Hi LostGuy,
I would like to point out that consciousness and identity are related topics, but should not be interchanged. Consciousness is the process that allows you to think, identity is who “you” are.
Your car scenario is interesting. It raises the question of whether who “you” are is contained within your body. So that when your consciousness was transferred to the rock, whether the consciousness that arises in your body would retain your identity. Or whether when your consciousness moves to the rock, whether that is what contains your identity, or is it could both. Ignoring the fact that this is a dualist conception of consciousness, it is a good question.
Lets move the discussion to a monist plane, because there is a growing propendence of evidence that there is nothng duallist about consciousness. It a safe assumption to say its inextricably linked to the physical body and particularly the brain.
So… is your consciousness “you”, or is your identity some separate emergent phenomena? Also - its important to avoid categorizing identity and consciousness as objects. Much like Hume (who I havent read yet) seems to be warning.
It is my opinion that consciousness is a emergent process of the brain, a incomprehensibly complex interaction between neurons and other components of the brain. It is so complex that (for humans at least) it has gained the property of being self-aware, possibly as a result of being a self-referential closed system. Consciousness occurs, it is not a persistent structure, it isnt always happening. Neurons are firing discretely in time, components of the brain are interacting discretely in time, information is moved around, stored, created, and destroyed. There is a illusion of continuity that arises because we are incapable of percieving the gaps within our own consciousness (for obvious reasons).
So what does that mean for who we are? Our conception of our “self”, are we continuous and persistent? or is that a illusion like our consciousness?. Here we have to get into the conscious and the sub-consious. The sub-conscious are processes that make up consciousness that are outside the scope of our self-awareness (unless special techniques like meditation are used). When one starts thinking about the self, it is often easy to conclude that it is tied to memory. Memory, of course is something that science has addressed.
Afterall, if someone loves baseball, they might have fond memories of going to ball-games with their dad. A reasonable and probable explanation. So, if one could erase those memories from that persons brain, would they still love baseball? Is your identity stored in your memory… are your likes/dislikes/opinions/judgments/goods/bads simply your consciousness refering to a physical structure in your brain for a answer or emotional response?
A good question. In my own introspection, I’ve come across a problem with this. I can, from examining the history of myself, bring together reasonable conclusions to existence of some of my opinions/judgments/etc… aka aspects of my identity. There seems to be a direct correlation, but no where in my memory does there exist a discrete moment that created that aspect of my identity. It may be a sub-conscious memory.
Further, I should note that within my studies, I’ve noticed that “I” am not continuous. At different times I can notice which discrete aspects of my personality are interacting with my consciousness and building impetus for a particular action. Or which aspects are responsible for a particular emotional response.
There is also the question of free will, I have been speaking of responses, but there are choices as well. Anyhoo, the fact that I could create correspondances between my past and my identity, yet could not find specific memories, rather just trends was troubling. Because, without reference to specific data, I cannot state whether my interpretation is correct, or simply a “hindsight is 20/20”. Which is the causer, am “I” here and am “I” looking back and interpretting past events in a biased way to justify the existence of myself? Or am “I” here, because in the past “I” was the same person but I consistently chose in a direction, aka… when a event happened, I interpretted in a way that would continue to form “me”.
So, now, years removed, looking back I would see myself as a consequences of events that occured to me, rather than the production of my choices and my perception of events.
It seems to me that who “we” are is mostly sub-conscious habitual behavior. Whoever you are now, whether you were created as a response of external events, or by long forgotten choices, or a interaction of the two it will not be known. But, going forward, the only way to unravel the mystery of identity is to bring as much of the sub-conscious habitual behavior to the surface and examine it consciously. Of course, then there is the problem of examining a system while being within it. Much like the Heisenberg principle, because by observing your identity, you may be changing it.
I agree, problems of identity are the most perplexing, and for me, that most interesting within philosophy.