Дмитро Сепетий

[Return to Dmitry Sepety’s Personal Page]

8. The Problem of Personal Identity

…there is a vast difference between mind and body, in respect that body, from its nature, is always divisible, and that mind is entirely indivisible. For in truth, when I consider the mind, that is, when I consider myself in so far only as I am a thinking thing, I can distinguish in myself no parts, but I very clearly discern that I am somewhat absolutely one and entire… nor can the faculties of willing, perceiving, conceiving, etc., properly be called its parts, for it is the same mind that is exercised all entire in willing, in perceiving, and in conceiving, etc. But quite the opposite holds in corporeal or extended things; for I cannot imagine any one of them how small soever it may be, which I cannot easily sunder in thought, and which, therefore, I do not know to be divisible.

Descartes. Meditations on First Philosophy

From the point of view of the person himself, the question of his identity... appears to have a content that cannot be exhausted by any account in terms of memory, similarity of character, or physical continuity. Such analyses are never sufficient, and from this point of view they may appear not even to supply necessary conditions for identity.

Thomas Nagel[1]

The problem of personal identity (self-identity) is the problem of understanding the nature of the human self, I. What is I? What makes me the same I despite all the changes that occur throughout my life both with my body and my memories, knowledge, ideas, mental states, etc. Obviously, this question is closely connected with the question about the nature of consciousness (mind). I am, primarily, a bearer, subject of consciousness.

In an interesting popular discussion of this problem – the text “Where Am I?” (in the collection The Philosophical Files) – Stephen Law considers four theories of personal identity.

1) The Body Theory: I am my body.

2) The Brain Theory: I am my brain.

3) The Stream Theory: I am a continuous stream of mental states.

4) The Soul Theory: I am a non-material entity usually called “soul”.[2]

1) The Body Theory

In the light of what is known about the relationship between the mind and physical processes in the human body, the Body Theory (identifying the human self with the human body as a whole) is unsatisfactory. Even if materialism is true, our memories and mental properties are determined not by the body as a whole, but by the brain.

S. Law shows that the Body Theory is unsatisfactory by means of a fantastic thought experiment. Imagine that some aliens, using their supertechnics, have performed two complex operations of brain transplantation: at night, while their patients were asleep, they have transplanted Bill’s brain into John’s body, and John’s brain into Bill’s body. On awakening in the morning, the person with John’s body and Bill’s brain will have all the memories and character of Bill, and will think he is Bill. He will be very much surprised to see in a mirror his new body – John’s body, but will nevertheless think himself Bill (although in John’s body), not John. Probably, we would agree that he is Bill rather than John. The essential thing that makes one person Bill, and the other John is not a body, appearance, but the person’s mind, or its bearer.

2) The brain theory

This theory also does not express adequately what people usually (first of all) understand by the pronoun “I”. S. Law shows it by means of another fantastic thought experiment.

Let us imagine that the aliens, instead of swapping Bill’s and John’s brains, have restructured them by some very sophisticated device, so that Bill’s brain acquires the former structure of John’s brain, and John’s brain acquires the former structure of Bill’s brain. From the point of view of modern materialistic views, it is the brain structure that determines thoughts, memories, mental states, character of a person, etc. Thus, as a result of these manipulations by the aliens, the person with Bill’s body and Bill’s brain stuff (but with changed brain structure) will have John’s memories and character and will think he is John. Probably, like in the previous case, we would agree with it: he is John rather than Bill.

One may advance an objection to this argument: a person (self, I) should be identified with his brain not in the sense of its stuff, but in the sense of its structure. Let us call this the Modified Brain Theory or the Brain Structure Theory: I am the structure of my brain.

S. Law does not discuss this theory, but its unsatisfactoriness can be easily shown by two arguments.

1. A duplication argument. (S. Law uses this sort of arguments when discussing the Stream Theory, but it is applicable here just as well.) Let us imagine that the aliens have created my artificial copy with precisely the same brain structure as mine. Now, where am I? Obviously, I am where I was. The being created by the aliens is another person – my copy, not me. However, according to the Modified Brain Theory he should be me. Therefore, the Modified Brain Theory is mistaken.

2. Suppose, the structure of Bill’s brain was changed a bit. Is this still Bill, or another person? Let us suppose that these changes are not significant enough to change essentially the character and memories. In that case, we, probably, will be inclined to acknowledge this person as Bill. On the other hand, if the changes of the brain structure are such that the character and memories change very much, then we can conclude that this is not Bill any more.

