It." It being the body which gives rise to the "I". Since I is a reduction of It, removing the brain from body to the Vat is the same thing as reducing the I from It. Which imo makes for a shitty thought experiment on personal identity.

And personal identity is how one views themselves, social identity is the mask a person wears in lieu of. Personal Identity is always changing for one who continually self overcomes.

From Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil

231. Learning alters us, it does what all nourishment does that does not merely "conserve"—as the physiologist knows. But at the bottom of our souls, quite "down below," there is certainly something unteachable, a granite of spiritual fate, of predetermined decision and answer to predetermined, chosen questions. In each cardinal problem there speaks an unchangeable "I am this"; a thinker cannot learn anew about man and woman, for instance, but can only learn fully—he can only follow to the end what is "fixed" about them in himself. Occasionally we find certain solutions of problems which make strong beliefs for us; perhaps they are henceforth called "convictions." Later on—one sees in them only footsteps to self-knowledge, guide-posts to the problem which we ourselves ARE—or more correctly to the great stupidity which we embody, our spiritual fate, the UNTEACHABLE in us, quite "down below."—In view of this liberal compliment which I have just paid myself, permission will perhaps be more readily allowed me to utter some truths about "woman as she is," provided that it is known at the outset how literally they are merely—MY truths.

Getting to the end of that which is fixed within us also requires cultivation.

Nietzsche and Jung both had Multiple personalities. Nietzsche expresses it subtly in poem and in some letters to friends as well as in some writings in and about his books. Jung was wide open about it.

thanks very much for your reply.

I still think you are seriously misapprehending what personal identity is in this context (the thought experiments). I’ve actually found the wiki page prettt darn good at explaining this concept https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_identity

It’s a fascinating set of questions that theoretically should have an empirical answer once we figure out the necessary and sufficients

I'll raise you one:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/identity-personal/

You're merely equivocating my meaning of personal identity to what you're familiar with.

hi again Vaskane. Forgive but that is clearly untrue.

If you have a look on that page under “characterisation” it makes the specific delineation I’m trying to illustrate - outside of philosophy personal identity is taken to be sets of properties to which we adhere and present to the world as a self-image.

That’s not wha philosophical personal identity deals with. It’s much more abstract and they can roll together in the following:

If you take the psychological theory of identity serriously this can include the phenomenological conception of self one carries over time - but that doesn’t indicate the “self” - it is, in fact, the mental continuity of the conception over time (ie you can singularly recall “yourself” at times in the past despite differences to the present you doing the recalling) which would by these lights establish a “you”. The self image does not due to its instability.

But it will also include many many other things such as your relations to others, bodily facts that you “know” etc…

Agin, really interesting area that goes far beyond a self-image deliberation

:)

I said I'll raise you one to alert you that I used a more full source than wikipedia.
I get that you may identify in a way as dehumanizing as the following: But again that's how you view your self.

Here are some of the main proposed accounts of what we are (in dealing with the problem of personal Identity; Olson 2007):

--We are biological organisms (“animalism”: van Inwagen 1990, Olson 1997, 2003a).

--We are material things “constituted by” organisms: a person is made of the same matter as a certain animal, but they are different things because what it takes for them to persist is different (Baker 2000, Johnston 2007, Shoemaker 2011).

--We are temporal parts of animals: each of us stands to an organism as your childhood stands to your life as a whole (Lewis 1976).

--We are spatial parts of animals: something like brains, perhaps (Campbell and McMahan 2016, Parfit 2012), or temporal parts of brains (Hudson 2001, 2007).

--We are partless immaterial substances—souls—as Plato, Descartes, and Leibniz thought (Unger 2006: ch. 7), or compound things made up of an immaterial soul and a biological organism (Swinburne 1984: 21).

--We are collections of mental states or events: “bundles of perceptions”, as Hume said (1978 [1739]: 252; see also Quinton 1962, Campbell 2006).

--There is nothing that we are: we don’t really exist at all (Russell 1985: 50, Unger 1979, Sider 2013).

Of which is stated there is no consensus or even a dominant view on this question.

Again, you're equivocating, to what you're familiar with.

