The vast majority of philosophers have already made many considerable contributions in the field that discusses the psychological continuity theory of personal identity. The idea of personal identity is closely connected to the idea of personal survival under certain conditions.
Personal identity comes from two different conditions and their connection to each other: pre-mortal condition when a person’s survival is under a question and post-mortal condition when a person’s survival is already the desirable answer. Some psychological continuity theorists are eager to argue about the type of continuation, physical or psychological, is more appropriate to this case.
The researches and ideas of Bernard Williams are focused on the necessity of personal awareness about the experiment; “they [Person A and Person B] may even have been impressed by philosophical arguments to the effect that bodily continuity is at least a necessary condition of personal identity” (Williams 80).
Williams makes a wonderful attempt to demonstrate how the idea of body-switching works and what the role of personal identity is if “one’s fears can extend to future pain whatever psychological changes precede it” (Williams 91); he also follows Locke’s example and tries to clear up how psychological continuity theory defines personal identity and what factors are considered to be influential in the chosen case.
Psychological continuity theory is one of those theories which may be aimed to explain the idea of personal identity taking into consideration both event memory as it is demonstrated in Williams’ work and some additional psychological traits as it was proved by means of behavior of the person A during the experiments.
The value of this theory turns out to be evident when Williams tries to compare the conditions of person A and person B. The case of amnesia makes a person A forget about his personal interests, traits, and awareness about what is happening to him right now. However, the peculiar feature of this case is this person’s awareness about this amnesia and its predictable outcomes. Of course, it is impossible to feel comfortable about the expected processes.
A person is told about the ongoing case of amnesia. He is also informed that all these tortures and memories will be forgotten after the experiment is over. Though Williams admits that such information could hardly alleviate person’s fear but still this awareness provides a person with a chance to wake up and not remember who you are, what you are, and what kind of torture happens to you if any.
Does this fact increase person’s fear? Sure, it does. However, it is also necessary to define whether person’s level of fear is identical in all cases. Foe example, the person is informed about such torture as amnesia and about the following tortures that will happen to him. In my opinion, person’s fear before the first operation is regarded to be as the most serious.
And then, A should fear the following tortures because each torture is not as serious and comprehensible as the first one was. It is also possible to draw a principle line between the case (i) and other cases because only this case distinguished person’s past life (pre-mortal condition) from his future life (post-mortal condition). As a result, the cases (ii) – (vi) are considered to be that distance that promotes personal identity, where psychological continuity (fear) does not play that crucial role.
Personal identity has many definitions, offered by different philosophers. However, the main idea of personal identity is to provide a person with a chance to identify him/herself through time. Personal identity usually deals with such questions that arise about people: what I am, who I am, what I am doing here, etc.
When we talk about the case of psychological continuity, it is necessary to admit that personal identity is regarded as transitive but memory continuity cannot take the same traits. Psychological continuity theorists face some problems with defining personal identity. They cannot come to the same conclusion whether identity is the relations of all or nothing and whether the relations between person stages can or cannot exhibit this continuity.
Bernard Williams’ experiment is aimed to evaluate the situation when two persons A and B undergo memory and personality switch. These people are informed about the torture and about their future financial reward. One of Williams’ main purposes is to focus on persons’ behavior before and after the experiment that consists of 6 stages.
The results of this experiment help to comprehend that personal identity is somehow bound up with the psychological continuity that is inherent to these people’s respective memories. The psychological entity is certainly sustained by physical processes: brain of one person and brain of the other person are interchanged, “putting the information into A from the brain of B, by a method which leaves B the same as he was before” (Williams 84).
This is why during these experiments, it becomes clear that psychological continuity theory of personal identity is not that important as physical (phenomenal) one, and the possibility of body-switching serves as the best and the most powerful evident. Psychological criteria is considered to be rather subjective, and the superiority of bodily (physical) continuity becomes evident.
Williams shows that physical continuity plays an important role for personal identity that is possible through time. He tries to reject the necessity of psychological criterion by means of evaluation of person’s memories. In becomes possible that several person are able to have the same memories and truly believe that their memories are also identical in the past. And identical relations have to be one-to-one but not one-to-many.
In his experiment, Williams demonstrates that it is possible to transmit the memories of one person’s mind to another person’s mind and not to omit some important facts and events. Psychological continuity theory aims at incorporating what material has been learnt by means of inconsistency and insufficiency objection. And the cases, offered by Bernard Williams, are all about bodies and the possibility to interchange their minds and memories by means of amnesia.
In general, Bernard Williams offers to evaluate personal identity and the idea of body-switching from two perspectives: the relations between mental states and body-possession and the relations between mental states of a person and his internal state of the organism (his brain state). With the help of body exchange, the idea of personal identity should not be defined as something purely mental only.
Peron’s mind has to be associated with person’s body because their behavior and demands also depend on physical condition. Embodiment of behavior is crucial for determination of identity. This is why psychological continuity concept of personal identity cannot be regarded as the most powerful one in Williams’ experiments, and his evaluation of person’s state of mind helps to define when personal identity takes place through time.
Works Cited
Williams, Bernard. “The Self and the Future.” In Raymond Martin and John Barresi Personal Identity. Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2003, 75-91.