It has also to be noted that in S. Law’s thought experiment with the restructurization of Bill’s and John’s brains, the identification of the person who have Bill’s body and brain stuff but John’s brain structure with John is plausible only in virtue of the supposition that the person will have John’s character and memories.

This seems to show that what matters for personal identity is the continuity of character and memories − be it determined by the brain structure or by something else. And this amounts to the Stream Theory.

3) The Stream Theory

The self (I) is a continuous mental stream – of emotions, thoughts, memories. It can be compared to a rope made of many fibres so that no fibre goes through all the length of the rope; intertwined fibres constitute a rope that is much longer than any one of them. Our memories about ourselves are located in time like the fibers of a rope are located in space. For example, at present the “fibres” of my memory do not reach my past beyond, say, my five-years-old age. But they are intertwined with older memory “fibres”: when I was five years old, I remembered something that happened to me when I was three years old, and when I was three years old, I remembered something that happened to me when I was two years old, and so on. This intertwined sequence of memories about my experiences is what makes me the same I (self) – now, at five-years-old age, at three-years-old age, at two-years-old age, and so on down to my birth. Likewise, my character was changing throughout my life, and now it is not very much like my character when I was five years old; however, all these changes occurred gradually and make up one continuous stream. This stream of mental states and dispositions is my self (I).

Although this theory looks prima facie plausible, it also runs into serious problems that show its discrepancy with our self-conception and the meaning that we usually attach to the pronoun “I”.

S. Law shows this with the help of several “duplication arguments”. Imagine that aliens have a device that allows to destroy completely a human body in one place and create qualitatively exactly the same body in another place.

Suppose that they have destroyed my body on the Earth and created an undistinguishable body on Mars. Am I dead, or do I continue living? If the supposition that our memories and character are entirely determined by the brain structure (S. Law proceed from this assumption throughout the discussion) is true, then according to the Stream Theory I continue living – I was merely moved to Mars. The mental stream in the new body continues the mental stream that is my self (I).

But suppose that the aliens have created not one, but two copies of my body – one on Mars and another on Venus. Who of these two people is me? It cannot be that they both are me, the same (my) self, because they are two different persons (although at the moment of their creation they were exact copies of me and of each other). However, each of them is equally a continuation of the mental stream that, according to the Stream Theory, is me.

To sidestep this problem, the Single Stream Theory is advanced: a mental stream is the same self only if it remains one, does not split into several streams. If it splits, none of the several “filial” streams is me. However, the Single Stream Theory also cannot be acknowledged satisfactory, for the following reasons.

Suppose that, when creating my copy on Mars, the duplication device of the aliens has not destroyed my body on the Earth. Perhaps, I do not even know that somewhere on Mars my exact copy was created. I continue my living as if nothing has happened, and have not the slightest suspicion that according to the Single Stream Theory I do not exist for a long time – that from the moment when my copy was created on Mars, I am not the one who existed before that moment. The single mental stream had been split. But of course, it is an absurdity: my existence cannot depend on someone somewhere creating my copy. My copy is but my copy, and I am I – the same I that existed before the creation of my copy.

Or let us suppose that at the moment when the aliens have created my copy, I was run over by a car and died. According to the Stream Theory (both initial and the Single Stream Theory), I continue living, although in fact I was run over by a car and died...

These examples show that the Stream Theory does not agree with how we, usually and primarily, conceive of ourselves and understand the pronoun “I”.

1+2+3) Before moving to the Soul Theory, let us consider yet one possible approach to the problem, which can be designated as “the Stream-Brain-Body Theory”.

According to this approach, the pronoun “I” in common language means the unity of a mental stream, a brain, and a body. In those situations in which we usually use it and with respect to which we have learned its application when mastering language, there is no divergence of these three aspects. The usage of the word “I” and its sense in common language are not adapted to such hypothetical situations as those in the above-discussed thought experiments.

I think that this approach is mistaken. It is refuted by the fact that I (and, I suppose, every my reader)

– can imagine myself in another body,

– can imagine myself in a body with another brain,

– can imagine that I have lost my memory so that I do not remember my name and my life before this moment (but it is I, nevertheless!),

– can imagine my mental twin that is not me – another person with exactly the same memories and character as me.

Thus, the basic sense of what I (also I guess, my reader too) usually mean when using the pronoun “I” is neither my body, nor my brain, nor my mental stream, nor the unity of these three components. (The purpose of the imaginary fantastic situations that we discussed is to help to understand what exactly we mean, and what we do not mean, first of all, when using the word “I”.) So what is this I, in the basic sense?

