Personal Identity and Moral Responsibility - Essay Example

?Personal Identity and Moral Responsibility A Research Proposal Submitted By: Background of The Research Study It seems that one of the most self-evident ideas that one may have is the idea of the self. Yet when one tries to examine the self directly, the idea becomes elusive. We think of the self as a whole, but the manifestation of the self can be seen in fragments. We think of the self as something enduring, yet it seems changing from moment to moment. Personal identity seems to be a crucial foundation for some of the most important aspects of human existence. How do I know that the person who committed the crime twenty years ago is the same person now? How do I know that the person I’m with now is the same person I fell in love with several years ago? All these questions rest on the survival of persons through time. For my purpose, let’s focus on moral responsibility. It is said that personal identity questions and ethical questions are related in some way. For example, suppose that there is a man who was about to be executed for murder, we will call him Robert. Robert was born in extreme poverty, and while growing up, he was mercilessly beaten up by his own father. He turned to alcohol and drugs at an early age and he was involved in a variety of crimes: rape, assault, and theft. When he was around thirty, he went on a killing spree. He robbed a convenience store and killed the cashier and two other innocent people who just happened to be there. There were witnesses that could testify of the crime and the evidence was sufficient. Robert was arrested, convicted, and sentenced to die. Let’s say that twenty years later, Robert’s execution had finally arrived. But by then, he had changed. He was on medication that controlled his anger. He then became quiet, gentle, respectful, and thoughtful. His main pastimes, rather than getting into fights with other inmates in his earlier years in prison, are reading science fiction and the Bible. He said to have found God during his stay in prison and became a Christian. He would even preach about God in his spare time. He looked, according to his inmates, more cheerful than ever. He has a clean-shaven appearance and a peaceful aura which made him look younger even though he has aged; this was a far cry from his unkempt, worn-out form when he first entered the prison. Robert was a “different man” and he claimed that he has been “out of his mind” when he committed those crimes. As a judge, how would you decide the case? How do you know that the person who committed the crime twenty years ago is the same person as the person who is described as a quiet, gentle, respectful, and thoughtful man? Is Robert, the “different man,” still accountable to the actions that he had committed when he has been “out of his mind”? Discussions of ethical issues are not limited inside classrooms. These issues could be seen and heard everywhere. We live with these issues; it is present every single day of our lives. Problems of Personal Identity Personal identity theories deal with the ultimate questions of our own existence. There is no single problem of personal identity; rather it is a wide range of loosely connected questions. Eric Olson (2010) identified eight main problems of personal identity. “Who am I?” (Uniqueness) One’s personal identity is said to be that thing or property or a set of properties, which makes one the person one is. This set of properties is referred to by Olson (2010) as the person’s individual psychological identity (IPI). What is a person? What is it to be a person? These questions are classified under the personhood problem. Moreover, it is a search for those necessary and sufficient properties that make up a person. “Is there an enduring self?” Persistence problems are concerned with the necessary and sufficient manifestations that would make a past or future person to be you. The persistence problem is said to arise out of hope (or fear) that we might continue to exist after we die (Olson, 2010). Almost all proposed answers to the persistence question take the form of a criterion/evidence, which is another problem in personal identity. What evidence bears on the question that the person here now is the one who was here yesterday? Usually, the most popular criteria are based on psychological and physical continuity. Theories of personal identity are also concerned with the basic metaphysical/ontological nature of human persons. “What am I?” (Ontology of persons) questions deal with the material composition of human persons. What are we made of? A possible answer is that we are biological organisms. Another is that we are all single indivisible immaterial substances. The most popular view nowadays is that we are made of the same matter as a certain animal, but we are different from the animal since what it takes for persons to exist is different from animals. “What am I?” questions are concerned with composition of human persons: what are we made of? (Olson, 2007, p.3) What sort of matter are we made of? Are we made of something other than matter? There is an estimate of ten billion people in this world, is it the case that