The Meeting: the problem of personal identity - Essay Example

Harry Vladek is in a dilemma. The reader is deeply moved by his anguished, “I don’t know what to do. I don’t know who to go to.” (Pohl and Kornbluth, 189). He hopes passionately that the school will bring about improvement in Tommy. However, this improvement appears to be on the miniscule scale of drawing a cartoon face or taking “his thumb out of his mouth for minutes at a time” (187). Mrs. Adler cannot promise Harry a cure, or a normal life for his son. She fails to give him a definite assurance that Tommy was “ever going to be like everybody else” .

Harry also worries about Tommy’s fate after the demise of his parents. As he picks up the phone, it may be assumed that Harry opts for the brain transplant surgery proposed by Dr. Nicholson. The successful operation will result in the other boy’s brain living on in Tommy’s body. The survivor of the brain transplant is not Tommy Vladek as Tommy’s personal identity is lost according to the theories of self. Harry Vladek subscribes to the traditional theory of self. To him, deciding to allow the brain transplant is equivalent to deciding “to murder my son”.

He does not base his idea of personal identity on the Body Theory, which proposes ‘Same body, same self.’ Only if the body is accepted as being the basis of identity can the survivor be his son.Obviously,Harry does not consider the body to be the basis of identity. Harry leans towards the Soul Theory. This maybe because he has religious beliefs, as seen in his considering whether “to talk to the priest” . . There can be no independent determinant of the existence of the soul, or confirmation that a body houses a distinct soul.

The soul cannot be observed. Therefore, the soul cannot be relevant to Tommy’s personal identity. I tend towards the Memory Theory as the correct theory of self. The position of this theory is ‘Same memory, same self.’   Having a sense of identity is dependent on conscious awareness of one's self in the present and past. The awareness of the past requires a memory of one's past. The survivor obviously will have a memory of the past belonging to the other boy. As the survivor does not have the same memories as Tommy, the survivor is not Tommy.

 Personal identity consists of the preservation of memory. Although Tommy is an emotionally disturbed child, he is capable of showing emotion and forming attachments. This is seen in “The occasional, cherished, tempestuous bruising flurry of kisses” (192) which he bestows on his parents. So, obviously Tommy possessed memories. With the brain transplant, the survivor does not have memories of Tommy’s past experiences, thoughts and actions. As Tommy’s memories are not a part of the survivor’s memories, the identity of the survivor is different from the identity of Tommy.

In the event that the survivor wakes up and doesn’t remember a thing, the survivor is neither Tommy nor the other boy. Without direct memory, there is no identity. As there is no continuity of memory in both cases, the survivor is a new self. This new self has to build up an identity based on memories of past experiences. The survivor, being neither Tommy nor the other boy, conforms to Parfit’s theory of “survival without identity” (Slide