Abstract
In the previous chapter it was shown that consciousness and self-consciousness originate in life itself, and evolve together with the evolution of perceptual and motoric capacities. Now we can answer the questions this book started with: What are we, precisely? When will we still exist and when no longer?
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
I do not want to claim that only human organisms can be persons.
- 3.
Baker (2000, p. 136).
- 4.
Tan (1989).
- 5.
See Meijsing (1998).
- 6.
See Baker (2000, p. 141).
- 7.
Williams (1973).
- 8.
See the movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), where a person suffering from love sickness wants to have his memories scrapped, but subsequently has to watch, with horror, how almost everything he holds dear disappears.
- 9.
For more on dementia and personhood, see Meijsing and Slatman (2018).
- 10.
See e.g., Slatman (2014).
- 11.
According to Swaab (2015) gender problems originate in the womb, through a deviant way of sexual differentiation in the developing brain.
- 12.
Somatoparaphrenia, Wikipedia.
- 13.
Locke (1690/1959, Book II, Chapter XXVII, section 9).
- 14.
- 15.
Fission, as it is used in thought experiments, is another problem. Since the occurrence of strange phenomena in so-called split-brain patients (Gazzaniga 1967), philosophers have been speculating about the possibility of cutting brains in two and placing each hemisphere in a separate, brainless body. But in a split-brain patient, it is not the whole brain that is split in two; it is only the connection between the two hemispheres of the neocortex that has been severed. You cannot cut complete brains in two with impunity, and a body with half a brain is not a viable organism. There are creatures who survive being cut in two and survive as two viable organisms; worms are a favourite example. And there are all kinds of organisms that split in two of their own accord, as their way of procreation. In such cases the counting of individual organisms is problematic and talk of personal identity loses its meaning here. Many philosophers who write about personal identity explicitly rule out duplication and fission (see Olson 2015).
- 16.
Olson (1997).
- 17.
- 18.
See Portmann (1958).
- 19.
Portmann (1958, p. 68).
- 20.
- 21.
At the same time the neonate is, again right from the very beginning, formed and characterised by a specific socio-cultural environment with a specific history, by ethnicity, gender, and social status. It is by no means my intention to disregard these aspects of what we are and who we are. But what we most fundamentally are, from the very start and ultimately, is a living human organism. At first that organism is quite plastic: all socio-cultural influences are influences on that human organism, that, in another environment, might have become a completely different individual (see also below). And ultimately, in advanced stages of dementia or a vegetative state, nothing more than a (just) living organism remains.
- 22.
See Oxana Malaya, Wikipedia.
- 23.
See Genie, (feral child), Wikipedia.
- 24.
Maybe there are creatures of which we have no knowledge, inhabitants of other planets, or maybe even disembodied gods or spirits, who are persons. Of course, I cannot rule out the existence of creatures of whom we have no knowledge, but as I do not have good reasons for assuming their existence either, I will ignore them in the following.
- 25.
This was the case for married women; unmarried women and widows were decidedly better off in that respect.
- 26.
That does not alter the fact that, in times of calamity, people wonder how God in his infinite mercy can allow such things. This problem was particularly pressing among intellectuals all over Europe after the Great Lisbon Earthquake of 1755.
- 27.
See Sandra (orangutan), Wikipedia.
- 28.
- 29.
Advocates of hard determinism, who think that science has shown that people do not have free will, argue that no one can be held responsible for their actions. That does not alter the fact that, for the time being, we experience a clear boundary within ourselves between our feelings of resentment at what is morally unacceptable to us, and feelings of compassion for those who are unaccountable, due to psychological trauma or disorder. See Strawson (1974).
- 30.
See e.g., Korsgaard (2009).
- 31.
Baier (1985, p. 85).
- 32.
Nedelsky (1989, p. 12).
- 33.
Hoagland (1988, p. 144).
- 34.
See also e.g., Honneth (2012).
- 35.
Baker (2008, p. 10).
- 36.
Frankfurt (1971, p. 5).
- 37.
Rorty (1988, p. 30).
- 38.
Rorty (1988, p. 31).
- 39.
Rorty (1988, p. 46).
- 40.
Although people like Cromwell and Robespierre had different opinions on that score.
- 41.
De Waal (1997).
- 42.
De Waal (2011).
- 43.
Dennett (1996, p. 164ff).
- 44.
Wittgenstein (1958, p. 223).
- 45.
On the other hand, my former colleague Steban Rivas set out to study signing chimpanzees, full of hope to finally get an insight into their souls, only to learn that the overwhelming majority of all their signing was simply “Gimme, gimme, gimme”. Rivas (2005).
- 46.
Levi (1959, p. 103).
- 47.
Holocaust Resource Center.
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Meijsing, M. (2022). “Here I Am”. In: A Philosophy of Person and Identity. Studies in Brain and Mind, vol 21. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09524-5_9
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