In the basic sense, the word “I” means a subject of experiences, conscious awareness, thinking, and willing (more precisely, the conscious subject that refers to oneself with the pronoun “I”). I (mental self) is that “something” that subjectively experiences, thinks, wills, is consciously aware of itself and the world – a Cartesian “thinking thing”.

“I”, in this sense, means not some physical object (a body or a brain) – a complex aggregate of elements that have no mind and are characterised only by physical properties, and processes of their physical interactions. From the presence of such physical structures and processes, whatever they were, it does not logically follow that there is I as something capable of subjective experiences, consciously awareness, thinking, and willing. However complex these structures and processes were, they remain but a complex multitude of physical (devoid of mind) elements, structures and processes – they do not constitute a mental self.

Also, “I”, in this sense, means not some multitude-sequence of mental states. The theory that I am a mental stream presupposes the absurd idea that to begin with, there are independent noone’s mental states, that these independent states form certain interconnected multitudes or streams, and that we somehow learn about these multitudes (streams) and call them by the word “I”. However, the idea of noone’s mental states is self-contradictory, because the concept of a state presupposes that this is a state of something or someone. If states are considered merely as elements of a stream, and it is denied that besides these states there are things (“substances”) whose states they are, thereby it is in fact denied that they are states, and affirmed that they are independent things (“substances”). However, the theory that there are such things as noone’s pains, joys, pleasures, and that they join into some interconnected multitudes (streams) that are called by the word “I” is too absurd to take it seriously. Besides, this theory is self-contradictory: for us to be able to learn about some multitudes (streams) of mental elements and to call them by the word “I”, we (our selves) should already exist and be something distinct from these streams. Hence, I cannot be a mental stream.

In other words, the Stream Theory means that 1) there are some interconnected multitudes (streams) of mental states, and 2) these multitudes (streams) of mental states call themselves by the word “I”. We have to do with the absurd idea that some multitude of elements {х1, х2, x3, ... xN) can call something by a word, with awareness-and-understanding of the meaning of this act of naming,[3] although none of its elements х1, х2, x3, ... xN has any ability to naming-awareness-understanding (if some element of the multitude has such an ability, then it, not the multitude, is I).

Thus, the human self (I) − as something that subjectively experiences, is consciously aware, thinks, understands, and wills − is neither a body nor a stream of mental states (experiences). My mental states (experiences) are mine only insofar as 1) I exist and 2) I experience certain mental states (experiences). I-s logically and existentially precede experiences (mental states), because any experiences (mental states) are possible only as experiences (mental states) of some (already existing) I.

I am not a stream of mental states (experiences), but a subject, carrier of mental states (experiences), which, as such, is a mental individual in the initial sense of the word “individual” – indivisible. This intuition, and the impossibility of understanding I as a physical system is expressed by the Soul Theory.

4) The Soul Theory: I is something nonphysical usually called “soul”.

S. Law treats this theory very flippantly, as to my judgement. He rejects it quickly on the ground of the argument that can be epitomized as follows:

1. The meaning of the word “I” is associated with the memories and character of a person.

2. All memories and character traits of a person are completely determined by the structure of his brain and the processes in it.

3. Therefore, if the soul exists, the memories and character of a person do not depend on it at all.

4. Therefore, I is not to be identified with the soul.

However, this argument begs the question. Most people who believe in the existence of souls would disagree with the premise 2, and, therefore, with the conclusions 3 and 4. They believe that our memories and character are not determined entirely by the structure of the brain and the processes in it, but depend, at least partially, on the soul. It is not proven that the premise 2 is true; it is merely a materialistic assumption. It is incorrect to estimate the Soul Theory proceeding from the (materialistic) premises that its supporters reject. On the other hand, if we consider the Soul Theory proceeding from its own premises, we would see that it is quite logically consistent and allows to avoid those problems that the alternative theories run into. Moreover, we would see that it fits the best with the basic sense that we primarily attach to the word “I”.

As an alternative to the above argument by S. Law (statements 1-4), the supporter of the Soul Theory can propose the following counter-argument:

1. The memories and character of a person are not determined entirely by the structure of his brain and the processes in it.

