Kripke on 'I'

Ideally, when ‘I’ am ostended, we desire to pick out the necessary factors of my being who I am, and in that, only one of me. More clearly put, for someone to refer to me they intend to point verbally to the one thing that fulfills all of the criteria of my identity. Is there something that can be established from this position about how we assign identity. It would appear primarily that a position like this is almost entirely question begging. I have assumed a definition of identity, based on the nature of a person, in order to assert that a person has an identity. Below I will attempt to put this objection more clearly.

Firstly, in a discussion of personal identity, I desire to know if there is any such thing as personal identity. On the basis of this information I can discover how to apply my knowledge – how to point to something and then later to the same thing by performing the same action, i.e. by using a proper name to pick out person. In the argument briefly outlined above, someone can point to me by knowing that I fulfill the criteria of being me, and on that basis define identity.

However, this argument does lead to a method of pointing to the same individual through time with some universal designation. This designation is formulated as a rigid designator. A rigid designator is essentially a proper name (it can also be a ‘natural kind term’, but that is not important for my discussion). Importantly, a rigid designator, once established, will always be ostentation to the same individual. Kripke sets forward this idea in ‘Naming and Necessity’.

This works initially by setting up a modal system on the basis of possible worlds. If we consider an individual, they have necessary and accidental properties. More abstractly, we can consider that in every possible world where I consider that individual, they will have the same combination of necessary properties, but different combinations of accidental properties. This is not to say that there are a multitude of actual other worlds. Instead this is designed to signify that every time I perceive of a thing, there are some things that it must always retain, and other things that I can consider may be different. An example of this can be found if I consider, say, a bench. When I look at that bench I can see that it is made of wood, has four legs and sits just so in the room. In this world, that is how I can identify the bench. For all of the properties of the bench, there are some that are necessary and some that are contingent. Necessary properties are such that to change them would change the ‘identity’ of the object itself. Properties that are accidental can be different and leave the original nature of the individual unchanged. So the possible worlds argument requires this; for any object (‘thing’) it has some necessary properties – things that are the same of that object in every possible world, where that object actually exists – and some contingent properties – properties of the object that occur in only a portion of all possible worlds.

Through convention a person is assigned a name, and importantly, that name is a rigid designation. To this end, if we refer to someone by name then we are guaranteed to pick out the person to whom that name refers in every possible world, where that person exists.

But what if we are not pointing to the individual directly, instead we are referring to their memories, or their social status (to take an example from chapter 1 & 2 respectively). In this way the name that we are using is a description of that person, not an ostentation. Kripke calls this a non-rigid designator, and importantly here, non-rigid designator’s do not pick out the same individual in all conceivable cases. Identity, in its form of being an object identical with itself cannot hold here. In essence, we can assign a name, which we then define to be identical with itself in our use of that name within language. However, there is no way in which we can describe an individual which leads to this same result. It would appear that in language, identity is simply convention.

Wittgenstein on 'I'

What if the importance of our Personal Identity is entirely a semantic one, is it only necessary to assign such a notion, in order to be able to formulate a language of it. Or rather, the concept ‘Personal Identity’ is one aspect of the way we use the word ‘I’. More radically, is it possible that this concept has arisen from a confused use of the word. Semantically, it may be that the word ‘I’ has more than one role in out language, and in confusion of these roles a deeper concept has been applied. My argument for this position will relate to the form of a previous exposition of the ‘me’/’mine’ distinction as seen in Dewey.

Wittgenstein wrote on the nature of words, their use in our language and the plurality of their designation.
“Do we use a hammer in two different ways when we hit a nail with it and, on the other hand, drive a peg into a hole? And do we use it in two different ways…when we drive this peg into this hole and, …, another peg into another hole? Or should we only call it different uses when in one case we drive something into something and in the other, say, we smash something? Or is all this using the hammer in one way and is it to be called a different way only when we use the hammer as a paper weight?…”

Not only is it possible that we place the meaning of a word in a multitude of ways, but it is also possible that even this understanding does not give us an accurate representation of a words use.

