There is a part that could be described as an operating configuration of molecules. While we would not welcome the loss of something as precious as an arm or a leg such a loss would not be called a loss of identity. While a loss of memory, if it was substantial enough, would be a loss of identity. Something that was me would be gone.
Our experiences only have substance with memory. Other people telling a story about what you did, even some kind of record, like a photograph or even a video taped event would seem unreal, like something that someone had merely made-up, if you had no corresponding memory.
Further if we accept a physicalist explination of how the mind operates then memory could eventually be duplicated in some medium outside of the brain. So if another being had the same memories as you to what degree would that being be you?
Like if a copy of your memories were inside of a robot how much would that robot be you?
Or to make matters more murky, if you were both able to copy memories and clone a being to a desired age, then used those abilities together, then to what degree would that clone, who had your same age, same genetics and with your same memories, be you?
Would you feel any loyalty or love towards your duplicate, or would you feel threatened by your non-uniqueness?
You say that a videotape would seem like a fake memory, unreal and made up. I don’t mean to trivialise, but you know when you get drunk, and you forget something, and your friends subtley remind you in the morning, that doesn’t seem unreal or made-up to me, even if i don’t have a corresponding memory. also you seem to be implying that if someone has amnesia they are no longer them, is this the case? i would argue not.
furthermore, i’m sure you’re familiar with the time old prince peasant debate… they swap bodies, but noone believes them when they say that they are not who they look like. if someone looking exactly like your best friend walked up to you, claiming to be someone else trapped in their body, you wouldn’t believe them, you’d probably think they’d gone slightly mad. I would suggest a lot of “being” is based around appearance.
as to whether the being had the same memories as me how much would it be me, i suppose that depends on how she reacted to the memories, me and my best friend share many memories, what makes them different is the perspective, would this new being have the same perspective as me? this kinda holds for the clone argument too…
i probably wouldn’t feel any love towards my duplicate, i wouldn’t know it, plus i find people have a tendancy to dislike people who are too similar to them, have you noticed this pattern in life? but i certainly wouldn’t feel threatened, it’s not like i’m completely original anyway, and plus, with the effects of envionment id know that from that day forward we would be different people cos we would do different things etc…
sara
what constitutes being? essence and potential to change(effect or be affected
While a loss of memory, if it was substantial enough, would be a loss of identity. Something that was me would be gone.
what if you played sports? would the loss of a limb be a change in potential and in tern limit you’re range of possibilities?
what if you were mentally handicapped in a car accident? would your family still know(recognize) you? your identity is you. human individuality is a fact of life.my identity is a result of my mind interacting with my environment in conjunction with my body. my sense of self stems from my perception. as i can sense myself as well as i can sense my environment. i also have the ability to form beliefs about what i experiance.this is reflection. i can remember thoughts as well as actions. thoughts can vary between a falsifiable nature and a good/bad nature. conceptualization of specific relationships paired with the affiirmation or denial of credability to the concept is what forms beliefs. some
issues are harder to conceptualize. some are taken as true/false and some as preference. some are put into action some not. you can never fully conceptualize what an actual or real experiance is like until you have experianced it yourself. a memory doesn’t cause you to feel the same as the past, unless you’re remembering doing something while doing it. having no memory would eliminate all belief forming. as i saind before, being is constituted by essence and potential to effect or be affected. nothing in the universe can be anything but itself. of course everything is changing even in the subtlest of ways. things effect other things.its the nature of our universe to change and fall into patterns.
So if another being had the same memories as you to what degree would that being be you?
we would share a particular memory of an experiance. that completely disregards the fact that each being is its own entity. with matter and/or energy. we are just mortal beings(needy beings) which have awareness and oppurtunities for change. our awareness and our beliefs motivate every action.
Would you feel any loyalty or love towards your duplicate, or would you feel threatened by your non-uniqueness?
to add a dash of reality; what makes people unique? my sense of self. where do i get my sense of self? from my awareness of environment and my bodies relation to it. where do i get my beliefs? from my experiances
what forms and stores these beliefs? my mind. what motivates any action? awareness of an oppurtunity to act on a plan of action and belief that this is the best current course of action.
I see now that I didn’t notice the aspect of idenity that is a social construct. To some extent you are who people all agree that you are. I am Xander to some degree because the people in my social matrix agree that I am Xander. So that if I no longer thought that I was Xander, but they still did, then to some degree I would be the same person, depite my inability to recognize it.
Yes, the consequence of my currently direction of thinking would lead me to accept that a person with amnesia is not the same person. My memories and my self-concept are more signifigant elements of my identity than my body. Anyone experiencing major amnesia would, to a significant degree, be a different person.
People forget things every day. Most of these are unimportant. Yet what about the accumulation of these? If we were able to compare what I remember today versus what I remembered 10 years ago or what I will remember 11 years from now, how might we describe that difference? To what degree am I same?
