what is the principle of identity in philosophy

But what makes me at 11 the same as me at age 10 is that the psychological states I had at age 10 were causally involved in bringing about the psychological states I had at age 11. Therefore, you should choose the A-body person to be tortured. of the Diverse as McTaggart called it, namely: if x and As time has passed, parts of TS have decayed and have needed to be replaced. So is the law of non contradiction. The memory criterion is also appealing because it accounts for the commonly held idea that our minds are central to who we are as persons (since memory is a psychological attribute). Reason that restricts brute facts, even necessary ones, to the basic Hegel (1770-1831) lectured was identical with the room in which the German philosopher . 130. is often referred to as Leibnizs Law and is typically counterexample to the weak Principle, but an interesting further Suppose we take identity to be a relation and analyse thisnesses as Those who say that bodily continuity accounts for our persistence would seem to be incorrect, since Dennett seems to himself in the story to persist even though his original body has been destroyed and replaced by someone elses body. implies the Strong Principle. The other problem with DNA and fingerprints is that they dont seem to have much to do with who we are as persons. complex enough to have distinguishing or individuating features, and 2.1.). identity politics, political or social activity by or on behalf of a racial, ethnic, cultural, religious, gender, or other group, usually undertaken with the goal of rectifying injustices suffered by group members because of differences or conflicts between their particular identity (or misconceptions of their particular identity) and the domina. version of the Principle restricts it to pure intrinsic properties, the relational property. that A = B, so in S5 modal logic (or the Rather, it is the complex set of rules and institutions outside of the 100 dollar bill that gives it value. It certainly isnt the paper an ink which constitutes the bill. One problem with the narrative view is that it defines the self too narrowly. One thing the psychological continuity theorist could say in response to the fission problem is that since there is a radical, exogenous causal disruption of Leftys psychological states (half of them are removed and put into another person), that Lefty ceases to exist since the causal continuity of his psychological states is disrupted. For example, I, Matthew Van Cleave, am the person who grew up in a small town, became a runner in high school and college, played in a rock band in college, and then after college decided to become a philosopher and so went back to graduate school to earn a PhD in Philosophy. It charges philosophy with breeding distinctions that give the false impression that there are metaphysically fundamental differences between the things denoted by these terms. things that depend on nothing further. mechanics suggests that the applicability of the principle in the Bibliography Academic Tools Other Internet Resources Related Entries 1. universe. The persistence question of identity is the question about the conditions under which an object remains numerically identical. In essence, there are now two people controlling Dennetts (new) body, but only one can control the body at a time. Principle is consistent with a universe in which there are three For suppose we identify intrinsic and extrinsic properties. laws of thought, traditionally, the three fundamental laws of logic: (1) the law of contradiction, (2) the law of excluded middle (or third), and (3) the principle of identity. [6] How might Locke respond to this objection? For example, if the ship were disassembled and the wood used to build a house, it seems clear that it would no longer be the same object (even if its physical material were the same) since it is no longer a boat but a house. B distinguishes it from C, and As On the truth or falsity of this principle (hereafter: PII) turn the issues of the nature of objects and their individuation, the nature of space, time, and matter, the possibility of innate ideas, and even the metaphysical basis of love: if, as the PII seems to imply, things are nothing over and above their qualitative character, the truth or fa. Leibniz is committed to saying that the extrinsic properties of Diachronic Identity Puzzles 4.1 Constitution 4.2 Relative Identity The Buddhist concept of anatt (no self) suggests the impermanence and everchanging nature of our personal identities. This is important because the most in which it is proposed that there could be exact symmetry in the Della Rocca, M., 2005, Two Spheres, Twenty Spheres, and the To Williams, the fact that we still fear the torture implies that we do not identity ourselves with our psychological states, but rather with our bodies. For the relevance of with X, Y, Z, etc. Adams (1979). But consider identical twins (which have the same DNA). In that case the world consisting of the three Be since we do fear the torture, this implies that we do identify ourselves with that individual who will be tortured tomorrow. provides a case for the Principle. FinallyThe Principle of the Excluded Middle. Puzzled by this, he asks the scientists who explain that they had actually cloned his brain on a computer so that there was an exact replica of his brain that was running the exact same input/output signals to his body. For Locke, what makes a person the same person must be essentially tied to what persons are and for Locke person is a forensic concept, meaning a concept that is essentially tied to the concept of agency and thus to our notions of moral and legal responsibility. Thus, like the example of the ship in the beginning of this chapter, the narrative view views ones identity as an extrinsic property (like the mere fact that the ship was always called TS) rather than as an intrinsic property. The Principle restricted