There are two modes of plurality, on the one hand it is possible to use a single word and have it cohere with two distinct meanings - “‘cleave’ is only used for chopping things up or also for joining them together”. In this case the important aspect of meaning is the words use in language, it has been used in both of these ways. No decision has been made about our system of language use in this case. The other circumstance of plurality relates to the use of words like ‘thought’, ‘altus’ and ‘I’. The question surrounding this problem is one of distinction, is ‘thought’ used in the same way in both the phrase “conscious thought” and the phrase “unconscious thought”. ‘Altus’ can be both deep or high, are these two different uses. In the statement “I have broken my arm”, ‘I’ has a different meaning than in the statement “I have toothache”. Wittgenstein draws a distinction between these two uses of ‘I’, the former being of ‘the use as object’ and the latter being of ‘the use as subject’.

The object ‘I’ can be used in statements which can ordinarily be verified. The possibility of mistake is taken into consideration. External parties can view the situation and assign a truth value to the proposition. It would seem to be the case that in the ‘use as object’ a proper name can be substituted for the word ‘I’, salve veritate. The sentence is merely designed to refer to the object – person – who is making the statement.

In ‘use as subject’, ‘I’ means something more abstract. It is not possible to verify the statement, it would make no sense to request confirmation “are you sure it is you who feel pains?”. Here we see an important conclusion, in making such a statement, it is not possible that I mistake another for myself. Whenever I use the word ‘I’ as subject, I self-refer. In this way ‘I’ is ostensive, the exact equivalent of pointing to myself, if the word is uttered by me.

“The word ‘I’ does not mean the same as ‘L.W.’ even if I am L.W., nor does it mean the same as the expression ‘the person who is now speaking’. But that doesn’t mean: that ‘L.W.’ and ‘I’ mean different things. All it means is that those words are different instruments in our language.”

Chapter 2 : Chapter 2: What else might we be.

Since ideas of simple continuation are so wrong, in terms of analysis of Personal Identity, it is time to look elsewhere for a satisfactory description of what it is to be ‘me’. In this chapter I will explore the other things that we might be. By looking outwards it may be possible to build up a picture of a person to whom we can assign a Personal Identity.

What if we are merely the collection of the things that make us who we are? Or rather, all we can claim to be is the total of things we have achieved. Sheena MacDonald seems to be of this opinion, shown in her recent documentary for the BBC. After suffering a serious injury in a car accident, she was in a coma and at that time doctors considered that she would be left with serious, and in fact almost total, brain damage. However, Miss MacDonald feels that she is the same person now as she ever was. Clearly continuity cannot apply in this case, as she does not recall almost all of her recovery time in hospital. However, Sheena MacDonald does express that there may be more to a person than their memories. Throughout the documentary, we are brought to the conclusion that she is her work, the clothes that she wears and her relationships. This position seems to be fairly synonymous with that of William James.

In his essay “the consciousness of self” James explains an important distinction, between ‘me’ and ‘mine’. It is possible that we confuse this distinction, and call ourselves ‘us’ when we should be referring to ‘ours’; are our bodies ‘us’, or are they just ‘ours’. If we can blur this distinction in this case, is it possible that we assign identity of a self to the wrong aspect of us. More specifically, it is a mistake to think that I am independently me, with an identity that can be isolated. Instead, my ‘self’ is a combination of the factors that I can define and apply in combination to only me. James forms a hierarchy of ‘constituents’;
“…a mans self is the sum total of what he can call his, not only his body and his psychic powers, but his clothes and his house, his wife and children, his ancestors and friends, his reputation and works, his land and horses and bank account.”
The purely material aspect of this theory is relatively un-problematic, it is easy to see how a specific combination of things can relate to a specific body, and be confused with the identity of that body – and called self. However, the second level of constituents are those of relations to peers, my social self. Even James concedes that here there is likely to be a plurality of self – we are thought of differently by different sets of people, lovers, work associates, and distantly referring fame. We are clearly different people in either of the first two situations, however the third needs clarification. Fame can be brought about by many things, and if I am famous for something, it is likely that I will be globally famous for just that one thing. In this case I am known of as a single self. It is also possible that I am not known directly in this circumstance, merely by convention that I am the inventor of such-and-such – my name becomes synonymous with me, and my fame. I will discuss this problem fully in a later chapter.

The key idea here is that of a depth of self, arising from objects that belong to me, and the feelings that I have about them. Since I am only ever a combination of my possessions it would be easy to assign a continuing personal identity even if my possessions and achievements change. My tendency to believe in a superceding identity, that which I call ‘me’ is obviated by the set up in which I have ‘self feelings’, emotions directly brought about by the objects that are ‘mine’. My character arises from these feelings and the actions they prompt, which in turn will have an effect on my peer-self.