2. They depend (at least, partially) on the soul.

3. Therefore, the identification of I with the soul may be correct.

This is a view that most of the supporters of the Soul Theory really hold, and S. Law has not shown that it is mistaken. He just has taken it for granted that our memories and character are completely determined by the structure of our brains and the processes therein. Eventually, all that S. Law’s argument shows it that if materialism or epiphenomenalism is true, then the Soul Theory (for which interactionist dualism is congenial) is false. But this is the same as to say that if the Soul Theory (or interactionism) is true, then materialism and epiphenomenalism are false.

Such an incorrect way of discussing the Soul Theory – when it is estimated from the point of view of (materialistic) assumptions that its supporters do not accept, and is rejected on this strange ground – is not unusual for philosophers-materialists.

For example, Derek Parfit, in reply to the objection that a dualist would defend the theory of personal identity “in terms of a soul being a simple thing”, advances a reasoning that, he thinks, “helps to ease us out of this belief”. He proposes such a thought experiment. Imagine, that 1% of the cells in your brain were replaced with exact duplicates. Then imagine that the percentage of the replacement is not 1%, but 2%, 3%, 4%, … 50%, … 100%. If 100% of the cells are replaced, then of course (?!) it is not you any more but someone else, some other person, even if he is qualitatively exactly the same as you. It is not clear exactly how many percents should be replaced for this to happen but… “on the view that there’s all the difference in the world between its being me and its being this other person who is exactly like me, we ought in consistency to think that in some case in the middle of that range, where, say, they are going to replace fifty per cent, the same question arises: is it going to be me or this completely different character? I think that even the most convinced dualist who believes in the soul is going to find this range of cases very embarrassing, because he seems committed to the view that there’s some crucial percentage up to which it’s going to be him and after which it suddenly ceases to be him.”[4]

However, this is an out-and-out distortion of the typical dualist view, an attribution to the dualist of views he is unlikely to hold. There is nothing in dualism why a dualist should be “committed to the view that there’s some crucial percentage up to which it’s going to be him and after which it suddenly ceases to be him”. From the point of view of the dualist who believes in the soul, whether it is he or not he is determined not by the percentage of brain cells but “in terms of a soul being a simple thing”. If I am a soul that is a simple thing, then a person’s being or not being me depends not on the percentage of brain cells but on the presence or absence of that simple thing, my soul. Even if all 100% of the cells of my brain are replaced but my soul is (I am) still associated with this new brain, then it is me, with a new brain instead of the old one.

Parfit’s failure to see such an obvious thing is especially surprising, if we take into consideration his description of the common sense understanding of I (which is dualistic): “belief which ... we’re all inclined to hold even if we don’t realise it. The belief that however much we change, there’s a profound sense in which the changed us is going to be just as much us. That even if some magic wand turned me into a completely different sort of person – a prince with totally different character, mental powers − it would be just as much me.”[5] This description does not lack understanding, although it is not quite accurate: in fact, if someone imagines himself moved into the body of a prince, or with new mental powers, he presupposes implicitly with it 1) that some deepest base of his person (his I, self, or soul) remains the same, and 2) that his character, mental dispositions and powers in some most essential aspects are determined by (inherent to) this base, and therefore that he will not become a completely different sort of person, with a totally different character and mental powers. (I can imagine that if my soul moves in Derek Parfit’s body, with Parfit’s brain, it is possible that I will forget my memories and will have Parfit’s memories. But I am inclined to think that even if it happened so, and even if I would think that I am Derek Parfit, some person who knows Derek Parfit intimately enough (his mother, for example) would notice that something is wrong with him: “He is as if another person!”. And I imagine that I would soon (while believing that I am Derek Parfit) give up materialism and wonder how could I believe this absurd doctrine for so long.) If Parfit consistently thought through this view, he would surely see that his thought experiment (with the replacements of brain cells) does not hit the mark and fails to refute dualism.

A semantic remark

By the way, let us notice the specifics of the meanings of possessive pronouns (“my”, “your”, “her”, “his”) when they are applied to the personal pronoun “I” or to its synonymous nouns (“self”, “soul”). Usually, when we use possessive pronouns with a noun, we mean that we have (own) the thing designated by the noun. For example, when I say “my pencil”, I mean a pencil that belongs to me. But this is not so when I say “my I” or “my self” or “my soul”: when I use these phrases, I do not mean that somewhere outside me there is such a thing as I or self or soul that may belong or not belong to me, so that I can appropriate it or give it to someone else. My I (self, soul) does not belong to me, I do not own it − it is me. The meaning of the word “my” in such cases is not really “possesive”, it does not appropriate but distinguishes − the I (self, soul) that is me from other I-s (selves, souls) that are not me.

