The Persistence of Self

             An example of such a cognitive process that stands ready to be triggered in the right sort of situations can be illustrated by the following scenario. Consider a pedestrian and an experienced skateboarder traversing a particular stretch of sidewalk riddled with cracks. Looking down, both are confronted with the same visual field. However, the skateboarder (perhaps unconsciously) distinguishes more features in the scene than the pedestrian does since the skateboarder must quickly classify the various cracks according to which are passable and which are impassable with respect to the diameter of the skateboard’s wheels. This discriminatory ability and its tendency to be engaged (consciously or not) in the right sorts of situations (such as when the skateboarder is traversing uneven surfaces) should count as a constituent of the skateboarder’s self. Another example of a constituent of a self might be a particular memory, insofar as the memory is rendered by a cognitive process and can be depended on to be accessible in the right sorts of situations (such as when a person consciously tries to recall it). Personality traits (if they are defined as dispositions to act a particular way in a given situation) are a third example, since they seem reducible, again, to potentially realizable cognitive processes that stand consistently ready to be triggered in specific types of situations.

             All these constituents of the self might be considered objective in the sense that they exist (for the most part) whether or not the person acknowledges them. For example, one can only be so successful in consciously repressing memories — a particular memory can remain available to present itself in conscious awareness whether or not one chooses to recall it. By virtue of their objective existence, these constituents of the self might be contrasted with the person’s narrative self (as defined by Dennett) which is subjective in the sense that the narrative self is the result of an act of free interpretation of the objective self and is amenable to almost complete revision at any time. In the account being developed here, the person weaves together all the constituents of his/her objective self (memories, tendencies, capacities, etc.) into a subjective whole, the narrative self, in order to construct a life story which makes sense of his/her existence for him/herself and others.

             The continuous availability of all of these (objectively existent) cognitive processes for contributing to a self-narrative and impinging upon consciousness (and the fact that a person can depend on their activation in critical circumstances, such that the skateboarder can approach sidewalk cracks with confidence) afford the person a sense of continuity above and beyond mere phenomenal continuity. It seems to me undeniable that the preservation of this further continuity — I’ll label it “psychological continuity” because it seems analogous to that familiar term — is a large part of what self-conscious entities (such as the average human being) have in mind when they express their desire to persist over time.

             Having concluded my redefinitions of “self” and “person,” I submit that survival admits of degrees — full survival requires the preservation of both the person and the constituents of the self, but preservation of only the person constitutes partial survival (as in the above thought experiment with the fetus) and is preferable to death. (I think that most human beings would prefer amnesia to death, for example.)

            This distinction between person and self increases the descriptive power of Dainton and Bayne’s phenomenalist account while maintaining all of the progress their position has already made in disambiguating the aforementioned threatening imaginary cases. For instance, my definitions, like Dainton and Bayne’s, allow for the argument that Williams’s scenarios induce contradictory responses in the reader only because no mention is made of whether phenomenal continuity is preserved in any of the cases. In fact, it seems that my account disambiguates the outcome of each scenario more than Dainton and Bayne’s does. For instance, if we were to assume in Williams’s first scenario that the subjects were conscious throughout the brain-state transfer, then, by my account, each subject undergoes a partial death: the persons would persist through the brain-state transfer but each person’s old self would “die” as a new one replaced it. Such an account does justice to the fear many people would likely experience at the prospect of undergoing such a procedure. In contrast, Dainton and Bayne’s account would simply stipulate that each subject survives because their person survives, even though their self does not.

            Despite such differences, my distinction does not radically alter Dainton and Bayne’s conclusions. As described below, most of their theses remain true following my redefinition of terms, although some are made to mean something slightly different. Still, where their meanings are altered it seems that Dainton and Bayne’s theses are brought into line with a more reasonable concept of what it means to survive.

            For example, the first clause of the Inseparability Thesis would remain true according to my interpretation of terms: self and phenomenal continuity still cannot come apart, for if one’sstream of consciousness ceased to flow, then his/her personwould die, since the minimally sufficient condition that must be maintained for a person’s persistence (as reasoned above) is that he/she be a conscious being.¹¹ It follows that in the absence of his/her person, his/her self cannot exist, since any selfis defined in terms of the availability of streamal content (that is, content of a stream of consciousness) to a person. If the person ceases to exist, the constituents of the self are unavailable to anyone, and therefore cease to constitute a self.¹²

            The second clause of the Inseparability Thesis is similarly unthreatened: The notion that all the experiences in a single (non-branching) stream of consciousness are co-personal is entirely consistent with my definition of a person.

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