Our spiritual self is necessarily reflective, upon all of the components of our material and behavioral self;
“…of our having become able to think of subjectivity as such, to think ourselves as thinkers.”

At this point Dewey steps in to concur about a distinction between mind and body, the dualism of ‘mind’ and ‘action’. For Dewey;
“‘mind’ denotes every mode and variety of interest in, and concern for, things: practical, intellectual and emotional… …always used with respect to situations, events, objects, persons and groups.”
Dewey concentrates on the ‘idiomatic sense of mind’ and isolates the ways in which we use the word in our ordinary language. Through an extended discussion in his essay ‘Mind and consciousness’ Dewey reaches the conclusion that ‘To Mind’ plays an important role, and the use of the word is a key signifier in our language.
“Mind is primarily a verb. It denotes all the ways in which we deal consciously and expressly with the situations in which we find ourselves.”
However, this use of a word to denote intellectual activity, affection and volition has been confused with ‘Mind’ the independent thing “which attends, purposes, cares, notices…”

· separation of mind from environment in which it has meaning
· separation of mind from body, rather than component.
· Idiomatic sense of substantial – “distinct from metaphysical substance, there is something substantial about mind”
· “whenever something is undergone in consequence of a doing, the self is modified”
· “attitudes and interests are built up which embody in themselves some deposit of the meaning of things done and undergone”
· there is an active background of mind that drives “formed out of commerce with the world and set towards that world”

Chapter 1: How we [mistakenly] picture ourselves.

Common theories of personal identity are based on principles of continuity. If we are to have an unchanging Identity how is this possible, how does it manifest itself. In essence, we can easily see continuity in two ways. Physically and physiologically. Physical continuity is simply the notion that we occupy a ‘chunk’ of the three dimensional space that is the world. We move around in it but at no time do we disappear from it. This is the idea of our physical presence in the world, and the continuity of a body that we associate to be ours. Does this hold even if we are sleeping or otherwise unconscious, or if we lose a limb? In answer to the former, yes. The important issue here is the continuity of a body, and secondarily our association to it, we do not disintegrate while we are sleeping, and so our physical continuity is maintained. The latter point is more complicated to decipher. Take as an example an analogy to a broom. The broom consists simply of a handle (a long straight stick) and a head (a bunch of smaller sticks). If either the handle or the head is lost it would be difficult for us to maintain the presence of the ‘broom’ as a single entity. Now consider the broom to be a compilation of one large stick and a collection of many smaller sticks. In this case, the loss of the handle will still cause the essential loss of the broom, however, a fairly large proportion of the smaller sticks can be lost before the broom is reduced to just a broom handle. Here the presence of the broom as a continuous physical entity is maintained in more circumstances. The final case study to be considered for this analogous case requires the latter definition of a broom (a composite of many small and one large stick). Consider that I require to clean my broom, or put to use all of the smaller sticks in some other task. I now dismantle my broom completely, and perform the task with the smaller sticks. At all times I ensure that no sticks have been lost, and at some point in the future, re-build a broom with the components. Is it still my broom?

Psychological Continuity an account from Locke.
“…yet it is plain, consciousness, as far as ever it can be extended- should it be to ages past- unites existences and actions very remote in time into the same person, as well as it does the existences and actions of the immediately preceding moment: so that whatever has the consciousness of present and past actions, is the same person to whom they both belong.”

The first case of the Psychological Criterion is that of the existence of a ‘soul’, that a purely mental entity, which behaves, for our purpose, in much the same way as the physical body. From Locke;
“[The self] is that conscious thinking thing, … which is sensible, or conscious of pleasure and pain, capable of happiness or misery and so is concerned for it[self] as far as that consciousness extends.”

This arbitrarily assigned notion is easily as problematic as that of the continuity of a physical body. Additionally so given that it is, by nature, non-visible. The idea of a ‘soul’ or sense of unifying ‘self-ness’ is characteristic as a supposed solution to the problems of physical continuity discussed above. It is simply not possible for an arbitrarily assigned idea to assist in any truth one to the other. The invention of the ‘self’ aids neither the cause of the physical criterion, nor that of the psychological criterion.

A more complex example of the psychological criterion makes reference to our experiences and consequently our memories. Another look at Locke for an example of this idea. In essence his idea stands thus; Memories are the connective components of that which distinguishes the ‘self’. Remote memories are just as connective as recent memories, their simultaneous presence signifies the existence of a continuous ‘self’. This ‘self’ can be housed in any substance (any physical body). [I will cover briefly the method by which he arrives at this conclusion although it is not vital to my project.]