The Soul Theory expresses our most fundamental understanding of ourselves as those who subjectively experience, think, are consciously aware of themselves and the world – mental subjects. A mental subject, or self is neither some physical system (human body or brain) nor a mental stream (of memories, experiences, mental states). In our fundamental understanding, the self (I) is a bearer (subject) of memories, experiences, mental states, an experiencer, something capable of subjective experiencing and of conscious awareness. A stream and a bearer (subject) are two entirely different things.

When we talk of a stream of experiences (or of mental states), we as if presume that these experiences exist on its own, like spatial things − not as someone’s (my or your) experiences. There are many streams of experiences, like there are many rivers, and we call these streams by the word “I”, just as we call rivers by the words “river”. For me, it seems obvious that this view turns everything upside down. There are no noone’s streams of experiences that we call by the word “I”. (That I could call something somehow, it is necessary first that I already existed. To paraphrase Descartes: “I name, therefore I exist”.) Experiences exists only as someone’s experiences, mine or yours. It is exactly their belonging to this or that I that makes a multitude of experiences a single stream – the stream of my or your experiences. I precedes any experience, is a necessary precondition of the possibility of any experience.

I cannot be reduced to something else – in particular, to a stream of experiences (or of mental states). The word “I” expresses the most fundamental intuition of being a human person as an entity that subjectively experiences, thinks, wills, is consciously aware. I precedes any experiences and its own mental states; it is not constituted by or consist of them (as “bundle” or “stream”), but is their bearer, subject, experiencer. To make it yet clearer, let us make a simple thought experiment – the regression of experiences in the past.

At the present moment, we − that is, our I-s or selves − have a certain bulk of memories that originate from our life’s experiences – from the birth up to the present moment. If we consider our (of our I-s or selves) former states, further and further in the past, we see that the bulk of experiences and memories decreases until it reaches nil. Eventually, one reaches the very first experience that has formed the first link of his “memory chain”. However, for this experience (and the emergence of the “memory chain”) to be possible, it is necessary that there already was the one to experience it – the experiencer, mental subject-self, I. Because experience (memory) does not exist on its own but exists only as my (or your) experience, it also cannot emerge on its own, without an experiencer already in existence. Thus, the existence of I precedes all experiences (memory). Thus, I may be, in principle, utterly “empty” in the sense of its experiences and memory contents. I am not experiences, and not memory but something that “stands behind” any experience and memory and has the (potential or actualized) ability of subjective experiencing and conscious awareness.

On the Humean Theory of the Self

The theory that the self is nothing but a mental stream, and the negation of the “substantiality” of the self in the western philosophical tradition has become influential owing to David Hume. In the eastern tradition, a similar view can be found in the doctrine of Buddhism. The gist of this view, as it was expressed by one participant of an Internet discussion (Randal Samstag), is: a self, or a person, “is an illusion in the sense that it is an impermanent repository of a lifetime of instantaneous momentary experiences”.

However, if I is but an illusion, whose illusion it is? Mine? But I am an illusion. It follows that I am an illusion of an illusion of an illusion ... (ad infinitum). This is a sheer absurdity. (Of course, one can hold the Stream Theory on the principle “I believe it because it is absurd”).[6]

Hume’s theory that I (self) is nothing but a stream of experiences absurdly flouts the obvious point that experiences do not exist on their own but exist only as someone’s (some I’s) experiences, which means that I-s precede (their) experiences. Hume’s absurd theory and its great influence are rooted in prima facie plausible and very influential but mistaken theory of empiricism, according to which all our knowledge and concepts should be (logically) reducible to experience, and all that is not so reducible is rationally unjustified. Of course, I cannot find among my experiences that I that “stands behind” all my experiences and makes them mine; all that I can find in my experience is a sequence of my momentary mental states, elements of my experience (experiences). From this, Hume concludes that the “substantial” self is but an illusion. We have seen that this conclusion is a sheer absurdity; however, it logically follows from the theory of classical empiricism. A correct conclusion from this is not the illusiveness of the self, but the falsity of the theory of classical empiricism.

The theory of classical empiricism, owing to the famous analysis of the same Hume, was found at a deadlock since the ХVІІІ century. Karl Popper, in his criticism of classical empiricism and positivism, has convincingly shown that our universal theories and concepts are never reducible to experience (are not logically deducible from experience) − they all reach beyond the boundaries of experience, although serve for the understanding and explanation of experience.

