An Essay on Personal Identity by Sarah Kugler

We like to believe that we have identity through time, that the “me” of today is the same as the “me” of yesterday. Multiple theories of personal identity - the brain theory, the body theory, and the soul theory – support this view. They suggest that something remains constant throughout your life, and that consistency lends you a sense of self. The memory theory runs along similar lines; as long as you have the same memories as you did yesterday, you are the same person. Contrary to these ideas of self is the idea of the “river of selves,” which suggests that, rather than an enduring personal identity, we flow from moment to moment and self to self with similar fluidity.

One theory of personal identity, the memory theory, suggests that our concepts of self rise from our memories and emotional states. As we gain new memories and lose others, our identities shift. Our sense of self rises, over time, from our relationship to these memories and emotional states; as long as we have memory continuity from day to day, we retain a specific personal identity.

The memory theory contains strong similarities to other theories of personal identity, specifically the brain and body theories. They, like the memory theory, suggest that retention is vital for identity; however, they embrace the consistency of brain and body. The brain theory says you must have the same brain in order to be the same person, and the body theory makes an identical statement about the body. Somehow your brain or your body contains your identity, and that identity remains constant despite any changes which occur to either brain or body.

Another theory of personal identity is the soul theory. Basically, there is an intangible, non-physical thing within you. It remains constant through your entire life, never changing, and your identity rises from that sameness.

Whether keeping your soul or your memories, all the theories of personal identity suggest that retention matters. The body theory is easiest to observe visually, but it provides little explanation of which body parts are necessary for the preservation of personal identity. The brain theory fosters similar problems. Trying to gauge the sameness of a soul is qualitatively impossible because the soul is an intangible, unchanging, non-physical entity. Additionally, the memory theory brings its own set of problems. Imagine the conflict between a cloned person and the original person in terms of the memory theory. Both persons seem to have equal claim to their memories; however, there no unique identity exists.

The problems with all these theories of personal identity suggest that distinct, enduring personal identites, at least in the concrete terms we usually construe them, may not exist. This conclusion spurs the "river of selves" theory. It suggests that, because we gain new memories and experiances every moment, we are more like a constant flow of slightly differing persons. Each new self is a survivor of the selves that came before it, molded by their choices, ideas, and feelings. As the time between two selves increases, they become less similar. The you of an hour ago deviates only slightly from the you of this moment, but that deviation increases if we look at the you of a year ago or of ten years ago. This moment to moment changing makes us different persons. There is no “me” that persists through time, one could argue, because, though my selves overlap, they are not identical to one another. Nothing uniformly consistent underlies your being; you are just a river of selves, constatly flowing sucession of imperceptibly differing persons.

This river of selves theory also has issues, the major one of which is the difference between accidental and essential changes. Accidental changes do not end the existence of a thing; they are minor changes. An accidental change could be eating a peanut butter sandwich for lunch – your stomach now contains peanut butter and bread, and it did not before. Eating the sandwich did not alter you significantly enough to destroy the essence "you." Essential changes, conversely, alter their subjects so much that the original object does not survive. Imagine that you are extremely allergic to peanut butter, and you eat the sandwich. Your intense allergic reaction almost kills you, because of this jarring experience, you decide to dedicate your life to teaching kids about severe food allergies. That would be an essential change because it altered the previous course your life, ending your desire to be a philosophy professor and setting you on another path.

Exploring examples of strange cases helps us work through these theories of personal identity and types of changes. An example of a consistent being helps us understand our inconsistency, and that of a more fluid person depicts our constantly shifting selves. Dr. Manhattan from the graphic novel Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons exemplifies a nearly consistent being, and Eric from The Raw Shark Texts by Stephen Hall demonstrates the fluidity of identity.

Dr. Manhattan began as an ordinary human being, Jon Osterman, a nuclear scientist working for the United States government. In a freak accident, he became trapped in an Intrinsic Field Subtractor. The machine broke him down to a molecular level, and somehow, a version of his body reassembled itself a couple months later. However, this new body was not that of the original Osterman; this reassembled Jon possessed super powers. Among these powers was the ability to experience his past, present, and future simultaneously. Though Jon, renamed Dr. Manhattan, outwardly appears to move through life and time as a normal human, his inner experience reflects a constant awareness of everything that has happened to him and everything that will happen to him. Nothing surprises Dr. Manhattan, though he behaves otherwise, and readers realize his acute awareness of past and future through his narration. Because of this inner awareness, Dr. Manhattan’s personal identity nears the consistent identity we imagine for ourselves. We cannot see the future, so, even if we have plans or ideas of our future, some aspect of each experience will deviate from what we anticipate. Dr. Manhattan, on the other hand, knows exactly what will occur in each moment because he has already seen it. Everything proceeds as he foresees it going, and because of this, his personal identity never changes. Without new experiences or ideas to change him, Jon’s existence seems strange to us. He appears distant and detached from the other character’s reality. At one point, Jon comments that everyone is a puppet, but he is a puppet who can see the strings. This illustrates Jon’s skewed view of time and also demonstrates his deviation from normal human experience.

