Topics Identity

Question Hello, I have reached a conclusion that is quite dangerous to my health and could lead to a lot of trouble. I need to ask someone and see if they come to the same conclusion. My question is: are you the same person you were 1 year ago or even 5 minutes ago? I figured that the self changes over time, regarding both personality and physical appearance. As you gain knowledge and change your opinion, your personality changes and you seem to be totally different then you were before. your physical appearance also changes over time, the cells in your body completely replace themselves in about 7 years (I think). Although your memory really doesnt change over time, only how you perceive this memory does, and how you perceive the world around you. To further define my question: because we are constantly changing and are becoming a new person (except for our memory which ties our life together and gives us the illusion that we are the same person) should I be living completely in the present and totally disregarding the past and future? You can see what problems this creates. Thanks you.

Accepted:
December 4, 2007

Comments

Pinning down precisely wherein personal identity consists is certainly a thorny problem in philosophy, which has been debated for centuries and still seems quite far from a definitive solution. I can't promise to solve it for you, but here are a few considerations that you might find it interesting to ponder:

1. Let's look at the way you set up your question: "As you gain knowledge and change your opinion, your personality changes and you seem to be totally different then you were before." You're using the same pronoun throughout, which is already enough to imply that there is just one enduring thing here to which this pronoun continues to refer. If you really believed that the things which existed in these different times really were distinct, wouldn't you refer to them in different ways? Moreover, you're attributing to change to something, but that too seems to imply an enduring identity. The very notion of change, the notion that a thing is now different from how it used to be, suggests that the same thing existed then as exists now, but merely happens to have different properties in these two different times. This, in turn, implies that the 'self' cannot simply be equated with the bundle of properties that it possesses at any given moment, and that these can come and go without any change in the identity of the self. But perhaps you might feel that it's a mistake to put too much weight on the accidents and imperfections of language, and don't feel that we can draw any valid metaphysical conclusions from the way we happen to use pronouns and so forth. In which case, then consider this:

2. How do you propose to 'live completely in the present'? It's easy enough (though imprudent) to disregard the long-term consequences of one's behaviour: but, no matter how self-indulgent and dissolute one's behaviour might be, one does still have to wait some time to reap the benefits. I'm glad that you added "... or even 5 minutes ago" to the way you set up the question, because this is a very important point. If we push your argument to its logical conclusion, you won't have any reason to care about what experiences 'you' (or, to avoid begging the question, someone very much like you) are going to have in five minutes from now, or even in just a few seconds. Suppose you were to decide: "I don't care about the future; I don't care whether I'm going to be living on the streets in a year's time, or hungover tomorrow; I'm just going to get blind drunk tonight, because tonight is all I care about." But your argument would suggest that the person (or people) who exists through the remainder of this evening is not the same person as you: so why would you care about the pleasures they are going to have in the near future, any more than you care about the pains they're going to incur in the further future? All that you can do right now is lift the glass to your lips. It takes time for the alcohol to get into your stomach, and then into your bloodstream, and finally into your brain: but, by then, and by your logic, it will no longer be your brain. So the argument in favour of disregarding negative consequences to yourself seems to speak equally against seeking positive benefits for yourself.

3. But let's suppose that the person who exists in a year, or in five minutes from now, really is a different person from you, as different from you as the person you see on the other side of the room right now. Don't we still have responsibilities towards other people? If you were to do something purely self-serving, without giving any regard to the negative impact that your action was having on the people currently around you, most people would say that you were morally at fault. Why, then, shouldn't we also say the same thing about future individuals? Even if we allow that they are not literally identical with you, shouldn't you still give them the same regard as you would to any other distinct person?