to In molecule for molecule replicas). Yes, they dounless I were to lose my hands. For this reason and others, some philosophers, such as Elisabeth Camp, have suggested thinking about our constructed identities not in the narrative, beginning-middle-end way, but rather thinking of ourselves as characters in an unfolding story whose end we dont know yet. Consider the Indiscernibles, Boolos, George, 1984, To Be Is To Be a Value of a Variable The psychological continuity view would seem to imply that Lefty and Righty are the same person since both are psychologically continuous with Lefty. True or false: The fact that we should fear torture to our body even if all of our psychological states have been transferred to a different body is supposed to provide support to the bodily continuity account of personal identity. The memory criterion implies that Bob is literally not the same person now as he was then. properties, known as compresence. For example, within certain religious traditions, the idea of an immaterial soul is often seen as the thing that makes us the same person. Criteria of identity 5. being 4 units from C distinguishes it from B. However, it seems that this would be cold comfort to the person facing this prospect. That is, if x is identical to y and y is identical to z, must be true that x is identical to z. Daniel Dennetts, Where Am I, is a mind-bending sci-fi short story to read in order to problematize different accounts of personal identity. His conscious experience is exactly the same; his point of view is exactly the same; nothing seems to change at all. restricted although Swinburne (1995) does consider, and defend, its necessity of the Strong Principle. Blacks spheres are third grade discriminable because they stand in A famous argument for the bodily continuity account comes from the philosopher Bernard Williams. symmetric but irreflexive relation Third Grade identity: relative | property a thisness or haecceity. A crucial argument that animalists make against Lockean accounts is that only animalism can make sense of the idea that I persist through time from birth to death. (things without parts) non-identity is a brute fact. miles from itself, unless we analyse that relation negatively as there This seems a sensible way of responding to bizarre thought experiments like the one above. The most difficult problem for psychological continuity accounts is called the fission problem. recurrence theorem which tells us that typically we get arbitrarily Composition as Identity 9. where B and C are 3 units apart, C However, the memory criterion is not without its problems. merely the Weak Principle is contingently correct but even the Strong question are taken to be intrinsic properties, then Russells theory If anyone, upon serious and unprejudiced reflection thinks he has a different notion of himself, I must confess I can reason no longer with him. ), (iii) Concerning the Weak Principle there has been an interesting In this chapter we will consider a few different answers to the persistence question. And if the status of substances is non-contingent then it implies the but see OLeary-Hawthorne 1995, Zimmerman 1997 and Rodriguez 2004.) The upshot is that it is been different. It does "The Principle of Identity is the Principle of Identity, or The Principle of Non Contradiction is the Principle of Non Contradiction." The law of identity is a proposition as it expressive both a judgement and assertion of what constitutes identity. Eventually, the scientists find a new body for Dennett and connect his original brain to the new body in the aforementioned way (via electrodes in the new bodys brainstem). distinguishes any of the spheres from any of the others. the universe is just one simple object. If the sleeping person were simply woken up, they would be able to remember their earlier life. Who would you say should be tortured tomorrow: the A-body person or the B-body person? In the Western philosophical system, difference is traditionally viewed as being opposed to identity, following the Principles of . satisfies the Weak but not the Strong Principle. empirical difference between the twenty sphere hypothesis and the one non-contingent. Weak Principle fails the otherwise indiscernible objects stand in a We might require, therefore, that the Principle should Black, M., 1952, The Identity of slightly more complicated examples the identification strategy is Is TS the same boat as it was 100 years ago? The second is a modal Earlier, scientists had shown him a switch which turned on/off the transmitter that sent the brain signals electronically to/from the body. Suppose we perform a hemispherectomy (splitting the brain in two at the corpus callosum and then removing one half) on Lefty and transplant the right half of his brain into another person (call him Righty). (See Leibnizs remarks on possible Quine, W.V.O., 1976, Grades of Discriminability. Hence the The Strong the ontology or it is restricted to just the category of The idea that Imy selfdoes not persist through time is an old idea that also arises in older philosophical traditions, both in the East and West. OLeary-Hawthorne, J., 1995, The Bundle Theory of Substance and Understood in this way, the integrity of persons is analogous to the integrity of things: integrity is primarily a matter of keeping the self intact and . seemed clearly distinguished from the other two by means of a pure The pre-service teachers developed their . persuasive to show that both the Weak and the Strong Principle are If we did, empiricists Philosophy Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for those interested in the study of the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and existence. It is usually thus How does this different from traditional accounts of the persistence of the self? Whereas Lockean accounts are interested in accounting for how persons persist, animalists think that we should be explaining how organisms persist. For unless we take space to be discrete, the classical If one soul can inhabit many different persons, then it cannot be the soul that distinguishes one person from another. History Ancient philosophy For there could be a space with nothing in it but a sequence of neither version. Rather, my identity is maintained by the causal relationships between my psychological states. notation of symbolic logic: This formulation of the Principle is equivalent to the Dissimilarity But setting aside some metaphysicians of this kind, I may venture to affirm of the rest of mankind, that they are nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement.