The Self, Supervenience and Personal Identity

Roland G. Alexander

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9780429772740
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

First published in 1997, this volume addresses the issue of personal identity by examining the possibility that a person is ascribed identity on the basis of having a supervenient self. Ronald G. Alexander uses the methods of non-eidetic phenomenology and analytic ontology to argue that the self is supervenient on the physical and psychological properties of the human being. Understood through the manner Alexander advocates, the self is not a statis entity, but reflects the temporal nature of the person. Alexander argues that the self is the 'pattern', 'character', or 'narrative identity' that is the outcome of a person's decision-making and actions.

1 Introduction

The problem of personal identity has received considerable attention from philosophers for the past three decades. For the last two decades the discussion has been intensified because of Derek Parfit's arguments supporting his thesis that it is not personal identity in one's survival that matters but rather some degree of 'psychological continuity'. The latter can be understood as involving chains of overlapping memory experiences, intentional acts and results, and mental contents such as beliefs or desires that are not merely momentary.¹ Although I do not address directly the problem of personal identity as framed by Parfit, an underlying theme in this essay is that Parfit's understanding of the nature of personhood and of the self is attenuated. Although Parfit is concerned about the implications of the concept of personal identity for morality, he does not seem to see the importance of values, social roles, and the person's orientation to tensed time as essential elements involved in the reidentification of a person.

In contrast, it is my contention in this essay that it is the self understood as a 'pattern' or 'narrative identity' or dynamic 'Gestalt' that arises from the physical and psychological properties that serves as the basis for ascribing personal identity to ourselves and others. Further, I will argue that personal identity is a dynamic concept, i.e., a concept that involves an interpretation of the self as being a diachronic, supervenient 'abstract particular' or 'trope'. Moreover, the self, serving as the basis for the attribution of personal identity to human beings, cannot be understood apart from the influences coming to bear upon it from society in terms of values and customs. Those who treat the problem of personal identity as merely being a problem of how one and the same thing (a human being) can retain its identity over time in spite of internal and external changes taking place in respect to that being are destined to experience frustration if the frame of reference in which they operate is dictated by the model of non-conscious concrete particulars. Human beings that bear personhood are not mere 'lumps of meat'. Therefore, the problems attending the identity or reidentification of non-animate things, though having a bearing upon personal identity, are increased in number when one tries to understand what it is that allows us to reidentify a person.

In the following chapters, I will not produce a survey of the history of the problem of personal identity. This has been done many times in recent years. For example, Harold W. Noonan's Personal Identity is a very fine survey. Another helpful and recent survey is Problems in Personal Identity by James Baillie. A rather lengthy anthology edited by Daniel Kolak and Raymond Martin provides a representative sampling of recent literature on the subject. My intention in this essay is to attempt to account for the continued persistence of the belief in the concept of personal identity in spite of this concept having been called into question by David Hume and, in this century, by Derek Parfit and others. In Chapter II, I set the stage for the identification of that which serves as the basis for personal identity by indicating some of the challenges to this concept which, however, do not result in the dismissal of the everyday use of the concept. Instead of assuming that the person in the street is simply misguided in this matter, I search for a plausible reason why the notion of personal identity is retained.

As already indicated, I believe that the 'self understood as a supervenient trope (abstract particular) is that which provides a basis for a person's reidentification over time. However, as a trope the self should not be understood as a static, timeless quality but as that which serves as the 'pattern' or 'narrative identity'² of the life of the person bearing that self. As such, the self can only be understood in terms of the temporality of the person. However, the groundwork for the latter point must be laid. Thus, Chapter III contains an exposition of the concept of supervenience as it must be understood in its role of depicting the relationship between the self and its subvenient properties, viz., the physical and psychological properties of the human individual that give rise to the self. However, the concept of supervenience itself needs a defense, and a specific kind of supervenience must be identified in order to serve in the role suggested.

To make my case, I must rely on recent literature that has discussed the body-mind problem in terms of the mind being a supervenient family of properties dependent upon the body (brain) and argue for the self being that which supervenes upon both the physical and the mental. The kind of supervenience that would support my version of the self, however, must be an asymmetrical and not a biconditional type of supervenience because the latter is extremely reductive in its implications. Thus, one must confront the work of Jaegwon Kim, who indeed asserts that supervenience must be understood as being biconditional. I perform an analysis of John Post's work on supervenience which supports the asymmetrical thesis, but Post's final position on the type of supervenience that is appropriate for the mind's dependency on die body is too weak for my understanding of the nature of the self.

In Part I of Chapter IV, I take a brief look at the work of George Stout and Donald Williams, two of the twentieth century's early proponents of abstract particulars. In doing so, however, my method is dialectical rather than merely expository. One of the major issues confronting the defender of abstract particulars is the necessity of the use of 'resemblance' in his/her interpretation of 'universals'. Thus, a worthy opponent of resemblance is Panayot Butchvarov, and I must counter his objections to a sufficient degree that the plausibility of the use of resemblance in respect to the classification of properties is defended against the concept of identity.

