Am I A Bare Locus?

In considering the development of theories of personal identities various different approaches have been taken. One of the common starting points for this study has been the exploration of particular case-studies or thought experiments to attempt to refine the concepts through intuition. This has involved the development of alternative descri ptions of the necessary and sufficient conditions for personal identity, which are then tested by increasingly theoretical conceptual models. I will show that the thought- concept model of exploration can lead to evidence that personal identity might not rely on psychological or bodily continuity but on a locus of mental life that does survive regardless of bodily or mental continuity. I will then explain some arguments that challenge this evidence and suggest that these results might show false or biased results due to various factors including an inherent or learnt subjectivity influencing those intuitions. These arguments will be discussed and I wish to show that whilst I may be a locus of mental life it is not necessarily a bare locus existence. I will use the experiments described in the works mentioned in my bibliography, but for reasons of space I will not actually describe the experiments in detail within the body of my essay.

The phrase 'bare locus' refers to the idea that a person does not have to be connected to either a set of psychological states or to be a body. Swinburne builds a theory of personal identity leading to the idea of a bare locus from the rejection of the theories of identity based on empiricism. He believes that these theories fail due to not meeting the determinacy requirement. Parfit uses the matter of degree in relation to personal identity, saying that sometimes there are no clear affirmative or negative responses to particular case studies determining whether an individual person survives. Parfit's 'fusion' example or the 'spectrum' example highlights cases where there is a degree of continuity, rather than complete or 100% continuity. Swinburne suggests that this lack of determinacy arises from the case-study methodology confusing empirical evidence for personal identity with evidence of personal identity. He suggests theories that allow for duplication fail because they violate the transivity of identity. Furthermore, theories that allow for the survival or non-survival of a third person as a determinacy factor in whether the personal identity is continuous fail as this violates the intrinsicness principle.

Theories that have arbitrary conditions or allow for borderline controversies fail due to lack of conviction. He then states that if identity is not just showing the continuity of observable characteristics, even if usually this evidence is overwhelming but something more, then it cannot be defined solely by bodily or mental continuity.

Swinburne suggests that because there is a widespread belief in life after death, or in reincarnation, and because he believes it is logically possible, it is coherent, though unanalysable, for me to hope that resurrection is a fact and that I can therefore be resurrected after death. He further suggests that this resurrected identity cannot be bodily continuous with me, as it may have no body at all. This identity will be me, not just psychologically like me, and this situation requires more than just psychological continuity.

These views lead Swinburne to conclude that bodily continuity, similarity of personality, memory, and character traits are all evidence of personal identity, but are not personal identity itself. If personal identity is separate than this is similar to Parfit's descri ption of a Simple View that personal identity s a single indivisible thing like a Cartesian Soul.

The thought experiments by Williams and the variants and developments discussed by Parfit, Swinburne and Johnston amongst others show that despite the usual view that personal identity is reliant on the continuity of psychological states or mental connectedness alone, even if the brain and body are not continuously in existence, this view is based on intuitions and experiments that can throw up unpredictable results. Therefore this view, sometimes called wide psychological reductionism, is unreliable. These statements can lead to the conclusion that personal identity, not needing bodily or psychological continuity, consists of a bare locus. Parfit rejects this view of a bare locus, or Cartesian Ego, basing his views on those of Locke and Kant, which suggest there is no observable evidence for them. If there are no features to the Ego, then if it were suddenly to cease to exist and be replaced with another, nobody would notice any difference, provided all the psychological characteristics were inherited by the new Ego. This replacement could happen many times, and perhaps becomes less plausible as a belief. (Parfit 1984:p228) Further to this Parfit (p275) says that as both physical and psychological continuity can be described in an impersonal way enabling a descri ption that allows experiences to occur but not necessarily to be had by a person, therefore personal identity does not just involve these continuations but also a separate further fact.

Johnston describes the method of developing theories by intuitive reaction to thought case-studies as 'justified if two requirements were satisfied' (Johnston.1987) He takes the first requirement as the reductionist requirement, that what makes person A the same as person B is not some simple irreducible thing, but is something else about them. For Parfitt (1984) this extra fact might be 'the fact of psychological continuity' and for Williams (1973) it might be in the continuity of the brain in his first presentation in 'Problems of the Self'. Indeed someone who believes in the continuity of all or part of the body or brain is necessary for the concept of personal identity will be reductionist in approach.