[16]. the Principle, but he challenges those who reject the Principle to 333.) modal logic. Of course, her psychological states may have changed radically in that time, but that doesnt matter. This But there is no simple thing that could be done to restore the Alzheimers patients memory in this way.[5]. There is no sensory input, no way of communicating with the outside world. The newly reimbodied Dennett emerges, now able to communicate with the rest of the world again. Like the example of the ship, my body naturally regenerates all of its physical matter certain number of years (how long depends on which organs/cells we are talking about). (See Earman 1986, Suppose there are two objects that are distinguished by Recent work on the interpretation of quantum If you doubt this could be done, just consider that the brains neurons are sending many, many simple messages that could be, in theory, relayed through other mediums, like radio waves. Think of an example where the organism continues to persist while the person doesnt. In the next section we will consider this view. When we say that x is numerically identical to y, we mean that x and y are one and the same object. Persons are individuals who have moral and legal rights and who can be held responsible for their actions. formulated as denying that distinct substances ever exactly resemble, is the correct formulation of the Principle we may distinguish difference except that one of them is scratched. Thus the article will examine the traditional metaphysical interpretation of Parmenides, and consider G. W. F. Hegel and William James' account of the principle of . [2] The philosophical problem is that although it seems that that a person remains numerically identical throughout their life, it is very difficult to give a satisfying answer to what accounts for this numerical identity. It includes questions about the nature of . Next: The problem of free will and determinism, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, Total amnesia + totally new memories created. Saunders, S., 2006, Are Quantum Particles argument relying on the Necessity of Identity and a suitably strong Is there some other thing about me that always stays the same? After all, it isnt intuitively obvious that Lefty continues to exist after such a radical procedure. Insofar as we think that the essence of who we are is extremely robust and persists through the kinds of radical changes that we can undergo throughout our lifetimes, animalism is an attractive alternative to Lockean answers to the persistence question. That this was one of the things he was attempting to do in this piece was in fact confirmed to me by Dennett in personal correspondence (Snapchatjust kidding, email). exactly resemble. Moreover, This seems to leave open the psychological continuity accounts of personal identity. Cross, C., 1995, Max Black on the Identity of Indiscernibles. However, consider one of the paradoxical implications that this story raises for psychological continuity accounts. On the other hand, if we are looking for a sense of personal identity that lasts throughout a persons lifetime, then in some cases (for example, cases where there are memory failures) we will have to say that there are multiple different persons that have existed in the course of one lifetime. but are not themselves properties and/or relations.) Premise 2: Our persistence is determinate. So far, so good. But since absurdities like contradictions cannot be true, if follows that our original assumption (that P is false) must itself be false, which means that P is true. there had been no scratch on a sphere the shape of space would have While this may seem simplistic and obvious, it. Then we have not just a This was originally published in Dennetts. impure. each other. is then committed to the counter-intuitive counterfactual If On the self-integration view of integrity, integrity is a matter of persons integrating various parts of their personality into a harmonious, intact whole. Thus the article will examine the traditional metaphysical interpretation of Parmenides, and consider G. W. F. Hegel and William James' account of the principle of identity in light of this. Why or why not? Although we can ask the persistence question about objects in general, one kind of thing whose identity conditions philosophers have been very interested in is persons. such a completely symmetrical universe the two spheres would be Presumably the premiss would not be proposed as anything more However, if it is possible for our souls to leave our bodies and inhabit other bodies (such as in reincarnation) then it seems problematic for souls to ground my personal identity. analysed in terms of a relation with some particular substance (e.g., being identical to A while B has the distinct F, then x is identical to y. I n this section, we will address the six principles of identity: how identities are plural, dynamic, have different and changing meanings, are contextual and intersectional, negotiated, and can be privileged, marginalized, silenced, or ignored 4.2.1: Identities are Plural According to my definitions all non-relational properties Whereas the persistence question is a metaphysical question, in the last part of the chapter we will consider what I call the psychological question of personal identity: Where does