Personal Identity: the Nature of Our Minds - Essay Example

Personal Identity Why Do Philosophers Tend To Emphasize Mind, And In Particular Consciousness And Memory, As The Primary Basis For Establishing Personal Identity? Are There Good Reasons Why Bodily Characteristics Need To Be Included As Well? Are There Other Features That Need To Be Factored In As Well, Or Instead? Overall, What Factors Are Indispensable For Establishing And Sustaining Our Identity Over Time? The mind deals with many concepts that include our beliefs, desires, sensations, emotions and passions among other things (Wiggins, 2007). The philosophies of the mind involve studies that are carried out to determine the nature of our minds, the mental events that take place in them, their functions and properties along with the relationship of our consciousness to our physical bodies (Crane, 2001). The field greatly considers the relationship that exists between our minds and bodies. However, it also considers other matters which do not concern the relationship that exists between our bodies and mind but that help in defining our personal identities (Behrendt, 2003). According to philosophy, consciousness is a terminology that is used in describing the relationships that exist between our minds and the environments we interact with (Crane, 2001). The term has been described as involving our ability to experience, feel or have feelings of selfhood while possessing the control of our minds (Wiggins, 2007). Many philosophers like Velmans claim that our consciousness involves anything that we are aware about which in turn makes the activity the most common feature in our lives. Philosophers argue that consciousness comprises of our views, thoughts along with feelings (Behrendt, 2003). Memory on the other hand, has been described as the set of cognitive abilities which enable us to retain information while reconstructing our past experiences (Wiggins, 2007). A philosopher like William James in the year 1890 argued that memory is the knowledge we have of previous states of mind we have experienced but have already been dropped from our consciousness (Martin & Barresi, 2003). This therefore implies that our memory derives its inputs from our consciousness in perceiving the events that take place in our environments (Crane, 2001). Philosophers such as Aristotle and Plato proposed various concepts that greatly helped in resolving the issues involving the relationship of our minds to our bodies (Behrendt, 2003). The two philosophers came up with the concepts of dualism whereas the notion of monism was introduced by Descartes (Wiggins, 2007). There are several types of dualists among them being the substance dualists along with the property dualists. The former dualist’s claim that the mind exists independently whereas the latter dualists believe that the mind consists of clusters of properties that are independent that usually come from our brains and cannot just be condensed to it (Davies & Stone, 2005). They additionally state that the brain is not a unique substance and other factors should be included in the analysis of our personal identities. On the other hand, monists like Descartes dispute the idea that our bodies and minds are ontologically unique types of entities (Hoerl & McCormack, 2001). However, other people like the idealists believe that the only thing that exists is the mind and that everything else is mental or is an illusion that has been created by our minds (Davies & Stone, 2005). The neutral monists believe that there is a substance that is unknown of which our minds and other matter in our environment are a part of (Wiggins, 2007). Currently, philosophers of the mind usually adopt either a reductive position whereas others adopt non reductive approaches in illustrating that our minds and bodies have a relationship that exists between them (Davies & Stone, 2005). However, there are still other philosophers who dispute the idea that the mind is an unadulterated physical construct that can go a long way in defining our personal identities (Martin & Barresi, 2003). The physicalists who hold reductive views suggest that our mental conditions and properties are explained by our physiological processes along with states (Behrendt, 2003). The perceptual experiences that we encounter usually depend on various stimuli that we obtain from the environment through the various sensory organs present in our bodies (Davies & Stone, 2005). Our minds in turn experience changes in state due to the stimuli changes we encounter. This eventually makes as to have a sensation from our minds that could either be pleasing or annoying (Wiggins, 2007). Philosophers like Descartes have since time immemorial experienced problems when trying to explain how a person’s propositional attitudes like our desires and beliefs makes him reason and contract his bodily muscles (Hoerl & McCormack, 2001). Dualists argue that in certain aspects mental phenomena’s are non-physical whereas Aristotle along with Plato argued that the human mind could not be associated to the physical body (Davies & Stone, 2005). Descartes however claims that the human mind is neither an extension nor a physical substance and he became the first philosopher to link the mind to our consciousness along with self awareness while differentiating these two from the brain (Crane, 2001). Dualists have continuously argued that our brains and physical bodies have very diverse properties that are irreconcilable (Davies & Stone, 2005). They also suggest that our conscious experiences are quite different from our brains since the ordinary person identifies his/her mind with his soul or personality (Wiggins, 2007). The dualists additionally claim that the ordinary person would most definitely deny the fact that their mind is the same thing as their brain. The interactionism dualists argue that our mental states which include issues such as our desires along with beliefs usually interact with our physical conditions (Behrendt, 2003). This according to Descartes is justified by the fact that we cannot quantify our thoughts with terms like weight and height. He additionally states that our bodies are an extension of matter that is quite unique but lacks the