Who are you? What makes you "you"?

[Thinker_Doer]

This is a science fiction related question. So, if you don’t like sci-fi, don’t bother with it.

The basic scenario comes from Larry Niven’s idea of organ transplants. In his world organ transplants are everyday occurrences. The law abiding citizens want to extend their lives, so they create laws where violating the laws carry death sentences. The question is not related to the “morality” of such laws.

It is a philosophical (ontological) problem: “Who are you?”. If you need a new organ due to an accident, you can get it from the organ banks. As time goes on, many organs will be replaced. New eyes with new retina scans. New hands with new finger prints. New legs and different height. But “you” are still “you” - as long as your mind (brain) is still the same. Or are you?

This is the question. Have fun with it.

 

[VanitasVanitatum]

This already happens when cells die and are replaced.

 

[Thom18]

As Vanitas said above, this pretty much already happens, no thought experiment required.

“You” are still “you” because we are more than just the sum of our physical parts. I don’t cease to be me if I were to lose my leg or just get my hair cut, nor do I become “me and someone else” if someone else’s organs/limbs/whatever are transplanted to me.

 

[Wozza]

This is a science fiction related question. So, if you don’t like sci-fi, don’t bother with it.

The basic scenario comes from Larry Niven’s idea of organ transplants. In his world organ transplants are everyday occurrences. The law abiding citizens want to extend their lives, so they create laws where violating the laws carry death sentences. The question is not related to the “morality” of such laws.

It is a philosophical (ontological) problem: “Who are you?”. If you need a new organ due to an accident, you can get it from the organ banks. As time goes on, many organs will be replaced. New eyes with new retina scans. New hands with new finger prints. New legs and different height. But “you” are still “you” - as long as your mind (brain) is still the same. Or are you?

This is the question. Have fun with it.

Memories. If we woke up tomorrow with each other’s memories then whatever physical body we had, at that moment I would be you and you would be me.

Out future selves would undoubtedly change from the people we would have been had the memories not swapped from that point (age, physical fitness, physical make-up of our brains) but at the very point of the exchange, we would turn into each other.

The corollary is that whatever physical aspects of a person you change, if that person still has the same memories then he is still that person.

 

[nightshade]

Memories

This is what makes Alzheimer’s and other sicknesses involving loss of or distortion of memories so painful. You slowly lose your loved ones. I am experiencing this with my dad right now who has liver failure. It is effecting his mind and he is slowly becoming a shell of who he used to be because his memories are either fading or getting twisted into something else.

 

[STT]

This is a science fiction related question. So, if you don’t like sci-fi, don’t bother with it.

The basic scenario comes from Larry Niven’s idea of organ transplants. In his world organ transplants are everyday occurrences. The law abiding citizens want to extend their lives, so they create laws where violating the laws carry death sentences. The question is not related to the “morality” of such laws.

It is a philosophical (ontological) problem: “Who are you?”. If you need a new organ due to an accident, you can get it from the organ banks. As time goes on, many organs will be replaced. New eyes with new retina scans. New hands with new finger prints. New legs and different height. But “you” are still “you” - as long as your mind (brain) is still the same. Or are you?

This is the question. Have fun with it.

You are collection of minds. Your personality is the result of how these minds are structured.

 

[Wozza]

Wozza:

Memories

This is what makes Alzheimer’s and other sicknesses involving loss of or distortion of memories so painful. You slowly lose your loved ones. I am experiencing this with my dad right now who has liver failure. It is effecting his mind and he is slowly becoming a shell of who he used to be because his memories are either fading or getting twisted into something else.

How true and how tragic. My thoughts are with you.

 

[Thinker_Doer]

You are collection of minds.

Why the plural?

Memories.

Very good, but not “deep” enough. Where are those memories stored? And if technology will advance to the point that all of our memories and abilities will be downloadable into some auxiliary storage and then can be restored, will this process preserve “us”?

 

[Lea101]

Our body and soul i guess, as per the theology of the body? You’re still you, because your soul cannot be altered.

 

[Thinker_Doer]

Our body and soul i guess, as per the theology of the body? You’re still you, because your soul cannot be altered.

Aha. Can you demonstrate this “soul”? Because the memories and the mind can be demonstrated.

 

[Wesrock]

Our body and soul i guess, as per the theology of the body? You’re still you, because your soul cannot be altered.

I agree with this, in an Aristotlean-Thomist fashion. “You” are the unique whole and everything operating under it, a unity greater than the sum of its parts, with your soul as your formal cause. It’s having your soul as a formal cause, not your material cause, which is why you are you.

Now, this can be greatly elaborated upon. The soul is not some ethereal substance piloting a body, it’s a principle, it’s the formal cause of you, and distinct from other human souls due to its intellective powers and attainment of knowledge unique to you. That is not the great elaboration I had in mind, and it probably sounds like gibberish to people not already familiar with what I’m referring to.

In less Aristotlean terms, again, it’s the unity that is greater than the sum of its parts that comprise you. New cells, organs transplants, etc… are incorporated into this unity. I think you need some Aristotle to fully appreciate this. Maybe I can continue this later.

 

[IWantGod]

Now, this can be greatly elaborated upon. The soul is not some ethereal substance piloting a body, it’s a principle, it’s the formal cause of you, and distinct from other human souls due to its intellective powers and attainment of knowledge unique to you. That is not the great elaboration I had in mind, and it probably sounds like gibberish to people not already familiar with what I’m referring to.