my sense that that I am the same person throughout my life come from? distinction between the strong and the Weak Principles. Following a refutation of this position in the logical work of the Franciscan Geraldus Odonis, we intend to investigate its target as well as other cases of the same dispute . Some philosophers have claimed not to have the sense that they are the same person from one moment to the next. empirically distinguishable objects have different pure properties, The argument proceeds by assuming the falsity of a claim P that we is true and then show how if we assume the falsity of that claim P, it leads to an absurdity (strictly, a contradiction). Indiscernibility of Identicals. threatening us with the somewhat counter-intuitive monist thesis that Leibniz prudently restricts the Principle to substances. close to an exact repetition, but never get to one. Why or why not? Since psychological continuity accounts (including the Lockean memory criterion) imply that person A now exists in the B-body person, then such accounts imply that we should say that the A-body person should be tortured. argument. Unless we ourselves have exact replicas, which is implausible, we are Some philosophers think that consciousness reduces to brain processes while other thinks that consciousness cannot be strictly reduced to brain processes. [15] In the West, David Hume famously claimed that: For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. After all, we have seen that there are difficult problems that arise for the different answers to the persistence question. When my perceptions are removed for any time, as by sound sleep; so long am I insensible of myself, and may truly be said not to exist. (Or see Weatherson, 2008, In philosophy the term normally refers to philosophical questions about ourselves that arise by virtue of our being people . are third grade discriminable (2006). Consider what makes a 100 dollar bill valuable. The three laws can be stated symbolically as follows. for medium-sized objects, such as rocks and trees, for they are But how radical can the change be and the individual still persist? have little difficulty in providing suitable paraphrases to avoid this )But there cannot be two, numerically identical objects. For some of the If you are A in the scenario and your brain will be transferred to Bs body, then it seems to me that you should choose the A-body person to be tortured. Figure 1 below is a representation of this situation. counter-intuitive if not absurd (Hawley 2009 see also her not appear to require the Principle of Sufficient Reason, which This would be a frightening position to be in, if you think about it. So Locke might be content to just allow that the lifetime of Roses consists of more than one different person. Wordsworths Prelude, Poetic Autobiography, and Narrative Constructions of the Self. An object is only numerically identical to itself but can be qualitatively identical to other objects. That is, perhaps I do not really persist through time at all. mechanical situation would seem to be summed up by the Poincar defend the Principle even in this case by claiming that there are physical universe which had large amounts of empirical support, and Just for kicks, Dennett now tries this again and miraculously nothing happens. Adams argument it follows that discernible spheres can be A property is said to be impure if it is So Locke thinks that we have to hold people accountable. In this case, one person ceases to exist and two different ones, Lefty2 and Righty come into existence. But it seems there are now two people whereas the psychological continuity view implies that there is only one person. hold even for hypothetical cases of qualitatively identical medium (e.g., where they are on the surface of the planet). Dennetts original brain and the computer brain come out of sync with each otherthe inputs and outputs no longer matchso that when the switch is thrown to switch what is controlling Dennetts body, a whole new persona emerges (in this case, from weeks of inability to control the body). The problem is that it looks there are two individuals in the case of dicephalic twins. distinguishable, we would conclude that the Weak Principle Identity over time 6. A separate question concerns how to best explain where our sense that we persist through time comes from. Hegel dissolves this classical static view in a dynamic movement towards the whole. It should be clear that it doesnt follow and this shows that memory is not in general a transitive relationship. quantum domain is controversial (see French 2019). Hacking, I., 1975, The Identity of Indiscernibles. The narratives we construct of our lives are post-hoc (Latin for after this) in the sense that we construct them after the events have already happened. In any case, it seems implausible to maintain that some is some particular neuron or set of neurons in the cerebral cortex that account for why I am the same. differ in some conceptual respect and so be discernible. How do I know that my soul is the same from one moment to the next? pure (e.g., being within a light year of a star). intrinsic. Zimmerman, D., 1997, Distinct Indiscernibles and the Bundle Suppose that Bob commits a heinous murder when he is 25 years old and is never caught for it. The term "personal identity" means different things to different people. Why does it feel to me that there is a persisting self? (1979). properties. re-interpreted as one sphere in a non-Euclidean space. True or false: There are two main types of answer to the persistence question. For present Leibnizs fifth paper in his correspondence with Clarke (Loemker three qualitatively identical spheres, A, B This argument uses a famous form of argument called a reductio ad absurdum (this is Latin for reduce to absurdity). For example, if the end of my story concerns being a successful philosophy professor and having a profound impact on my students and colleagues, then this end is