there are ten billion human organisms as well? Population questions are concerned with some biological, psychological, or other facts that could make the case that there are certain numbers of people at a given time. One might think that the number of people at any given time is simply the number of human organisms that are there. But people who have multiple personality disorders could disprove this, as they are said to house two or more different thinking beings in a single body. The possibility that we can be somebody else is also entertained by theories of personal identity. These questions deal with the problem of essence/accident: how could I have been? How different could I have from the way I actually am? Which of my properties do I have essentially, and which only accidentally or contingently? (Olson, 2010) Moreover, they are also considering the idea that there could be possible worlds or alternative universes just like this one that we are living in but the people switched places. Are these preceding questions really important to our lives? Does it have practical significance? The question: “What matters in identity?” searches for the practical importance of facts about our identity and persistence (Olson, 2010). And this is where the preceding questions became more than questions of personal identity. These questions could have an ethical implication as well, like the problem of moral responsibility. Suppose that the new thing in medical technology is brain transplant and we (you and I) are going to switch brains. Now, let us assume that the result of the transplant would be this: my body will have your mental states; your body will have my mental states. Now, who is going to be responsible for one’s actions? Will the resulting person, who others may think is you, because it is your body, be responsible for my past actions since it is my thoughts that tells me those were my actions? What if you killed someone in the past, who is going to be responsible for the crime? Is it going to be me who happens to be in your body? Is it you who happens to be in my body? Is it going to be both of us or neither of us? Personal Identity and Ethics It was during the time of John Locke that the first attempt to associate personal identity with specific ethical concerns came to surface. In fact, it was the philosophy of Descartes, which posed a problem for Locke. For Descartes, the indivisibility of the self or the thinking substance is a self-evident truth. From this standpoint, it seems that the problem of personal identity never really arose. For Locke, the human mind is not equipped with any clear and distinct idea of a substance and cannot have an intuitive knowledge of its nature. Locke even goes as far as denying the immateriality and immortality of the soul. But this again posed another problem for Locke. If we do not know that the soul is indivisible, how do we know that it persists through time? If it does not persist, how can we talk about that the person remained the same? (Allison, 1966, pp.42-43) Though this problem arose from Locke’s critique of Descartes, it was the recognition of its ethical significance, which forced him to provide a solution. Locke could not be contented with the idea that the person remained the same (Allison, 1966, p.43). It is personal identity, which is the source of all the right and justice of reward and punishment. Moral responsibility is based upon personal identity (Allison, 1966, p.47). Locke (1995, p.467) called ‘person’ as a forensic term, “appropriating actions and their merit; and so belongs only to intelligent agents capable of a law, and happiness, and misery”. Moreover, a person illustrated as a thinking intelligent being (Allison, 1966, p.47). Locke’s account of personal identity appealed to what seems to be a crucial condition of moral agency, namely, self-reflective consciousness. On his view, a person – a moral agent – Y at t2 is identical to a person X at t1 just in case Y’s consciousness can be extended towards to X, and this typically taken to mean that Y remembers X’s thoughts and experiences (Shoemaker, 2005). In connection to moral responsibility, it is only those actions that I remember doing that I can be held accountable. Bishop Joseph Butler accuses Locke of a “wonderful mistake”. Locke failed to recognize that consciousness of that past experience is not what makes that person who experiences the past me, but the consciousness of that past experience presupposes personal identity. In other words, I can remember only my own experiences, but it is not my memory of an experience that makes it mine; rather, I remember it because it is already mine (Shoemaker, 2005). Thomas Reid also affirms Butler’s objection but added that personal identity implies a continued existence of that indivisible thing (myself). This self (whatever it may be) is something that thinks, deliberates, resolves, acts, and suffers. While thoughts, actions, and feelings changes from time to time, the self is permanent. In contemporary literature, there are several views of personal identity that have been taken to have some relevance to ethics by theorists (Shoemaker, 2005). But for my purpose, we will just