Posted by:
Henry Bemis
(
)
Date: February 02, 2023 01:18PM
First, I apologize for offending you by commenting on your post. That was not my intention and is never my intention.
Second, I own and have read countless books on the subject of personal identity, including those that have in one way or another incorporated memory into their theories. Traditionally, this includes John Locke, and more recently, Anthony Quinton, and H.P. Grice. At the present time, this view has been mostly dismissed in favor of physical, brain-based identity theories. Psychology is just too vague and elusive for scientific purposes for establishing identity.
In traditional memory theories, memory is deemed to be a more or less continuum of *mental* states arising from personal experience. Thus 'memory' on such views is a mental phenomenon rather than a physical one. Memory theories of identity are offered as an alternative to materialist physical theories of identity that ground identity in the human body or brain. The best single book on this topic is John Perry (Ed.), *Personal Identity* 2nd Edition (2008). For memory theories see Parts II and III. Note: You may find this a bit philosophically "heavy," (you know, "mental masturbation") but it will give you the gist of what a genuine memory theory of identity involves, and why they have been rejected.
___________________________________________
"At the risk of encouraging HB to further disect and evaluate my words, let me try to answer his question - where I "came up with all this".
COMMENT: Why is it a "risk" to have your views commented upon and if necessary corrected, either by me or anyone else? What is so offensive about having one's opinions "dissected?" I don't get it. Really, isn't that the Mormon attitude that we on RfM so soundly reject? So, why is it so difficult to have our own views challenged? SOMEONE PLEASE ANSWER THIS QUESTION FOR ME!
_____________________________________________
Mostly through Steven Pinker's work, ("The Blank Slate", "The Language Instinct", "How the Mind Works");
Also, David J. Linden, ("The Accidental Mind");
Thomas Moore, ("The Care of the Soul", "The Re-enchantment of Everyday Life")
Oliver Sacks, (The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat", "Musicology")
Alan Jasanoff, ("The Biological Mind")
COMMENT: Thank you for sharing. However, none of these books advocate and argue for a memory theory of personal identity, whatever merits they might otherwise have. I own and have read the 1st, 3rd, and 4th books. The 2nd and 5th books were written by neuroscientists and from their titles and descriptions have a typical materialist (rather than memory) view of human identity. This is the mainstream view, which is articulated in any number of popular books by philosophers and neuroscientists. In any event, perhaps you might share what you gleaned from these works that you found compelling.
________________________________________
"I truly believe that eventually there will be a physical understanding, and scientific recognition and understanding of what makes us who we are and how we think - aka "consciousness".
COMMENTS: Perhaps so, but most would say that the gap between the physical brain and mental experience is fundamentally unbridgeable given the distinct differences between what is deemed to be mental, e.g. consciousness, and the physical. That is why consciousness is universally deemed to be "mysterious."
__________________________________________
Now, as for the claim that one's personal identity can be established by one's memories, again, this is not a materialist view, but rather a traditional view of personal identity that is more akin to the idea of a soul, or mind, but without Cartesian substance. The soul, upon this view is simply deemed to be the continuity of one's experiences and memories. But we can see upon immediate reflection that this cannot be right.
Memories are transitory mental states ("engrams") as produced by experience, which are notoriously unstable, not contiguous, and unreliable. As such, it is difficult (if not impossible) to identify any collection of such memories stable enough to ground the singular identity of a person through time. For example, a physical object, like an apple, has uniquely identifiable particles and structure that persist in space and time such as to distinguish the identity of one apple from another. There is an underlying stability to make identity determinations. However, a complex of memories has no such underlying material substance or structure. (Rather, it is a mental, or psychological construct.) Moreover, the content of such complex of memories changes over time, such that today my complex of memories might be much different from the complex of memories I had yesterday, years ago, or will have at any time in the future. In short, there is nothing about memories per se across time, that could possibly preserve one's personal identity, without being further associated with a singular "self" or "soul." As such, personal identity must be grounded in something else; either an underlying mental "self" (or soul) or a physical brain or body.
Since memories are mental states, not physical states, the most logical mental grounding is in a persistent self or soul. On this view memories, rather than being isolated complexes of experiences, are associated with a persistent self or soul. It is this association that grounds personal identity, not the memories themselves.
So, then, what about grounding personal identity in the brain. There are unique problems here as well, but for purposes here, I will only point out that making the brain, or brain states, identical with personal identity leaves out what is most important about being human, namely, our mental lives, including our memories. Again, scientifically, there is nothing mental that is naturally associated with any physical system, including biological systems.
Nowadays, it is difficult to find competent scholars who advocate for souls as the ground for personal identity, but I do have one recommendation, if you are interested in an alternative point of view: M.C. Baker and S. Goetz, *The Soul Hypothesis: Investigations into the Existence of the Soul.* This is a compilation of several essays by people who reject materialist attempts to ground personal identity in the brain.