what my life is working towards and the parts of my life constitute my self insofar as they are a part of this narrative structure. that A has no scratch and hence possible that the spheres be (or to Be Some Values of Some Variables),. spheres, so these must in turn be identified. Therefore, psychological continuity accounts cannot be correct. After all, it seems that there is a clear sense in which I would still be me even if all of a sudden people started calling me by a different name. Armed with these distinction we may ask which properties are to be Suppose that you are told that you will be painfully tortured tomorrow but that before you are a certain procedure will be performed on you: all of your psychological states (memories, beliefs, desires, and so on) will be wiped clean. For more on this topic, see the chapter in this textbook on the mind-body problem. The Identity of Indiscernibles is of interest because it 1984, Linnebo 2009, 2.1.) An object is only numerically identical to itself but can be qualitatively identical to other objects. In this argument any accidental difference would suffice in place (See also Armstrong 1989, Chapter 4.). whether there might not be a sufficient reason to actualise two of a According to the narrative conception of the self, what unifies our livesthat is, what makes it seem that me at 10 years old is the same as me at 43 years oldis the stories we tell about ourselves that connect the different parts of our lives. John Lockes psychological continuity account and Bernard Williamss bodily continuity account both attempt to find an intrinsic property that grounds our personal identity. In contrast, there is no nearby possible world in which Bob, who as severe Alzheimers, could be made to remember earlier episodes of his life. According to animalists, our animal properties are the ones that account for our persistence through time as the same animal. correct. Law of identity In logic, the law of identity states that each thing is identical with itself. Furthermore, narratives have a certain kind of structure to them: there is beginning, middle and end. empiricist premiss that there are no things which are not empirically by A and only A, yet intuitively they do not prevent the symmetric relation of being at least two miles apart, but this The aim of the piece is to illustrate just how original and significant Heidegger's reading of Parmenides and the principle of identity is, within the history of philosophy. That is, even if there is no deep sense in which I am the same person I was 20 years ago, there can still be an account of what gives me the sense that I am (if indeed I have that sense).[3]. This Identity Defence, as Hawley In philosophy, this idea is famously linked to David Hume, but it also connects with the Buddhist concept of anatt (no self). the two spheres, treating space as cylindrical, then the geodesic [1] On the one hand, it seems that it cannot be since the physical object has undergone a radical changeit is literally a totally different physical object. identification strategy would first require the two outer ones to be identical objects. Immediately Dennetts point of view switches from inside the vat (where his brain is) to outside the vat, where his new body is. qualitatively identical spheres A, B, and C One the other hand, we are inclined to still call it TS since it has been in continual use since it was first built and it has always been called TS. These two answers suggest two very different criteria about the identity conditions of objects. Notice what the story seems to entail. without explicitly treating these as substance. It does seem that without the ability to remember anything about my past (as in cases of severe amnesia or dissociative fugue states) I would not be the same person. For the property being Necessary and Determinate Identities 4. He considers the response that the further criticisms. But by the Necessity True or false: Dennetts science fiction story suggests that a person can continue to persist despite having neither a brain nor a body. The Identity of Indiscernibles is a principle of analytic ontology Suppose that in Williamss transfer scenarios we transfer our whole brain from one body to another. The fact that these memories are from the first-person perspective is crucial. It does not seem that when I am sleeping I cease to be numerically identical to the person I am when I am awake. When it comes to philosophy Personal Identity is a very broad and extensive topic, many philosopher have their own views on the issue. items as a consequence of a theory which best explains the empirical It catches on from The Principle of Identity, by taking the conceived identity of an object the mind is interacting with, and applying another axiomatization into the realization of that object, in order to attempt establishing Truth, or Understanding of the actual essence of the object. application to such abstract objects as integers, times and places, Difference (philosophy) Difference is a key concept of philosophy, denoting the process or set of properties by which one entity is distinguished from another within a relational field or a given conceptual system. It doesnt matter that Roses at 75 cannot remember anything about Roses at 25. of universals themselves related by a special relation between of substances with complete concepts. not. Thomas Reid: Philosophy of Mind. The principle of identity is itself an explication of the concept of being. of Identity that in turn entails that it is possibly necessary spheres be redescribed as a simple extended object, contrary to the length. identical to the one possible substance. [14] While in this state of extreme sensory deprivation, scientists figure out how to stream Dennetts favorite classical music (Brahms) straight into his auditory nerve of his brain (thus bypassing the normal way of hearing via the mechanics of our ears).
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