ability of thinking (Crane, 2001). This is additionally justified through the different properties that our minds and bodies possess. Descartes also claims that our mental condition has a relationship with the causal effects that our body in turn experiences (Behrendt, 2003). For instance, when a child comes into contact with a hot surface, he or she will experience pain which will eventually lead him into screaming or calling out for help. The previous action of touching the hot item will in turn form a mental event in the child’s brain which will enable him to protect himself and fear them (Wiggins, 2007). However, critics like Freud and Duhem, who have disputed these claims, argue that an expert in psychology can comprehend better the unconscious motivation that lead a different person than he can personally tell (Crane, 2001). Philosophers with the beliefs of parallelism have the perception that our minds and bodies do not usually influence one another. They suggest that events of the mind only run parallel to activities within the brain and bodily activities on the other hand coordinate only amongst themselves (Behrendt, 2003). They in turn suggest that our minds along with bodies seem to pressure each other. This is because there are major differences that exist between causations in our physical bodies along with our brains (Wiggins, 2007). Philosophers who believed in Monism principles greatly contrast their perceptions with the concepts of dualists (Davies & Stone, 2005). They tend to suggest that the only substances that we know to exist can only be physical despite the fact that idealists believe that anything known to exist is only mental (Crane, 2001). According to behaviorists, reports on the interior thinking of an individual cannot be utilized for the purpose of making generalizations out of predictions made (Martin & Barresi, 2003). They therefore state that in order to eliminate the concept of our interior cerebral life’s we should concentrate on describing the behaviors that we observe among various individuals (Davies & Stone, 2005). Functionalists believe that our mind’s traits are controlled by the causal relationships that exist with the different types of inputs and the outputs from our behaviors (Behrendt, 2003). A philosopher referred to as John Locke suggested that an individual’s personality usually extends only to the limits of their personal consciousness. The philosopher greatly helped in creating a connecting between our consciousnesses along with our memory in his theory (Wiggins, 2007). According to Locke, our personal identity involves the self who is a human with the ability to think, reason while reflecting on various issues as itself in diverse places or situations (Hoerl & McCormack, 2001). The philosopher additionally states that our personal identities are ‘the sameness in a just human being’ (Crane, 2001). This therefore implies that any changes that are witnessed in a person’s identity additionally mean that a person has changed. This could include changes in a person’s beliefs, desires, religion along with cultures (Davies & Stone, 2005). He argues that our personal identities extend only up to where our consciousness can reach. This is because according to him, ‘Consciousness always accompanies thinking’. This concept of consciousness that the philosopher believes in is usually equated with his conception of memory (Wiggins, 2007). According to Locke, memory is a vital condition for describing our personality since it helps in the remembrance of previous activities that we participated in. This is because he had asserted that in case we do not remember previous events we participated in then we did not have the experiences (Davies & Stone, 2005). Critics to Locke’s theory suggest that our memories, intentions along with our beliefs are vital to us though they are not very essential in the definition of our identities along with our persistence’s in time (Behrendt, 2003). In summary, Locke’s theories can be said to claim that our identities over certain time durations is usually fixed through our consciousness of the past events in our lives (Davies & Stone, 2005). He stipulated that our identities only matter up to where we recall and we remain the same people provided our consciousness remains the same (Wiggins, 2007). Finally, Locke’s theory suggests that we are only guilty for the crimes that we seem to experience (Behrendt, 2003). In conclusion, there are many other factors that can be utilized when describing our personal identities. They include issues like our cultural backgrounds. Our ethnic languages, the time periods we have lived, our dwelling places, the groups we belong to and our families (Martin & Barresi, 2003). In addition to these factors, our personal identities can be described effectively using our educational, financial along with social statuses (Crane, 2001). Finally, our personal identities can be effectively described using the activities we indulge in like our talents, hobbies, beliefs, desires, sensations, emotions and passions. They in turn enable people to determine and explain more concerning our behaviors along with attitudes (Wiggins, 2007). Overall, the most important and indispensable factors that will enable the establishment and sustenance of our identities over time are our behaviors, peer groupings, our mental abilities and our cultural backgrounds (Martin & Barresi, 2003). This is because they help in shaping our character from our childhood years and mostly remain entrenched within us for our whole lives (Behrendt, 2003). References Behrendt, K, 2003, The New Neo-Kantian And Reductionist Debate: Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, Routledge, New York. Crane, T, 2001, Elements of Mind, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Davies, M & Stone, T, 2005, Folk Psychology: The Theory Of Mind Debate, Blackwell, Oxford. Hoerl, C & McCormack, T, 2001, Time And Memory: Philosophical And Psychological Perspectives, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Martin, R & Barresi, J, 2003, Personal Identity, Blackwell, Oxford. Wiggins, D. R. P, 2007, Sameness and Substance Renewed, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Read More