In Part II of Chapter IV, I defend the metaphysical nature of the self treated as a supervenient trope. Both Butchvarov and Keith Campbell provide useful contributions to this concept of the self, but both also raise serious questions about supervenience that demand a response before I can continue the analysis of the self. Butchvarov's 'cluster of qualities' notion and Campbell's 'tropes' provide support for my understanding of the self as a supervenient property. Yet, both philosophers are somewhat dubious about the necessity of appealing to the concept of supervenience in order to undertake an adequate analysis of abstract properties. I try to show that the dynamics of the self as a trope do not fit the traditional understanding of properties and that supervenience provides the proper conceptual vehicle for these dynamics. As will be seen, I cannot simply treat the self as an abstract property or universal per se inasmuch as any self has a uniqueness that would be lost if treated as a universal.

The contents of Chapter V serve as a necessary prelude to Chapters VI, VII, and VIII in the sense that the latter three chapters provide an analysis of the self as that which figures prominently in the person's being as it unfolds itself in time. Decision-making is one of the hallmarks of personhood, and thus in Chapter V I try to make a case, again relying upon portions of the body-mind literature, for the selfs role in the causal process of intention and action – a process we understand as taking place within a physical context. Chapter V focuses on the problem of how the self can be an abstract particular and still have causal efficacy.

In Chapter VI, I try to show how the person is temporal through and through and how an existentialistic or phenomenological analysis of time must be taken into consideration in respect to the problem of personal identity. As the theme progresses in Chapter VI, it becomes clear that the temporality of the self is not simply a private or individualistic matter. Rather, the self of the person does not arise solely from the individual but is also a product of the individual's interchange with society. Temporality and community are not separable components of personhood because the 'role' one plays out in his/her life (temporality) is in large measure a role provided by the community. G. H. Mead's work in respect to the social construction of the self is very helpful here if it is supplemented with a Sartrean understanding of consciousness.

Chapter VII continues the theme of the social self but with Ernst Tugendhat's interpretation of Mead's work serving as a transition (and as an improvement over Heidegger's understanding of the selfs relationship to other selves) to Paul Ricoeur's ethical interpretation of the self. Ricoeur's work in turn is an improvement over that of Tugendhat's in that his emphasis upon values and community impacting upon the self is put in the context of the concept of 'narrative identity'. The latter is a way of talking about my notion of how the self helps constitute the person in a 'dynamic' way. Ricoeur performs an analysis of narrative identity within the context of the problem of personal identity and with Parfit's contribution to the discussion in mind. In fact, Ricoeur challenges Parfit at certain points but seems to capitulate to Parfit unnecessarily in the end. Re that as it may. Ricoeur's analysis of the self as 'narrative identity' incorporates both the temporality of the self stressed in Chapter VI and the social-ethical component stressed by Tugendhat. What emerges here, then, is the self as a supervenient trope but understood as the 'theme' or 'character' of the person's immersion in temporality.

In Chapter VIII, the relationship between the self and consciousness is explored. These two features of the person are not identical in function. Again, Mead and Sartre are very helpful in the examination of this relationship. Sartre's view of consciousness is an improvement upon Mead's even though the latter's position on the role of society in respect to the self is more helpful than Sartre's. I conclude the chapter with a brief look at Robert Nozick's analysis of the selfs 'self-synthesis'. Much of what Nozick has to say in this regard is instructive and supportive of my view of the self as a supervenient trope, but unfortunately he backs off from endorsing this approach. I think that he would have been more supportive of this concept of self if he had kept separate the functions of self and consciousness, and if he had treated universals as abstract particulars.

Finally, in Chapter IX, I try to show that the philosophical demise ol personal identity as generated by Parfit was misguided from the beginning because of his careless use of thought experiments. The thought experiments devised by Parfit have unfortunately shaped the direction of much of the recent discussion on the problem of personal identity. I do not claim that thought experiments should be banned in the analysis of concepts. For example, the discussions emerging from Putnam's 'Brain-in-a-Vat' and Searle's 'Chinese Room' experiments have been very fruitful. However, one must not let the thought experiment lose significant contact with the background conditions that serve as the context for the phenomenon under consideration. I contend that Parfit is guilty of this error. Of course, the point of using imaginative variation in respect to the properties of a phenomenon being investigated is to gain a better understanding of the nature of the phenomenon. But this cannot be accomplished if the background conditions are arbitrarily varied as well.