focus on three: psychology-based theories, biology-based, and the complex/multiple selves view of Derek Parfit. Given the aforementioned account, is identity a necessary condition for responsibility? There is nearly a universal agreement that it is. But what if there is a change that happened in the person (in personality or identity), then what happens to moral responsibility? Are these two (personal identity and moral responsibility) relevant to each other? The more important question would be: what is the relationship between these two concepts? Statement of The Problem The main problem in this research is: Are substantial theories of personal identity important to account for moral responsibility? In answering the main problem, the following questions will also be focused on: I. What are the substantial theories of personal identity that are being related to moral responsibility? A. What is the necessary condition for personal identity? 1. Psychological criterion? a. What are the strengths of this criterion? b. What are the weaknesses of this criterion? 2. Bodily criterion? a. What are the strengths of this criterion? b. What are the weaknesses of this criterion? II. What do we mean by “moral responsibility”? A. What are the objects in which we can ascribe moral responsibility? B. What is “moral agency”? 1. How is moral agency different from “agency”? 2. Who is the “moral agent”? What are the characteristics of a moral agent? C. What is a “moral action”? What are the characteristics of a moral action? D. What are the conditions of application of this concept? III. Is personal identity a necessary condition for moral responsibility? A. What theory of personal identity can satisfactorily ground our practice of holding persons morally responsible? B. Where do we ascribe moral responsibility? IV. What is the relationship between “personal identity” and “moral responsibility”? Significance of The Study There are so many paradoxes of the idea of the self and with all these discussions that are being talked about in personal identity, we find ourselves in a perplexing situation. A lot of people believe in a self and they conceive it as a distinct thing although they are not clear what it is. There are many speculations on where the ‘self’ depends; on where one’s personal identity depends. There are philosophers like Sydney Shoemaker who claims that the self/personal identity depends on the continuity of memories, beliefs, and psychological traits. On the other hand, there are philosophers like Bernard Williams who claimed that the self/personal identity depends on bodily continuity. In contrast, there are philosophers like Wittgenstein and Anscombe who denies the existence of any self or soul substance and they deem the concept as illusory. While the discussion on the nature of personal identity has not been (or will never be) settled, it gets even more perplexing once this idea is attached to ethics. According to Walter Truett Anderson (1997, pp.156-157): … issues of rightness and wrongness are copiously discussed and debated. Moreover, ethics is a growing industry and professional ethicists are hard at work on codes of business ethics, medical ethics, legal ethics, etc. There seem to be no shortage of moralizing and preaching as the problems of morality, as with personal identity is not too little, but too much. Since there is a huge amount of topics available in ethics that could be related to personal identity, I would only focus on one of those topics: moral responsibility. Given the concepts of personal identity, moral agency, and action, one question remains: Where do we ascribe moral responsibility? If someone undoubtedly proved that personal identity depends on one’s memories, beliefs, and psychological traits, does that mean that we should also ascribe moral responsibility to the psychological identity of the person? If someone undoubtedly proved that personal identity depends on bodily continuity, does that mean that we should ascribe moral responsibility to the bodily identity of the person? What if someone undoubtedly proved that the concept of personal identity is illusory? Does that mean that the concept of moral responsibility is also illusory? Furthermore, I would also look at one of the specialized concept of moral responsibility that is legal accountability. Basically, my interest sparked upon pondering that we have a legal system that is full of contradictions. We could have the same nature in criminal cases, yet different judgments. For example, the insanity defenses that would excuse a behavior of some lucky people judged to be ‘not himself/herself’ at the time of the act, yet penal systems amounts to little more than institutionalized vengeance. And vengeance requires resistance to the belief in fundamental personal change (Anderson, 1997, p.154). Are these really necessary or a bit excessive to consider in our judgment of people, especially those who committed a crime some time in their past? It seems that the deeper issue here is the relationship between personal identity and moral responsibility. What should we develop first to account for the other? There are philosophers who believed that we should develop