endsthegame (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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fandomhigh2024-06-11 04:27 pm
endsthegame) wrote in fandomhigh2024-06-11 04:27 pm
Entry tags:
Practical Philosophy, Tuesday
"We've been blessed with relative peace of late," Ender said, his legs folded under him, the remains of a sandwich beside him. "Still, this is Fandom. I'm sure most of you will have woken up at some point or another looking like someone else, or feeling like someone else. It can be a bewildering experience. Or freeing."
He reached for his water. "The great philosophers spent a lot of time talking about matters of personal identity," he said. "Some philosophers denote identity simply as bodily existence: you are who you are as long as you are your physical self. Of course, that brings issues of its own with it, whether it be because of the natural process of aging, or because the island turned you into another sex. Are you still yourself, when your genitals are different? I would say yes, but it's a frequent topic of debate."
He set the bottle back down. "The second theory is that identity is a product of mental substance; that one's mind is separate from one's body, and that it is where our personhood lives. So if we wake up one morning forgetting who we are, then whatever inhabits our body is not us. Whatever that body did was not our action."
He eyed each student in turn. "Of course, John Locke went a step further and defined mental substance as being one's consciousness, in which case the answer is rather more clear-cut, I feel. 'If Socrates and the present mayor of Queenborough agree, they are the same person: if the same Socrates waking and sleeping do not partake of the same consciousness, Socrates waking and sleeping is not the same person.'"
"But there are many other theories. One presupposes that one's self is really one's intuition: after all, when your mind is gone, and someone then proceeds to torture you, you'll still feel fear and apprehension, because you can intuit that torture isn't something you want happening to you. Other theories suppose that consistency is key, that every part of you that I've just mentioned must remain in a certain alignment for you to be you. And so on, and so forth."
He smiled, tapping his finger against the bottle. "But that's enough for Philosophy 101," he said. "Have any of you ever experienced waking up in another body? Or with another mind? Did you remember what you did? Did it mean anything to you, or could you put some distance between it and yourself?"
He reached for his water. "The great philosophers spent a lot of time talking about matters of personal identity," he said. "Some philosophers denote identity simply as bodily existence: you are who you are as long as you are your physical self. Of course, that brings issues of its own with it, whether it be because of the natural process of aging, or because the island turned you into another sex. Are you still yourself, when your genitals are different? I would say yes, but it's a frequent topic of debate."
He set the bottle back down. "The second theory is that identity is a product of mental substance; that one's mind is separate from one's body, and that it is where our personhood lives. So if we wake up one morning forgetting who we are, then whatever inhabits our body is not us. Whatever that body did was not our action."
He eyed each student in turn. "Of course, John Locke went a step further and defined mental substance as being one's consciousness, in which case the answer is rather more clear-cut, I feel. 'If Socrates and the present mayor of Queenborough agree, they are the same person: if the same Socrates waking and sleeping do not partake of the same consciousness, Socrates waking and sleeping is not the same person.'"
"But there are many other theories. One presupposes that one's self is really one's intuition: after all, when your mind is gone, and someone then proceeds to torture you, you'll still feel fear and apprehension, because you can intuit that torture isn't something you want happening to you. Other theories suppose that consistency is key, that every part of you that I've just mentioned must remain in a certain alignment for you to be you. And so on, and so forth."
He smiled, tapping his finger against the bottle. "But that's enough for Philosophy 101," he said. "Have any of you ever experienced waking up in another body? Or with another mind? Did you remember what you did? Did it mean anything to you, or could you put some distance between it and yourself?"