You should probably read the page more fully.
Start with Section 1. and see which ones of these Problems of Personal Identity
"Characterization, Personhood, Persistence, Evidence, Population, Personal ontology, and What matters in survival."

apply to what I say here and see which ones align with what I said about "the problem with personal identity is"

The problem with personal identity is that it's a garden that requires cultivation and most people can't spend 10 minutes cultivating their mind by reading something that challenges them and pushes them to grow. Most people buy fake plants and put them in their garden, saying, "I am these labels!" Which generally amount to what they are fans (favorite characters from some type of media, favorite team, favorite musicians etc etc). — Vaskane

A further Edit:

On the bit of 4. Psychological-Continuity Views

Most people—most Western philosophy teachers and students, anyway—feel immediately drawn to psychological-continuity views. If your brain were transplanted, and that organ carried with it your memories and other mental features, the resulting person would be convinced that he or she was you. This can make it easy to suppose that she would be you, and this would be so because of her psychological relation to you. But there is no easy path from this thought to an attractive answer to the persistence question.

This is exactly the mind in the vat view.

I'm not drawn to this view because I believe the body plays a large role in personal identity. And I've said this in my prior posts here multiple times. Which also goes into further hints on what I feel problems of identity are that align specifically with the ones listed in section 1.

I'm also not even a philosopher who even knew these problems were the problems, I just read, and these were my own basic thoughts on the problems of identity, which align with the problems of identity on the SEP page.

So I at least thank you for making me aware that I'm up to date and even beyond contemporary views of personal identity -- as stated from section 4, most are still ensconced in "Hegel" more or less.

But I will tell you this -- there is no "you" without muscle memory.

When you physically develop, you develop your central nervous system by synthesizing new tissue that is connected to the CNS, essentially one has to plug in new hardware with more wires to the CPU via creating new connections.

hey mate / thanks so much for such a thorough reply.

I don’t know that this is going to be a fruitful exchange because I’m seeing some talking past each other happening from each of us a bit. I shall try to give a fairly complete response to avoid further convolution…

Again you’ve identified a different problem - which is what constitutes the type which the “human” consists in. The issues discussed in both sources (but admittedly, while more succinct, the wiki page is far more cursory) are about what makes a single “one” the same token of whatever type (which seems to be the issue you’re identifying) across time. This isn’t dealt with other than orthogonally in the direction you’re going from what I can see.

Those problems I’ve outlined haven’t been addressed by either your personal comments or the discussion of other sources. It may be that you’re resistant to an analytic use of the term identity which I recognise is sort of a choice on my part - and I’d also note that I’ve outlined how and where your concern is totally legitimate and that even your comments strike me as correct / but it doesn’t address the crux let’s say of what I understand the questions of personal identity to really traverse in this philosophical context.

I understand finding certain views that comport with your intuitions - that’s what drew me to philosophy generally. But I’m unsure that’s a sufficient basis to say that the topic at hand isn’t the traditional philosophical topic and something more constructivist.

Given it’s entirely possible I’m wrong: If that isn’t true, or at the very least I’m necessarily misunderstanding you - fsir enough. I’d just then roll back most of the exchange and say “oh, all right. I’m most interested in *insert the issues I’ve outlined* within this arena” and try to go forward from there

Dude, I understand that you think personal identity is "what doesn't change about you over time." Since Nietzsche spoke to Zarathustra as a second Identity within himself -- he's conjuring the X Y and Z that make Zarathustra Zarathustra to him, I understand that's the personal identity you're talking about -- the Actual Zarathustra from thousands of years ago, to what Nietzsche identifies within himself as "Zarathustra." That unchanging "I am this," ...

In each cardinal problem there speaks an unchangeable "I am this"; a thinker cannot learn anew about man and woman, for instance, but can only learn fully—he can only follow to the end what is "fixed" about them in himself. — Vaskane

Have you read Douglas Hofstadter's books?

I'm A Strange Loop could help you understand more of where I'm coming from.

There is only one solution: the acknowledgement that personal Identity is a concept, a heuristic, not an objective feature of reality.

There is only one solution: the acknowledgement that personal Identity is a concept, a heuristic, not an objective feature of reality. — hypericin

Glad to see you posting again on the forum, mate. What you posted is interesting. I searched for what heuristic means, and the dictionary says: a method of learning or solving problems that allows people to discover things themselves and learn from their own experiences

Thank you so much for quoting this concept because I wasn't aware of its existence until this morning. There is a big debate about the legislation in my country about transgender people. They now have the right to switch their gender and name more freely. Ignoring all the arguments which are against them because of conservative ideologies, I want to highlight the heuristic argument.

Frankly, they say they feel like a 'woman' or a 'man' because this is what they feel. But how can this happen at all? According to heuristics, I learn by experience. So, how can I experience being a woman? Only if the transaction of souls exists. Another point that shows that transgender is a political debate and not a philosophical one.

Hey Javi!

Thanks for pointing out the definition, actually. I'm a computer guy, and I've always presumed the computing definition was the predominant one:

proceeding to a solution by trial and error or by rules that are only loosely defined.