Applying this conclusion to the concept of self (I), we can say that it is not reducible to experience but expresses a fundamental intuition, the intuition of our own existence, and is necessary for understanding the possibility of any experience. Any experience is possible only as someone’s experience, an experience of this or that I. I am a bearer, a subject of experience, not its stream.

The negation of the existence of selves as bearers (subjects) of subjective states is a manifestation of yet another mistaken empiricist theory, which can be formulated as the contention that things (substances) as bearers of properties (states), as distinct from properties themselves, do not exist at all; any thing is but a “bundle” of properties. This theory is based on the mistaken idea that if there are such bearers, as distinct from a “bundle” of properties (states), they should be some “mysterious ‘bare particulars’ ..., propertyless substrata underlying the qualities”. Saul Kripke (with whom I entirely agree on this issue) well explains the mistake of this interpretation:

“I do deny ... that a particular is nothing but a ‘bundle of qualities’... If a quality is an abstract object, a bundle of qualities is an object of an even higher degree of abstraction, not a particular. Philosophers have come to the opposite view through a false dilemma: they have asked, are these objects behind the bundle of qualities, or is the object nothing but the bundle? Neither is the case; this table is wooden, brown, in the room, etc. It has all these properties and is not a thing without properties, behind them; but it should not therefore be identified with the set, or ‘bundle’, of its properties...”[7]

I can add a bit to this explanation. Things are not bundles of qualities that could exist separately from the things. The statement that a thing is not the bundle of its qualities does not mean that there are things without qualities – it means only that there are no qualities without things. Things as distinct from properties and properties as distinct from things are abstractions (two conceptual sides-products of the process of abstraction): only things with qualities concretely exist − although a thing can change a property, or get into another state, while remaining the same thing. It applies to the human self (I) as well as to other things.

The negation of personal identity, I, its “substantive” separateness, and considering it as part of some aggregate stream grows in part out of ambiguity of such words as “separateness” and “variability”. No doubt, my (your) self (I) is part of the world; it is interconnected with other parts of the world, it influences them and is influenced by them, it changes together with them. It is not isolated from the rest of the world. Everyone of us is in the stream of interactions with the material world and other people. Everyone of us incessantly changes. Today I feel and I think not what I felt and thought yesterday, and yesterday I felt and thought differently than the day before yesterday. All this is obvious and trivial. But all this does not abolish the identity, separateness of my self in another sense – the sense we all mean when we talk of ourselves in the past or the future: yesterday I was not quite such as I am today, the day before yesterday – not such as yesterday, and I will change tomorrow, but all this is me, not someone else.

In all my interactions and changes something is retained that makes them my, in virtue of which all these interactions and changes happen with me, not with someone else − this “something” is my separate self (I). It is absolutely separate in the sense that I am always I, not someone else − although it obviously is not separate, if ‘separateness’ is understood in the sense of isolation, the absence of interactions with anything that is not me (including all other I-s).

Sometimes, the idea of selfness is denied with a reference to ecstatic experience – peculiar experiences that are interpreted as unity with another I, dissolution of one’s own self in another. It can be the state of merging with God, as described by mystics, or an extraordinary feeling of unity with another human being, perhaps in mystical or sexual ecstasy. I think that this is a false interpretation of the experience. What is illusory here, is not I (self) but the merging-dissolution. We have to do with an inaccurate description-interpretation of a certain extraordinary experience that belongs to the very I at issue. The experience is someone’s experience. It is my, or your, or his, or her experience; it is what have happened with me, or you, or him, or her – what I, or you, or he, or she have (has) experienced. Thus, the self (I) of the experiencer was there throughout the experience; it did not vanish, or dissolve; it was the one who experienced this extraordinary mental state. Therefore, if it seemed to this self that it has disappeared-dissolved, it was an illusion – the self’s illusion. The self itself is not an illusion. It is real and separate in its existence. It is the same self (I) that “stands behind” all interactions in which it takes part, and all changes that happen with it. The self (I) is an individual, distinct of all others, subject-bearer of experience and changes.

Really, the feeling of the unity with the world need not be opposed to one’s “selfness”, distinctness, separateness, individuality: one does not contradict the other. The unity of reality means that everything is in the process of interactions with one another – not the non-existence or “illusoriness” of those elements of reality that interact. Changes, in the case of a self, are changes of subjective states with the retention of the subject.

