When I think of myself, I think of a human being that has my consciousness. The “me” that I refer to whenever that idea comes up is the current vessel that carries my thoughts and keeps them alive. This distinction comes from the fact that when every second passes, I am a different person and therefore should have a different title to refer to myself as. My personhood does not change, but everything about my body and mind change. This “loose identity” is what allows us to refer to an entity that changes constantly by the same name.
This idea of a thing being completely different when there is any change is best shown in the example of the ship of Theseus. Theseus’ ship is sitting in a harbor to honor his memory. Because it is made of wood, the wood planks need to be changed periodically so the ship stays afloat. It gets to a point where every bit of wood has been replaced.[1] Is this still the ship of Theseus? At what point did it stop being his ship and become something else? To me, the ship stopped being the ship of Theseus as soon as the first plank was replaced. For something to truly be something, it can’t survive change. All that survives is the name. Forever, that ship will be the ship of Theseus simply because that is what it was initially so everyone refers to it as such. This is the same with people. You as a six year old and you as a sixty year old are completely different things. But, you are still referred to by the same name. This is same for the ship. All of this is for simplicity’s sake and so that things would not be confusing as everything would need to be renamed as it changed each time.
Something that Parfit touches upon is the idea of personal identity. This biggest point that Parfit touches upon is the idea of q-memory. Q-memories are memories that you have about certain events, whether or not they are true. It is how you saw a situation, remembered a situation or how you perceived a situation.[2] A good example of this is any witness to a murder trial would be giving their testimony based on q-memory. A witness that gives false information, not false of their own will, but false on the actual truth of the situation. They did not lie; the information they gave is just what their q-memories told them.
Where q-memories relate to identity is on recalling upon you in the past. We relate to our past selves in how we remember ourselves. When a person would go about remembering their last birthday, they would remember them in the past rather than just the event. It is not “oh, that was my birthday,” it is more “oh, there I am when I just turned twenty-three. That was four months ago.” What I am trying to get at is the language used. It’s “me when I was twenty-three” not “someone else that was of twenty-three years old at the time who I used to identify myself with but I am no longer that person even though I still carry the same title that that person carried.” The first statement is based upon q-memories. The memory is something you believe that was a past experience that you relate a memory to, the memory did happen and you believe that the memory you are sure happened was a memory that you were involved in and that you experienced.[3]
With this in mind, what validity is there that the only memories that you have are q-memories? I feel this is true, but an argument against this could be remembering an event from photographs and another person rather than just trying it on your own. The only problem with this is that first off, with the person to person connection, it would be conflicting q-memories. Sure, you could agree on many things that happened, but no two people could possibly see an event in the exact same way. Even with pictures, interpretation can differ and no two people could truly agree about a situation without some concessions on either side.
Snowdon touches upon identity by relating humans and animals and asking is there a difference between the two. His idea of personal identity is weighing where we draw the line between Homo sapiens as humans or animals in the world.[4] All of this hinges on identity. Without trying to be too technical, we are humans and animals, but I feel what matters is how a person sees him or herself. When you see a person mindlessly polluting a river, you can see that they don’t see themselves as animals. I feel it’s our technology that has caused us to forget about our roots. It is so easy to look at an animal and not be able to connect with them at all.
What Snowdon says is that we are persons and animals. We are essentially animals and we are essentially people. This idea is well represented in the idea of Cartesian dualism. It goes as follows[5]:
1-I am a mind [“person”/ psychological entity]
2-I have a body à Animal
3- I am essentially a mind
4- I am essentially a body
Where the secret lies in all of this is in the use of the word “essentially.” What is meant by essentially is for all intents and purposes the stated is what is believed. It is a way to have something that is essentially an absolute without the problems of absolutes. What all the above stated means is the mind is what makes you a person and the body you have is what makes you an animal. So, the answer to the question is that we are both an animal and a person.
So, where does this leave us? I was asked to explain who I am now, who I was and who I am going to be in the future. All of these representations of me are completely different people, and this is the point I am trying to make. I in the past am exactly that: I in the past. I am not the same person that I was at my first birthday as I will not be the same person I am today, tomorrow. Identity is just a way to keep us all sane. We are animals, we are people. We are the people we were in the past and we aren’t. Identity can be considered the most open-ended thing in all of metaphysics simply because what identity means differs from person to person. So, who am I? I am me. I am an animal who is also a person, I am not who I was five years ago, I won’t be the person I am now in five years in the future. I am not the same person right as I was when I started this paper as I won’t be when I hand it in as I won’t be when you read it. I, like everyone else (I assume) am the constantly-changing entity that goes by my original title to prevent confusion and to make it easier on everyone and myself.
[1] Introduction to Identity pg. 528
[2] “Personal Identity”, Parfit pg. 568
[3] Class notes 11/15 – as relating to Parfit’s “Personal Identity” and explanation of q-memories
[4] “Persons, animals and ourselves,” P.F. Snowdon pg. 578
[5] Class notes 11/29, in response to second half of Persons, animals and ourselves,”
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