Which captures what I was trying to say. Communication is hard!

According to heuristics, I learn by experience. — javi2541997

Don't take it too seriously. Of course we learn by experience, but "heurisitics" is not some sweeping philosophical claim that everything can only be known by experience. We have innate capabilities, feelings, and perhaps identifications as well.


BTW, the next writing contest is opening up soon, keep an eye out! Hope to see you there.

that is not what I think it have said.

where I live this is true but of “sex”. It’s a bizarre thing to do if you’re dealing with a different issue (gender).

I don’t think identifying as a man or a woman means much of anything. I’d say i agree with your general point

Well, you could consider phenomenological personalism, in which "persons" and thus "personal identity," are ontologically basic.

Of course, you could consider that this is just a cheap move. Making something a "brute fact," doesn't exactly explain it. However, I think there is something to the idea that "we are all persons," and that we only experience things "as persons," which does seem to leave some grounds for claiming that personhood is at least phenomenologically basic. But there does also seem to be grounds for dismissing this as mere illusion.

TBH, I've only dabbled in this set of ideas so I probably couldn't make a very good case for it. I find it interesting though.

But there does also seem to be grounds for dismissing this as mere illusion. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Especially since it is explicable why such an illusion might arise and persist.

Personhood is embedded in language, with such words as "I", "you", "person", "self", and special words which single each of us out individually. Since we largely think in language, personhood is imbued in our thinking.

We are discrete physical bodies in the world, with narrative histories built upon memories.

Sensory data is translated (somehow) to the phenomenal arena of perceptions, where a central brain area operates processes in those terms. Moreover, the phenomenological reality of this central brain area is divided into external and internal realms, the latter consisting of feelings, bodily sensations, and thoughts (typically expressed as internal sounds and images). This schism between inside and outside sensations is the division between self and world.

All this powerfully contributes to the notion that the self is somehow ontologically fundamental. Yet, experience brain injury or indulge in various intoxicants and you will see first hand how fragile this sense of self really is.

Personhood is embedded in language, with such words as "I", "you", "person", "self", and special words which single each of us out individually. Since we largely think in language, personhood is imbued in our thinking.

True, although this seems like a partial explanation at best. We'd then need to explain "why" human language is like this. The advocate of personalism has a ready made answer — because language is developed and used by persons. Why else should diverse codes for storing and transmitting information all center around an "I" and "we."

Likewise, drugs sort of provide support in both directions. On the one hand, persons seem less than basic if they can be disrupted. On the other, you have the fact that persons seem to reconstitute themselves despite disruptions, so they aren't easily dispelled like many illusions, but remarkably robust. Plus, people with NDEs and drug experiences of "ego death" still tend to describe these experiences as "theirs," which gets back to language.

Personalism seems to work pretty well with modern epistemology (unlike metaphysics). When it comes to discussions of what is known, instead of what "is," it seems like persons tend to be accepted as the fundemental "knowers." We don't talk of words "knowing" their meanings or books knowing their contents. "Knowing" then seems to presuppose a sort of personage, as opposed to the mere encoding of information.

This is something i've been stuck on thinking about identity. I start with that there is no personal identity - Occaming everything away... but in moving forward to explain aspects of experience - it falls entirely flat where we can discern between 'persons'.

And your example is perfect - a word doesn't 'know' its meaning, or even 'misunderstan' it's meaning - a person does (or some lower form of consciousness such as Elephants or Dogs). We can even posit that 'more than one person' knows a particular thing, and it is, short of speculation about honesty or really strong pan-psychism, not easy (or possible?) to defeat the idea that a piece of information can be known within 'more than one person'. The fact of interpersonal misinterpretation might bolster that. This could boil down to 'mind' rather than person - and there we're at a loss again since mind is so ill-defined.

This is only one avenue i sometimes venture down from that starting gating...

Have you any/many thoughts around that?

Likewise, drugs sort of provide support in both directions. On the one hand, persons seem less than basic if they can be disrupted. On the other, you have the fact that persons seem to reconstitute themselves despite disruptions, so they aren't easily dispelled like many illusions, but remarkably robust. Plus, people with NDEs and drug experiences of "ego death" still tend to describe these experiences as "theirs," which gets back to language.

I've been interested in how people find drugs affect personhood ever since finding out some people truly believe a loss of consciousness constitutes death.

Is that reconstitution a rebirth? Or is that a new person, marginally different, from the one who existed before the break in consciousness (or even just conscious state)?

Jason Werberloff doesn't drink because he believes he would die through the process of becoming drunk, and a new person born, through the process of becoming sober. I don't take that line, but i find it very interesting.