I am part of the stream of reality – a part that is in incessant interactions with other parts and that incessantly changes – but a separate part, distinct from other parts and aware of its separateness, individuality, selfness. Descartes described the self as a thinking substance, or a thinking thing. It would be more precise to describe the self as a thinking (and experiencing, and willing) individual, using the concept “individual” of its primary sense that means integrity, indivisibility, non-composedness-of-parts. (My experiences and thoughts are not parts of my self but its subjective states and processes of changes of these states.) The self (I) is integral, indivisible, non-composed-of-parts, because it cannot be composed

neither by combination of several parts such that none of them is a self – none has the ability of experiencing, thinking, awareness, self-consciousness, and willing;

nor by putting together several selves – because this would be not one but several selves.

The self (I) is Leibnitz’s “monad”, but (despite Leibnitz’ s theory, according to which monads do not interact, “have no windows”) it is open and turned to the world and other monads, another selves. The self (I) is a soul, which is a simple thing in the sense that it does not consist of parts that can exist separately from it; however, it is very complex in another sense – of the richness of mental content, variety of mental states, multifacetedness.

On kinds of identity (sameness)

It is an old philosophical problem – the problem of understanding the concept of identity (sameness) and its conditions: What is it that makes a certain thing the thing it is? What changes are needed for it to cease to be this thing and become another?

This reminds of the famous statements by Heraclitus: “Everything flows, everything changes. You cannot step twice into the same river, for other waters are continually flowing on” − the river’s states are changing, and the person’s states (both physical and mental) are continually changing too. In some sense, it is already not the same river and not the same person. But it is also clear, that in some other sense it is the same person and the same river.

That is, we are dealing with two different kinds of identity (sameness); in philosophy, there are technical terms for them – “qualitative identity” and “numerical identity”. I prefer to use, instead of “numerical identity”, the more telling name, “existential identity”, to designate being the same thing, and retain the term “qualitative identity” to designate being a thing that is qualitatively the same.[8]

Thus, in the case with a river, qualitatively the river and the person become different, but existentially they remain the same. In the case of self-identity, we are interested in existential − not qualitative − identity (sameness): however my mental states (sensations, emotions, mood, thoughts, knowledge, memories) change, they all are attributed to the same self – to me. I change (the loss of qualitative identity) while remaining the same I (existential identity).

Given that we are interested in existential identity, the following questions still need an explanation: What is it that makes a certain thing the same thing? What changes violate its self-identity and make it into another thing? Let us suppose that I have a car. It can endure a lot of changes while remaining the same car. But if I disassemble it into components, it is not the car any more. If the car gets damaged, how great should the damage be for it to cease to be the same thing (the car)? Or let us suppose that I have two cars, A1 and А2, that are almost identical qualitatively. I can replace some component, or several components, in the car A1 with the analogous component(s) from the car A2, and I would consider it as the same car A1. But let us suppose that I have cut both cars in two halves, and then welded one half of A1 with the second half of A2. What is the resulting car’s identity? Is it A1 or A2? We can think of great many various possibilities of this sort, and their consideration leads to the conclusion that there is no uniform objective criterion of identity (sameness). In all such cases, the identity is fuzzy and conventional: we consider something as the same thing despite its qualitative changes merely so far as it is convenient to us with the view of understanding and communication; if the changes that occur with this thing seem to us not very essential, if they do not get beyond the limits of a certain range that, according to our intuitive notions (formed mostly in the course of linguistic practice), does not violate the self-identity of the thing. (In some cases, the self-identity may be determined not by material composition, but by some other features. For example, in the case of a football club, it may be that during a certain period its personal membership – players, trainers and proprietors – has completely changed, but the club is regarded as the same; the identity of a club as the same juridical person is determined by a certain legal procedure.) The conditions on which something is or is not regarded as the same thing are determined informally by considerations of convenience and by linguistic practice of the community. There are no objective criteria of self-identity in all such cases.

When we talk of the identity (self-identity) of a self (I), we mean something different – some nonconventional, absolute, objective identity that belongs to the very structure of reality. In physical reality, such identity would pertain to Democritus’ atoms (not to be confused with the atoms in the sense of modern physics) – the smallest indivisible microparticles of matter, if they existed. As they are indivisible, they remain the same – in the nonconditional, absolute, objective sense, even if some their physical states, qualities or mutual relations change (in fact, with all microparticles, mutual relations of at least one kind – spatial locations – do change). Although it is possible that they can change qualitatively, they remain existentially the same – in the unconditional, absolute, objective sense. This is the kind of identity that matters in the case of a self (I).

The identity of my (your) self (I) that makes mine (yours) all my (your) actions and subjective experiences throughout the life (and, may be, also beyond this earthly life) is not merely an existential identity but an objective, nonconventional, absolute, real identity.