I might say that I am no different, but which elements of me really have changed? Those changes might have happened so gradually that I don’t consider them differences.
That shows how much we depend upon bodies to indicate the identities of others. It might be more instructive to consider what it would be like if you work up tomorrow and found yourself in a different body. Or imagine if you woke up to discover that ten years had passed of which you had no memory. How could you accept the deeds your body performed during that forgotten time? It would be much easier to concieve of those events as having been performed by another person.
Yet from the outside we are forced to respond to bodies. Bodies are most usually a good way to differentiate people. If the body of your best friend walked up to you claiming to be a different person you would question that statement. You have an accumulated investment in accepting that person as being a certain way.
There would be no way to immediately demonstrate that the person in that body was a different person. Anything they did differently from what you might attribute to artifice. Only after a continued expose to this person in your friend’s body might you come to accept this new identity as substantial.
This is the fundamental ontological question. To wit, a being is an existent. We generally conceive of Being as the totality of existence–and then comes the metaphysics: whether Being is finite, whether Being is comprehensible as such or only as appearances.
However, you seem to want to cut to the chase with this one: how is it that humans are granted this superfluity of being, “being yourself”? What is identity? To what degree does the self exist independently of the Being in which it is immersed? To attempt to draw a line here is missing the point: to precisely the degree we separate the self from existence, this is the degree to which we deny identity and divide our consciousness from reality. This gap between Being and appearances, since it participates in but is not Being, is nothing. As the next poster notes:
sarax:
Appearances constitute a reality in and of themselves. Being does not flinch before our observation: beyond sight and touch, the reality of existents is imperturbable yet ineffable. The primordial self-identification (“I am myself”) reifies this unalterable metaphysical division conceptually, simultaneously creating bonds between the self and being, transcending these bonds towards the absolute, finally destroying them through the limitations of subjectivity. Once again, sarax is right on the money:
If the self always interacts with Being through a unique perspective, then perspective IS the problem-- the double movement of self-identification reveals the finitude, the mortality of the subject, the infinite abyss which separates perception from reality, being from appearances. Closing this gap amounts to relinquishing our unique perspective: dying or not existing anymore. To resolve this disjunction we must resolve the fundamental disruption that self-awareness creates, the distinction between subject and object. Trevor asserts that Being is
I would ask what essence to which we are here referring. Is this essence absolute, is it subject to change? I would argue for universal impermanence, i.e., that being is in flux and undergoing constant change.
hmmm wanted to write more but i’ve got to run, catch you cats later -joe
If you’re moving, you’re alive…you’re a being. You’re breathing, your heart’s beating, your body’s going. You’re good. Why would the loss of a body part or memory take away from your being?
Mmk, yeah, you would. Does that take away from your being there without your leg? Living? Breathing? Not in the least. Now, losing your heart, on the other hand, would be much more tragic, would it not? The blood flow is gone, the oxygen is gone, you’re gone. It doesn’t have to do with memory, does it?
I looked back to the original post and Xander never suggests that a body part or memory takes away from your being. He clearly states, though, that a loss of memory takes away from your identity.
He’s asking if you put your memory into another being would it be apart of your being. That means he thinks memory makes your being but I say it doesn’t.
Memory connects a past, present and future being into a cohesive identity.
Genetic memory, as the sum of a beings historical becoming, and its individual memory, as the sum of its experiential past, constitutes the beings totality, as it exists in the past – in reflection – and often determines its future.
Hopefully this will end this, for it has gone too far already:
As you can see from the above passage, Xander says nothing about your being. He mentions that the loss of a memory would affect the being’s identity not the being itself.
Thus, memory makes the being’s identity, not the being.
I find this discussion and the questions almost kind of disconnected… much of the arguments seem more for the identity and uniqueness of the being and not the being itself…
To define a being is not the same as to define the identity and therefore uniqueness of the being which it seems like he is trying to argue in the second part of what extent of a shared memory would be the same being…
so although it is much harder to come up with a solid definition to the first question I feel that the seocnd is much more easily answered… the entity would be a separate being if it could be classified as such… the identity though may be similar though
Awareness, for me at least, seems to imply a knowledge of the semantic meanings of different ‘commands’ caused by an agent. So in other words I wouldn’t say that a calculator is ‘aware’ in that (if we are to follow Searle’s Chinese room argument) the input from your fingers is an unknown concept to which the calculator ‘recognizes’ at an aesthetic level and manipulates according to a set of logarithms.
What Searle was too stubborn to admit is that memory is pretty much all that is needed for semantic knowledge to develop. So if you were to ask me ‘are our computers aware’? I’d say yes… to a certain extent, after a certain amount of time.
You leave Searle in that room for long enough, he’s gonna learn fucking chinese.