How am I my memories?
P(1) – Experiences which I have had in the past are components of what it is to be ‘me’
P(2) – My memories are mnemonic traces of experiences which I have had in the past
ß (3)
C(4) – The memories of these component experiences confirm my continued existence as an ‘I’

Proposition (1) is clearly an independent statement of fact. We can hold the principle that “experiences are components of what is it to be me” even if we cannot maintain and principles of ‘self’ or unchanging ‘essences’.

According to Locke, it is not possible to contradict statement (2) although there is a very simple opposition to this view. I have many apparent memories of things that did not, in fact, happen to me, or, occurred while I was not aware of them. The first conjecture is easily explained, I can have memories of very vivid dreams, for example. There is no doubt that the dream is something I experienced, but the occurrences within it I did not. My memory of, for example building a shed repeatedly in a dream, is not a memory of something that I experienced consciously. It is a memory of a fiction. The latter instance of ‘false’ memory, is typified by the following example. I have an accident, and fall into a coma. It is known that there are various stages to this recovery process. Initially I am fully unconscious, unaware of my surroundings and supported, more often than not, by machines that control my bodily functions. The second stage of recovery is exemplified by my waking, and apparently holding conversations and being aware of my surroundings. During this phase it is known that nearly all short term memory functions are failing. It is possible for me to have conversations that I will not remember moments after the discussion has ended, while during the debate I appear knowledgeable and coherent. This phase is followed by the return of short term mnemonic functions. I can now recall conversations and my part played in them, however I have no memory of the preceding stage. As I recover fully (I shall assume that I do) a friend tells me of conversations we have had while I was in the second phase. Many years later I seem to recall these conversations, however it is not possible for me to truly have any recollection of them. I have no experience of these events, even though they may have occurred to me, and so memory as experience reference is not in effect.

In light of this it is no longer possible for us to readily accept the conclusion (4). It is tempting to believe that there is an extra stage to the argument, ready and waiting to be slotted in to place at (3). For example ‘Memories are necessarily linked through time one to the next and so on’ Although this clearly will not do, it is simply not the case. Something as simple as sleeping would break the chain unless it counts that I have a memory of sleep. Although this would be countered by the same reasoning as the objections to (2), in that I ‘fill in’ the gap with a thought that I imagine to be a memory.

Or indeed I fill this gap with something else. Is it possible that by convention a continuous identity is assigned to an object that is fundamentally non-continuous. For example, I assign an unchanging Identity to the thing that I call ‘I’, even though I am quite clearly different now than I was as a child.

I refer the reader back to a previous section, on physical continuity, and the example about a broom. Hume, has this to say on the matter;
“Identity depends on the relations of ideas; and these relations produce identity by means of that easy transition they occasion”
There are three key themes that must be extracted from Hume in the section “Of Personal Identity” in A Treatise of Human Nature for my project. According to Hume all three of these things are aspects of fault in our assignation of continual Personal Identity. Firstly ideas of proportional, physical change can be miss-leading in that if the changes are small enough we will be want to disregard their importance. Secondly, there is an important distinction between numerical and physical identicality. Parfit picks up on this idea and to some extent the ideas merge at this point. Lastly Hume notes that gradation of change leads our inclination to declare no change at all. All three of these ideas leads to the claim above, namely that Identity is assigned as independent and continuous falsely, and instead such a thing must be discovered through the relation of all of its component properties.

Proportional, physical changes.
This is primarily a problematisation for notions of Personal Identity from physical continuity. The argument can be expressed succinctly thus; Take a mass of matter, for example a sand dune. I assign to this an essence, or Identity, as long as it appears to me to be unchanging. During the time of observation some of the sand is removed, (xlb for example) not enough that I notice the change. As such, I maintain that it has kept its original identity. Take a second mass of matter, this time a mound of salt in a bowl. In a similar fashion, this is assigned its identity as it appears to be unchanging. The same amount of salt is removed – xlb. This makes a significant difference to the mound of salt, and so I remove its original Identity and assign a new one. It is therefore vital to the notion of personal identity that the changes are proportional to the original.
Is it really possible for something to change and still hold the same identity.
“T’will be impossible to account for this, but by reflecting that objects operate on the mind, and break or interrupt the continuity of its actions not according to their real greatness, but in proportion to each other…”
Now it is possible to connect these two modes of continuation together, this extra step could be filled in relation to physical continuity.