My First Philosophy Essay & The Ship of Theseus
The following essay is the first real piece of philosophy writing that I did. I wrote this short essay in June 2023, when I was 13. Interestingly, the essay was about the continuity of personhood, the title bing “Why am I still the same person as I was when I was ten?”. In the current moment, as I review this essay 3 years later, almost everything about me has changed, so I have to once again pose the same question: am I still the same person as I was when I wrote this essay?
I thought this piece isn’t quite appropriate to put in the ‘essays’ section as it is not really a complete essay, so I decided here would be a good place to record this ‘archaic’ piece of writing I did.
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Introduction
As people grow older, their physical and mental traits change constantly. For example, skin and gut cells in a person’s body can completely replace themselves in a matter of months (Paula Heinke et al., 2022). Most memories that people have only last for 15-30 seconds (Atkinson & Shiffrin, 1968). Then the question arises: What keeps someone the same person through time if they are changing constantly? To answer this question, we need to construct a model that decides if two people are “same”.
There are two models that can be utilized:
Physicalism model: If two people share the same essential physical characteristics, they are the same people.
Psychological Connection Model: If two people are psychologically connected, they are the same people.
Through examining these two models and their implications, I contend that a person is the same person they were when they were ten if they have a psychological connection with that person.
First Model: Physicalism
Essential Properties are defined as properties that an object must have; if an object loses that property, they are not that object anymore. On the other hand, accidental properties are defined as properties that an object can have or not have (Robertson & Atkins, 2023). For example, being mortal is an essential property that all living things have, while being green is an accidental property that livings things could theoretically lack.
The physicalism model argues that our essential properties are our physical characteristics because we are physical beings just like animals and plants. This means that two people are the same if they have same physical characteristics, and they are different if they have different physical characteristics (Olson, 2023). Thus, in this view, we are the same person I am the same person that I was when I was ten because I stayed in the same body from birth to death.
However, this model faces two major problems.
The first problem with this model is that all physical properties that distinguish between different people are accidental, not essential. There is a famous thought experiment called “The Ship of Theseus”. A ship leaves Athens to go on a voyage. During the voyage, all of the ship’s components were replaced one by one, including the sailors and planks, so that by the time it returns to Athens, the ship is completely different from when it started (Levin, 2019). People’s bodies are the same: a person’s physical characteristics gradually change over time, so that when they die, they have almost none of these initial physical characteristics in them. In fact, research shows that red blood cells replace and regenerate themselves every four months, and skeleton cells only take ten years to do that. A person’s physical characteristics are constantly changing as these cells replace themselves (Milo & Phillips, 2015)
Thus, the model of identity with essential properties would imply that a dying person is not the same person as they were when they were born, just because their physical characteristics have changed gradually, and the concept of personal identity persisting will not exist.
The second problem with this model is that humans are not purely physical beings. They have consciousness. In fact, this conscious part of humans is the reason that identity exists, since identity is only a concept that exists in the human mind, not in the physical universe. Thus, a person’s identity cannot be all physical, and the psychological part of a person’s identity is more essential than the physical part. This argument can be demonstrated through a thought experiment. Suppose that a mad scientist transplanted X’s brain onto Y’s body, so that Y’s body inherits all of X’s memories, thoughts, and experiences. They also did the same thing with Y’s brain to X’s body. Now, the mad scientists ask the two resulting people to choose one person to torture. Both people will likely choose to torture their own body, because their consciousness is in the other person’s body. (Unger, 2000). This shows that consciousness is more essential than physical characteristics in personal identity.
It has become obvious that people’s physical characteristics are not what makes their identities persist through time, because psychological characteristics are more essential than physical characteristics in a person’s identity, and physical characteristics do not persist for a whole lifetime.
Second Model: Psychological Connection
Psychological connection describes a causal dependance relationship between two people’s minds. If my psychological state, including my experiences, thoughts, and emotions, is directly caused by another person’s psychological state, then there is a psychological connection between me and that person. (Shoemaker, 1984)
Psychological connection explains why we are the same person throughout time: we only have psychological connection with ourselves in the past or future, because the psychological state of our past selves continuing to exist and expand directly causes the psychological state current selves. Thus, that psychological connection is what makes us the same person as ourselves in the past or future.
In other words, the model of psychological connection envisions a person’s identity to be a chain, with the psychological state of a person at different moments being the separate pieces of chain, and psychological connection connecting them together.
One example of psychological connection is memory, since me in the past experiencing something causes me in the present to remember it, which proves that me in the past is the same person as me in the present.
It is important to note that psychological connection with somebody else is not an essential property. It avoids the setbacks of essential properties. For example, an experience that I had when I was ten years old might cause a thought I had when I was thirteen years old, and that thought I had when I was thirteen years old caused another experience for me in present, although me in the present is completely different from me when I was ten years old. From the model of essential properties, I am not the same person as when I was ten years old because I changed and became different. However, from the model of psychological connection, I am still the same person I was when I was ten years old, because we are on the same “chain” of psychological states that characterizes me.
Of course, the psychological connection model also has its own problems. The biggest problem is the fission problem. Suppose that a person’s brain is split into the left and right hemispheres, and each hemisphere is transplanted to a different person’s head. After that, both people who received the brain would be psychologically continuous to the person that the brain originally belonged to. However, that does not make sense, because the two people who received the brain are not identical: they have different memories, do different things, are in different locations (Olson, 2023). This constitutes a paradox: two people cannot be both identical and not identical. However, this problem can be solved because two people can only be the same if they are psychologically connected, and there is no other person that is also psychologically connected to that person at the same time. In simpler words, the chain of psychological connection cannot fork into two separate and different chains. This means that neither of the two people who received the brains are the same as the original person, so the original person has died, but two new people have been created.
Conclusion
By examining and comparing the physicalism model and the psychological connection model, I can conclude that a person’s consciousness is the essence of their personal identity, and it persists through time because psychological connection connects them together like a chain. Thus, I am the same person I was when I was ten because I am psychologically connected to that person.
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