Johnston takes the second requirement as the need to take intuitive responses to thought experiments as providing both 'necessary and sufficient conditions, and not overgeneralisations'. He points out that there are so many different conceptions of people that have been proposed, including religious and science-fiction type (Dr.Spock) suggestions that it becomes very difficult, if not impossible to use these to determine a rigorous concept of personal identity. There arises the problem if concepts become undecidable. Williams used the idea of contrasting two different presentations of the same situation as an example of how intuitions could be led astray or provide conflicting results.

Johnston further suggests that an intuitive response to a thought problem may be influenced by unchallenged preconceptions arising from the philosopher's cultural, physical or intellectual background. Even the use of language norms may unconsciously influence the 'feeling' of intuitional truth. This may have in some part encouraged the domination of intuitions supposing that psychological continuity, or mental connectedness, or the persistence of the mind, as a factor in the definitions of personal identity.

Johnston himself uses a thought experiment suggested by Nozick's closest-continuer schema whereby if there are alternative possible inheritors of an initial personal identity following an experiment, it is the individual closest to the original subject who becomes the 'owner' of the personal identity. Johnston strongly suggests that because even minor changes to small details or viewpoints within a thought experiment can change the intuited conclusions, these thought experiments should not be trusted. The described conclusions to his examples lead him to propose that the bodily continuation or survival of an individual is not necessary or sufficient conditions for survival of a person. He uses the results of this experiment to propose that the observer's intuitive opinion as to the continuation of personality A in any given experiment indicates that there is a 'locus of mental life' (Johnston 1987) that can be traced in the experiments. This locus may, but not necessarily, undergo psychological continuity.

Johnston objects to the bare locus idea as implausible and uses the idea of imagining surviving my body turning to stone. In this scenario the survival is due to being a bare locus that can survive any type of physical or mental change. He surmises that if the stone idea is acceptable, then so would coma, or unconsciousness. If the petrification occurred during unconsciousness then the ability of the connections between bodily states and the essence of identity would not hold. Johnston claims that this rules out the bare locus idea.

Johnston instead develops the idea that rather than a bare locus, a person is a locus of mental life. He suggests that a person comprises of a human organism with a psychological life. The person needs both parts to exist. By using the petrification example and the deep sleep example experiments he deduces that there is a possibility of bare loci changing, swapping and otherwise reconnecting with human organisms without the observer being any the wiser. Although unlikely, there is no evidence to suggest that this does not happen, even though this goes contrary to our natural view. Johnston says,

"On any such view similar problems will arise... We do not trace the locus of mental life with a purely mental nature or essence when we trace people through such states."

He rather thinks of a mind as being separate from the person. Rather than a bare locus, or Cartesian Ego, he views it as mental functioning. Johnston suggests that rather than talking of a person's mind we should be talking about a person's mental functioning, and that, unlike a bare locus, would be unable to occur without an organism in which to function.

The thought experiments outlined by Williams, Swinburne, Parfit and Johnston have drawn out commonly held beliefs, and then challenged them by looking at the same experiments from different points of view. They have tested the view that bodily continuity is necessary, and then tested the view that mental states need to be continuous. Swinburne attempted to treat metaphysical and epistemology separately, while Johnston suggests that this cannot be the full answer as it goes against our experience of dealing with these issues in normal life. I am not persuaded that we are bare loci, but I am inclined to the view that we are loci of mental life. I agree with Johnston that we are human beings and that, whilst the biological entity that is my shell, is born, lives, and dies, there is a psychological aspect to me that develops during my biological life, and relies on the biological shell to support the mental life, the succession of developing mental states that comprises my psychological profile, character and personality. When the organism that supports this mental life dies, I believe that the mental life dies as well, although I do agree that there might be an exception if the brain survives with the memories of previous psychological states.

Bibliography.

Johnston. M., 1987. 'Human Beings' The Journal of Philosophy, LXXXIV,2, 59-83

Parfit, D., 1971. 'Personal Identity'. The Philosophical Review, LXXX, 3-27

Parfit, D. 1984 Reasons and Persons. Oxford. Oxford University Press

Swinburne, R.G.,1973. 'Personal Identity'. The Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, LXXIV, 231-47

Wiggins, D. 1991 'The Concern to Survive'. Needs, values, Truth, 2nd edn, Oxford: Balckwell, pp305-11.

Williams, B. 1973. 'The Self and the Future'. The Problems of the Self:Philosophical Papers 1956-1972, Cambridge:Cambridge University Press pp.46-63