A word about the use of terminology is in order at this point. I have tried with great care not to use the terms 'person', 'human individual', 'human being', 'self', and 'consciousness' as synonyms. The term 'person' is not equivalent to the term 'self'. Neither is 'human being' nor 'human individual' nor 'individual' equivalent to 'person'. I use the term 'person' as signifying the human being or human individual that satisfies Dennett's six conditions of personhood with the added qualification that a person is necessarily 'temporal' as well. A human being (human individual or individual) is not necessarily a person. 'Human being', 'human individual', and 'individual' are terms used to refer merely to the organic, physical being of a person. The term 'self' refers to the 'character' or 'pattern' or 'narrative identity' that characterizes a particular person. But the term 'self'is not equivalent to the term 'consciousness' because the person bearing a specific self can be aware, to a certain extent, of the nature of its 'character' or 'narrative identity'. Furthermore, none of the preceding terms should be understood as being equivalent to 'transcendental ego'. The admonitions of Sartre against this are well taken; one must guard against an implicit idealism.

Notes

¹ Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), 204 ff.

² A term taken from Paul Ricoeur. It suggests that the self is the product of one's interpretation of his/her life based on imaginative variant readings of personal decisions, cultural influences, and moral choices.

2 A brief look at the problem of personal identity

It is probably safe to say that the concept of personal identity is in a state of disarray. If the present philosophical endeavors in respect to an analysis of the nature of personal identity are any indication of the actual existence of something called personal identity, then Hume's perspective on the issue should not only be respected but honored as a negative method of investigation; i.e., since personal identity does not exist, there is no point in trying to discern its nature.

Nevertheless, there is something haunting about the notion of personal identity such that it seems to provoke constant renewals of investigations of the concept. Undoubtedly, during the era of Locke and Descartes, the concern about personal identity had its source in religious doctrine. That is to say, how can one be sure that eternal rewards or punishments are meted out to the right person(s)?¹ If a person changes both mentally and physically in a myriad of ways throughout a lifetime, then is the child the same as the subsequent middle-aged person, and is the middle-aged person the same as the subsequent elderly man or woman? Moreover, what does it mean for a person to persist in time when so many changes occur to that being? Thus, is it fair that the elderly person suffer eternal damnation for the 'mortal' sins committed by her youthful predecessor? Or, should the youthful predecessor receive the benefit of an eternal reward due to the supererogatory efforts of its elderly successor?

So Locke referred to the issue of personal identity as being of forensic concern² Such a concern in his day and age was directed to a person's existence spanning more than an earthly time-line. However, we in our day may still have a forensic concern about personal identity that is directed solely to our earthly span of existence even without a religious basis for that concern. (That is not to say that some persons today do not have the same concern for an afterlife evidenced during Locke's era.) Indeed, we can be concerned about mundane rewards or sanctions being meted out justly to a still living human being. For example, should Miss B be sentenced to life imprisonment for her part in a grisly murder that occurred three years ago? Miss B has changed considerably in the interim. She no longer is constituted by many of the cells that composed her body three years ago – not to mention the vast number of molecular changes that have occurred in her cells within the last hour. Further, during the three-year period from her commission of the crime to the day of sentencing, Miss B has undergone many and severe noticeable psychological changes. Some of these changes are: Her memory of the crime has dimmed, she has appropriated a belief in the respect for human life that was not part of her psychological make-up prior to the crime, and she now has feelings of guilt that were not in evidence until a year after the crime. It cannot be said of Miss B at this time that she is identical in all respects to the person who committed the heinous crime of three years ago. Thus, is it just for the present Miss B to be sentenced harshly on the basis of the acts performed by the former Miss B?

So, there can be judicial (and, more broadly, forensic) reasons for defending the existence of personal identity apart from religious reasons or concerns. Regardless of Hume's philosophical arguments against the existence of personal identity, we must contend with the persistence of the commonsensical tendency to identify the present Miss B with the Miss B of three years ago for no other reason than to be able to make an identification. Q: 'Is this the same person you knew as Miss B three years ago?' A: 'Yes'. Q: 'But, how can you make this claim? This person has changed molecularly, physiologically, and psychologically in a significant way in each case. She is undoubtedly a different person now from what she was three years ago?' A: 'I don't know about all that, but she is the same person'. Of course, no attorney for the defense would use such an argument (though Clarence Darrow attempted to defend Loeb and Leopold by espousing determinism). Our brief dialogue, of course, illustrates the fact that the person on the street refuses to give up the notion of personal identity in spite of obvious changes taking place between the person of yesterday and that of today.

Most of us would also refuse to give up the notion of our own personal identity even though we are willing to acknowledge the truth of a statement such as 'I am not the man/woman I used to be'. We are beings who have memories that seem to belong to us rather than simply being impersonal historical events. My memory, for some reason, means more to me than does a memory belonging to John Doe. (Witness my willingness to watch slides of my trip as opposed to my unwillingness to watch slides of John Doe's trip.) So we seem...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• 1 Introduction
• 2 A brief look at the problem of personal identity
• 3 Searching for the proper kind of supervenience
• 4 The supervenient self and its relationship to tropes
• 5 Supervenience and action
• 6 The self, time, and the community
• 7 The self and narrative identity
• 8 Consciousness and the self
• 9 A major problem with Parfit
• 10 Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index