[extropy-chat] Agency as Prime Determinant of Personal Identity

[Jef Allbright]

Lee wrote:
> Heartland writes
>> What!?   You're not understanding.  What is *different* between the
>> nine year old and the ninety year old in Jef's example is 
>> that the VMBs *did* change.  It fits perfectly with the fact that we
>> are so tempted (and rightfully so) to question whether they are the 
>> same person.
>> 
>> Eventually you realize that almost none of your VMBs at 2 
>> are the same as your VMBs at 80 which forces you to admit that
>> someone has died sometime between 2 and 80.
>> Then you either admit this or choose to give up the idea 
>> that "VMBs = Self." :)
> 
> I *admit* that!   Too much change kills one.  It changes you 
> into someone else.


[For those who are already tired of this discussion, you might enjoy
going straight to the examples further below.]


This discussion becomes dull and sometimes frustrating to a large extent
due to confusion between the ontological and epistemological domains.  I
often despair of us climbing out of that morass so we can explore higher
vistas.  One might say such is the reality of attempting philosophical
discussions in a public forum via email, but I see much the same
limitations, albeit on a more ponderous scale, in regard to academic
philosophical discourse from Plato to John Locke to present-day
thinkers.  

We're not professional philosophers here, and we often make mistakes of
domain and category confusion, invalid logical inference, and simple
failure to rigorously define our terms.  And at a meta level, how many
of us keep in mind while debating that we can only "prove"
inconsistency, but never consistency within an open context?

In this discussion we often unwittingly confuse categories such as "what
does it mean to be a unique person?", with "what does it mean to be the
same unique person over time?"  We often confuse domains, arguing over
the statement "two different copies can be the same", where one person
argues on the ontological basis that to say there are two copies
logically mandates a difference between them, while another person
argues just as consistently on the epistemological basis that a
difference that makes no difference is no difference at all.

And then we have conflict between contrasting point of view and
motivations.  Following in the tradition of Descartes, there are those
who reason from the point of view that reality is defined in terms of
the subjective observer, and then there are those who reason from the
point of view that there is no privileged point of view.  Those of one
viewpoint have a strong tendency to assume that unique identity must
truly and necessarily exist, those of the other viewpoint tend to see
"unique" identity as a useful fiction. As for the bias of motivation, it
is apparent that some argue the issue of personal identity from a sense
of mathematical or scientific purity, some argue from a sense of
pragmatic utility, and others argue from a sense of desperately hoping
to escape an end to their personal existence.

Nevertheless, we see potential for growth of understanding, and we see
practical application of that understanding with the imminence of new
technological capabilities that would challenge popular understanding of
personal identity.

As I consider how to present a theory of personal identity based on
agency, I see many possibilities for the discussion to become a phyrric
one, with any valid point likely to succumb to attacks which might
succeed not due to their aim but their number.  I observe that the more
general a new principle, the greater its exposure, and I wonder what
strategy is best for such an effort.  There's the direct frontal attack,
likely to succumb as described above, there is the pincers maneuver--a
favorite of Lee's--but one finds there is always a escape (if only
through a previously unknown dimension of discursive reality ;-) ),
there is the Socratic method, and there is infiltration from within.
Hmmm.

-------------------------------

Well, let's begin.

Lee, I presented the little story of Aging Alice in order to demonstrate
the incompleteness of the "patternist" view that personal identity is
essentially defined in terms of ones values, beliefs and memories, i.e.
in terms of their physical/functional attributes.  While I agree that
this holds for any given instant (t=0), and that it supports the view
that an identical copy of a person is essentially that same person, this
definition appears to fail *immediately* and progressively with
increasing  divergence of two instances of the same person.

While many of us would say that a person's identity remains constant as
they change with age, and thus your definition seems wrong or at least
incomplete, you claim that your definition is mathematically and
logically correct and it is the common-sense understanding of
personality that is flawed. I will attempt to show that your assertion
is correct only at t=0, and while it usefully demonstrates the
possibility of multiple instances of a personal identity, it says
nothing about the extended practicality of such a narrow concept.

(1) You have stated that as change accumulates with age, at some point a
person must be considered to have become a different person.

(2) You have stated that one should consider any copies of oneself as
being exactly the same person regardless of some non-zero amount of
space, time and accumulated experience, so it is clear that in your
theory, personal identity persists through some significant amount of
change.  

(3) So in your theory it seems either that there must be some t>0
dividing point, or that your definition of personal identity is
internally contradictory.
(3a) You seem to claim a sort of mathematical or objective purity to
your theory, so I would ask you, at what point is a person no longer the
same person? 