This is a very big stone i keep tripping over. If we are not a ghost in a machine, what does it mean for the soul to be a principle of a thing, and if in dying the soul becomes separate from the body, how is that not a duality? How is that not like a ghost in a machine?

 

[Wesrock]

Lea101:

Our body and soul i guess, as per the theology of the body? You’re still you, because your soul cannot be altered.

Aha. Can you demonstrate this “soul”? Because the memories and the mind can be demonstrated.

As a Thomist, I say one can demonstrate that all material things (including humans) have a formal cause, and one can demonstrate that the intellective capacities of people (referring here to a very specific process and not all cognitive processes or consciousness) are an immaterial power of that formal cause. And to a Thomist that would be a demonstration of a soul, for the soul is just the form or formal cause of a living thing, and the capacity for intellection what is considered incorruptible and so immortal.

I know I haven’t demonstrated anything in this post. I haven’t attempted to yet.

Not everyone, Christian or otherwise is a Thomist, of course, not are they required to be, though I do think the arguments not presented here are true and follow.

 

[Thinker_Doer]

Not everyone, Christian or otherwise is a Thomist, of course, not are they required to be, though I do think the arguments are true and follow.

You are right. Not everyone is a Thomist. But the memories and mind can be demonstrated in a physical fashion, so there is no need for philosophy, Thomistic or otherwise. To be precise, the mind is the electro-chemical activity of the brain.

 

[Wesrock]

Wesrock:

Not everyone, Christian or otherwise is a Thomist, of course, not are they required to be, though I do think the arguments are true and follow.

You are right. Not everyone is a Thomist. But the memories and mind can be demonstrated in a physical fashion, so there is no need for philosophy, Thomistic or otherwise.

On the contrary, there are faculties of the mind that cannot be explained or understood in a strictly physical fashion, at least not without denying that these faculties exist and that one has a mind at all.

 

[IWantGod]

But the memories and mind can be demonstrated in a physical fashion, so there is no need for philosophy, Thomistic or otherwise.

The brain is fundamentally comprised of blind physical activity. Intention cannot be demonstrated as the act of a blind physical process because intention is the very antithesis of a blind physical process. If you were correct, we wouldn’t be having this discussion at all.

 

[Wesrock]

Thinker_Doer:

But the memories and mind can be demonstrated in a physical fashion, so there is no need for philosophy, Thomistic or otherwise.

Intention cannot be demonstrated as the act of a blind physical process because it is the very antithesis of a blind physical process. If that were the case, we wouldn’t be having this discussion at all.

Intentionality, yes, being one of the biggest hurdles for physicalism philosophy of the mind, if not the biggest.

 

[Wozza]

STT:

You are collection of minds.

Why the plural?

Memories.

Very good, but not “deep” enough. Where are those memories stored? And if technology will advance to the point that all of our memories and abilities will be downloadable into some auxiliary storage and then can be restored, will this process preserve “us”?

Good points.

Our memories are obviously stored in all that wet meat between our ears. Excuse me if I pass on any reliance on the soul in this respect. So if we were to swap memories, it would be along the lines of the ‘brain in a vat’ scenario.

I have discussed hypotheticals where each neuron and synapse is replaced with an artificial one. And the question asked: At what point is it not ‘you’. I think that it’s always you in that scenario.

But that leads to the download question. Or to look at it in another way, if we duplicate each of your neurons and synapses and replace someone else’s with them, do they gradually become you?

A gradual replacement would simply have the individual parts incorporated into the original. But if we built an artificial brain that duplicated yours and ‘turned it on’ would there be two of you?

I’m not sure… Because who you are, your memories, are not a specific configuration of ‘stuff’ that you can copy. I believe they are a process within the brain. It would be like me playing the guitar and you simply making an exact copy of the guitar and expecting it to make music.

But then again (I’m literally thinking out aloud here), that heads towards dualism, which I reject completely.

 

[Wesrock]

Wesrock:

Now, this can be greatly elaborated upon. The soul is not some ethereal substance piloting a body, it’s a principle, it’s the formal cause of you, and distinct from other human souls due to its intellective powers and attainment of knowledge unique to you. That is not the great elaboration I had in mind, and it probably sounds like gibberish to people not already familiar with what I’m referring to.

This is a very big stone i keep tripping over. If we are not a ghost in a machine, what does it mean for the soul to be a principle of a thing, and if in dying the soul becomes separate from the body, how is that not a duality? How is that not like a ghost in a machine?

It’s a form-matter dualism, not substance dualism. Form and matter also each being causes (formal and material) of a substance.

There’s some debate in Thomism between corruptionists who hold that the human substance (in an Aristotlean sense) that was you does not survive death even though even though your intellection as a power of the soul persists, and survivalists who hold that the human substance does persist even though it’s missing most of what naturally belongs to it. Ed Feser, for example, is a survivalist.

But the debate isn’t about substance dualism, whether the one substance that is you continues while the other substance that is just a machine dies, but about whether the one substance that is you persists or not (even if just in a handicapped state, like how a dog who lost a leg is still the same dog though missing parts natural to it as a substance and it’s substantial form).

Edit: I really need to turn my phone’s terrible auto correct off.

 

[IWantGod]

But the debate isn’t about substance dualism

Do you know of any books that just deals with the Thomistic conception of the soul? That would be helpful. Thanks