Is the Self a “Pure Subject”?

To conclude this section, I will quote an apt explanation of the relationship between the self and the brain given by Karl Popper, and comment on some its points:

“I have called this section ‘The Self and Its Brain’, because I intend here to suggest that the brain is owned by the self, rather than the other way round. The self is almost always active. The activity of selves is, I suggest, the only genuine activity we know. The active, psycho-physical self is the active programmer to the brain (which is the computer), it is the executant whose instrument is the brain. The mind is, as Plato said, the pilot. It is not, as David Hume and William James suggested, the sum total, or the bundle, or the stream of its experiences: this suggests passivity. It is, I suppose, a view that results from passively trying to observe oneself, instead of thinking back and reviewing one’s past actions.

I suggest that these considerations show that the self is not a ‘pure ego’; that is, a mere subject. Rather, it is incredibly rich. Like a pilot, it observes and takes action at the same time. It is acting and suffering, recalling the past and planning and programming the future; expecting and disposing. It contains, in quick succession, or all at once, wishes, plans, hopes, decisions to act, and a vivid consciousness of being an acting self, a centre of action...

And all this closely interacts with the tremendous ‘activity’ going on in its brain.”[9]

To this, I would make some reservations as follows.

1) I think that in a sense, it is quite appropriate to talk of the self as “a pure subject”. In some sense that is important for our discussion, the self is “a pure subject”, although it is not the sense that Popper had in mind. It may be important to make this point clear. When I say that the self is “a pure subject”, I mean, of course, not a concrete subject (my self at the present moment or Popper’s self at the moment when he wrote the quoted fragment). I mean the meaning of the concept “self” abstracted from all concrete selves and, hence, deprived of all individual features (and thus very impoverished). I mean what is common for all concrete, individual, incredibly rich selves, what makes them selves. This common, what constitutes a person’s selfness is the ability to experience sensations and emotions, to wish, to think, and to be aware. It is nothing but subjectness − being a mental subject. Of course, every concrete self is not pure (abstract) subject but a concrete subject with concrete emotions, wishes, thoughts, memories, temperament, etc.

2) The statement that the self contains wishes, plans, hopes, decisions, awareness, etc. should not be understood container-wise − as if wishes, plans, hopes, decisions, awareness, etc. are separate things that are heaped in a container called “self”, and that can be taken out of this container and exist independently of it. Also, they should not be understood as parts of which the self consists (this would be a return to Hume’s theory that the self is “a bundle”). They do not and cannot exist separately from that self whose wishes, plans, hopes, decisions, awareness, etc. they are; therefore, they are not parts, but subjective states of the self.

3) Popper uses the word “self” in the meaning that is narrower than the meaning in which I use it in this book. He applies it only to self-conscious socialised (that presupposes, first of all, the mastery of a language) persons; in this sense, animals and infants in arms have no (are not) selves. I use the word “self” in the wider sense of a mental subject – someone who subjectively experiences, wishes, thinks, etc., so that the ability to have subjective experiences, however primitive, is sufficient. So, in my sense, an infant in arms, or an animal, if he really (subjectively) feels something, has (is) a self, even if he does not think of his feelings in the descriptive forms of language, and is unable to express them so. (See Section 12 about functions of language.)

[1] Nagel T. Subjective and Objective. – p. 200.

[2] S. Law discusses the same problem in the text “Brain Transplants, ‘Teleportation’ and the Puzzle of Personal Identity” of the collection The Philosophy Gym, but without mentioning the Soul Theory at all.

[3] Naming is not just a physical process, such as air vibrations that make a sequence of sounds. Naming is a physical process plus intentionality, i.e. the attribution of a certain meaning to the process.

[4] Рarfit D. and Vesey G. Brain Transplants and Personal Identity. – p. 316.

[5] Рarfit D. and Vesey G. Brain Transplants and Personal Identity. – p. 317.

[6] Obviously, this consideration is in line with Descartes’ famous claim that the existence of myself as a thinking entity is the only fact I cannot doubt without self-contradiction. I doubt, therefore I think; I think, therefore I exist as a thinking thing.

[8] One reason why such a terminology seems to me more convenient is that the pair of categories “numerical”-“qualitative” can be confused with the pair “quantitative”-“qualitative” from the Hegelian dialectics, while in fact these two pairs have quite different meanings. Another reason is that it seems that what matters is not numbers but the continued existence of a thing.