(4)Failing (3a), would you agree that personal identity (other than for
the trivial case at t=0) can not be stated essentially in terms of some
objective physical measure (ideal or practical), but that personal
identity must necessarily be assigned as the result of some subjective
evaluation (which of course is likely to have a strong correspondence
with observables)?

Please let me know your response to the preceding and of your agreement
or disagreement with any of its premises or conclusions.

----------------------

Following Robert Bradury's wise counsel that one should not attempt to
destroy another's belief without offering a replacement, I will now
offer the following:

Given that an objective measure of personal identity is incoherent
(other than the case of the mathematically valid identity at t=0), I
will propose that a more encompassing concept of personal identity can
be based on agency, namely that multiple agents (can be said to) share
the same personal identity to the extent that they (are observed to) act
on behalf of a particular entity.   

To head off an anticipated early objection, consider the following:

We are all familiar with the idea of a commercial agent, such as one who
represents the seller of real estate, or the author of a book, or a film
star.  We are accustomed to the idea that this agent can act on behalf
of the principle in certain limited ways, and in doing so, assumes moral
and legal responsibility for such acts as authorized.  This is agency,
but to a very limited extent relative to what promises to be possible
with future technologies. If we extend the concept of agency, we see the
agent taking on more and more resemblance to the principle, in terms of
knowing the principle's values, beliefs and memories and being able to
choose and take action in all such respects.  Logically, I am my own
agent.  This instantiation acts in all ways as an agent of the entity
known as Jef.

Consider the following scenarios:

#1 With the intention of increasing my working bandwidth, I step into
the duplicator box. A short time later two agents acting on behalf of
the entity known (by everyone including himself) as Jef go to work.
They happen to be physically (and thus functionally) the same as the
original so the results are coincidentally the same as the patternist
view.

#2 With the intention of increasing my working bandwidth I step into the
duplicator box. To avoid some confusion, I set the controls so that one
copy will have blue skin, but be identical in all other respects.  The
two agents of Jef go to work.  Would the patternist say they are not the
same personal identity since there's an obvious physical difference?
>From the point of view of agency, it's the same personal identity, but
with different skin colors. If Jef's skin color were to change would we
say he's a different person?

#3 With the intention of temporarily increasing my working bandwidth I
step into the duplicator box.  To avoid confusion and dispute later on,
I set the controls such that one copy will have blue skin and will also
not feel hunger or boredom, and incidentally it will die within a short
time (maybe due to not eating.)  From the patternist point of view there
are two different persons physically, functionally, and in terms of
values.  From the point of view of agency it's two of Jef, with one of
them significantly modified.  If Jef were in the hospital with a skin
condition and a brain anomaly that caused lack of boredom would we say
it isn't Jef?  Note that the functions and actions of someone in
hospital may be severely modified but they continue to act solely and
entirely on behalf of the same entity.  

#4 With the intention of contributing to the worthwhile social cause of
asteroid mining, but not being able to send my firstborn son, I step
into the duplicator box.  I send my duplicate off as a free agent to
contribute to the cause, knowing that he will get a good pension and I
probably won't ever see him again. The patternist view would insist that
I was sending myself.  The agency point of view would say I was sending
a different person with an extremely strong resemblance, carrying my
knowledge and skills.  Note that if I had in fact sent my son, no one
would think of doubting that he was ultimately a free agent, even though
I was the sole direct cause of his enlistment.

#5 Ten years after sending said free agent to the asteroid mines, he
returns, informs me that he was converted to patternist thinking while
away, and now claims equal share of my property, my projects and my
wife.  A patternist might claim (I remember Lee claiming this) that he
would in fact be me, and I should be happy to have doubled my runtime
and gladly find a way to share.

#6 A few days later, I learn that the real reason he returned from the
asteroid mines is that he had been accused of a plot to blow up an
asteroid belonging to the Bush family and had therefore been charged
with terrorism under penalty of death.  Under patternist thinking,
should I turn myself in, or under agent-based thinking, should I tell
him he's in big trouble and might consider making a large political
contribution while in hiding?

#7 Remember Alice?  Under patternist thinking according to Lee, she died
at some point even though someone continued on with her property, her
relationships, and her name.  Under agent-based personal identity,
there's no question that we should see the 86 year old woman as a late
instantiation of the entity known to all, including herself, as Alice.
Furthermore, fifty years later, we would gladly interact with her
variants and doubles exactly as if they were Alice in various alternate
forms and places.

I look forward to your thoughtful comments.

- Jef