On the other end of the spectrum is Eric, the narrator of Stephen Hall’s novel The Raw Shark Texts. Rather than transitioning smoothly from one self to another, Eric experiences this shift in a rather jarring way. He wakes up in a coughing fit on the floor with no memory of his identity or his past. As the novel continues, Eric pieces together the story of who he was before he forgot everything. Much of Eric’s information comes from letters he receives from someone claiming to be “the First Eric Sanderson.” Apparently the First Eric Sanderson knew he would lose his memory; he wanted to preserve important information for the benefit of his future self, our narrator, the Second Eric Sanderson. As Eric 2 reads these letters, he learns about the character and personality of Eric 1. Though they share a body, Eric 2 never considers Eric 1 to be “the same” person as him. They do not share memories; therefore, according to the memory theory of personal identity, they are not the same person. The soul, body, and brain theories suggest that Eric 1 and Eric 2 are the same person because they are numerically identical.

Eric and Dr. Manhattan demonstrate interesting perspectives on personal identity despite their fictionality. Both characters deviate from traditional human experiences; Dr. Manhattan gains superpowers, and Eric mysteriously loses his memory. Despite these fantastical elements, aspects of their stories apply to reality.

Dr. Manhattan depicts the necessity of inconsistency. After getting stuck in the Intrinsic Field Subtractor and gaining super powers, he lost important human attributes, most obviously, the traditional human experience of time. Normal people cannot see into the future or perfectly remember the past; we live one moment at a time rather than experiencing every event of our lives simultaneously. Our status as changing creatures is vital to our humanity. Dr. Manhattan demonstrates that a nearly consistent self, someone aware of everything they have experienced and will experience, is impossible for a person. Experiences in the present do not change him because they have already altered him; by experiencing everything, he is changed by nothing. When Dr. Manhattan gained this stasis, he lost his humanity.

The example of Dr. Manhattan demonstrates that, though we may believe our selves to be fairly consistent, we remain distant from truly static beings. Some deeply ingrained attributes stay steady through our lives, but much of who we are shifts as we age and learn. If we were static, we would be more like Dr. Manhattan, beings going through the motions of life, but never deviating from the path set before us. We are inconsistent because that consistency conflicts with basic attributes of our humanity.

Eric’s experiences, rather than probing concepts of consistent human identity, propose a strange relationship between our past and present selves. Eric 1 and Eric 2 share a body, and, because of the stories Eric 1 imparts to Eric 2 through his letters, they almost share some memories. The more stories Eric 2 reads, the more he understands and identifies with the Eric that came before him. Eric 2 does not recall from his own experience what it was like to be in Greece with his girlfriend, for example; all he knows about it is what Eric 1 told him. Eric 2 does not know the trip’s minute details, what shoes he wore on the first Monday there or the color of the bedspread in their hotel. Nevertheless, he gains a faint picture of what it was like to be Eric 1, a picture similar to a memory of the distant past. To illustrate this, consider the relationship between a person at age 15 and that (numerically) same person at age 60. The 60-year-old possesses some of the memories of the 15-year-old, but many memories they would share have faded or been forgotten by the elder person. Some overlap remains between them, but with time, their connection waned.

Perhaps the connection between Eric 1 and Eric 2 nears the relationship between that person’s present self (the 15-year-old) and a self in their past or future (in this case, the 60-year-old.) A few shared memories and a body connect them, but for the most part, they are independent persons. Their goals and values differ, those of the elder person or Eric 2 partially influenced but not determined by those of the younger person or Eric. This progression of ideas and memories demonstrated by the Erics suggests that, in addition to being ever-changing beings, we are products of our former selves.

What are we, then? Do concepts of personal identity not apply to persons at all? Based upon Dr. Manhattan and Eric, some form of self endures through time, but it is not the static entity we usually imagine. This self is fluid, influenced by accidental and essential changes. As we move through time, learning, forgetting, and aging, our self almost imperceptibly changes. We are neither identical to nor wholly different from our past selves. As we grow further away from a specific self, our differences increase, but, as a survivor of that self, our connection never entirely ends.