a theory of personal identity before we can assess whether and when should people be held morally responsible for their actions. There are those who believe that we should develop a comprehensive account of moral responsibility before we can talk about one’s personal identity. And there are philosophers who believed that these two concepts are independent of each other. This paper would provide new insights on the idea of the self/personal identity, on the idea of moral (and possibly legal) responsibility, and on their almost universally accepted relation to each other. Methodology The main concern of this thesis is whether or not theories of personal identity are important to account for moral responsibility. First, the eight main problems of personal identity, together with the historical background of the problems of personal identity will be discussed. On this part, the focus will be on the shift of approaches to the problems of personal identity: from metaphysical, epistemological, and linguistic, to my main concern: ethical. From there, I would cite the highlights of the relation between personal identity and ethics, particularly moral responsibility starting from John Locke to Derek Parfit. On Chapter 4 entitled ‘On Personal Identity,' I will zero in on the two popular substantial theories of personal identity: Psychological/memory and physical/bodily criterion of personal identity. A linguistic and conceptual analysis of both criterions will be done using the following steps: identifying their main claim, identifying the arguments that support the main claim, and the problems of the claim. The objections and counterarguments of both criterions will also be discussed. On Chapter 5 entitled 'On Moral Responsibility,' a linguistic and conceptual analysis of the word 'moral responsibility will be provided. What do we really mean by 'moral responsibility'? Under what conditions can persons are considered to be 'morally responsible'? What is a moral agent and what are the criteria for being one? In order for the analysis to be clearer, examples and thought experiments will be provided. Chapter 6 entitled 'The Relation of Personal Identity to Moral Responsibility' synthesizes the concepts that are discussed in Chapters 4 and 5. It will discuss the pragmatic concept of personal identity, as well as Derek Parfit’s Complex/multiple selves view. The relationship between personal identity and moral responsibility will be discussed in this chapter, which will prompt the critical examination of John Locke’s concept of personal identity. References Allison, H. E., 1966. Locke's theory of personal identity: a re-examination. Journal of The History of Ideas, 27 (1), pp.41-58. Anderson, W. T., 1997. The future of the self: inventing the postmodern person. New York: Tarcher/Putnam. Locke, J., 1959. An essay concerning human understanding, vol. 1. A. C. Fraser, ed. New York: Dover Publications, Inc. Olson, E. T., 2010. Personal identity, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, [online] Winter Issue, Available through: Metaphysics Research Lab, CSLI, Stanford University [Accessed 30 March 2011]. ---- 2007. What are we? A study in personal ontology. New York: Oxford University Press. Parfit, D., 1971. On “the importance of self-identity.” The Journal of Philosophy, 21 Oct., 68 (20), pp.683-690. ---- 1984. Reasons and persons. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Perry, J., 1975. Personal identity. Berkeley: University of California Press. Shoemaker, S., 1963. Self-knowledge and self-identity. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. ---- 2004. Functionalism and Personal Identity--A Reply. Nous, 38, pp.525-33. Personal Identity & Moral Responsibility A Research Synopsis Submitted By: (Name of Student) It seems that the most self-evident idea that a person may have is the idea of the self. Yet when that person tries to examine this “self” directly, the idea becomes elusive. We think of the self as a whole, but the manifestation of the self is seen in fragments. We think of the self as something enduring, yet it seems changing from time to time. So what is this self? How does a person know that he or she is the same person to that of yesterday or tomorrow? Moreover, it is said that personal identity questions and ethical questions are interrelated, for what really matters is not identity but the ethical implications of identity. Thus, it bears with it certain ethical implications, such as the problem of moral responsibility. But is identity a necessary condition for responsibility? I shall argue that substantial theories of personal identity are important in order to account for moral responsibility. Discussions of ethical issues are not limited inside classrooms. We live with these issues; it is present every single day of our lives. Given the aforementioned thesis, this research shall be divided into seven chapters: introduction, theoretical framework, literature review, a section devoted entirely on personal identity, then another section on moral responsibility, followed by a section on the relation of personal identity to moral responsibility, and finally, the conclusion of my said research. Read More