Identity (Identity)

by dhw, Saturday, August 15, 2009, 11:27 (5366 days ago)

There are different discussions on different threads at the moment concerning free will, consciousness, morality, and other aspects of what it is that makes us not only human, but also different from one another. I'd therefore like to link them to "identity", in the hope that someone might come up with answers to some puzzling questions. - Matt has pointed out that thoughts often come into our heads seemingly of their own accord, with dreams as an extreme example. He suggests that since these thoughts come involuntarily, they must throw a degree of doubt on our free will. David argues that since our conscious and our unconscious minds are part of us, we can hardly attribute them to anything outside ourselves, and he believes that he is in control of who he is. BBella has put forward a concept of a possible Universal Intelligence which occupies all of us and therefore presumably thinks our thoughts for us, although we are not aware of it. (I hope I've got all this right, but no doubt you will correct me if I haven't.) I'm sure we all believe we have our own identity, so just what is it that makes us "us"? - Materialists would presumably say that the basis of identity is the physical stuff that goes to make up our bodies. I don't think anyone would question that the body has an enormous influence on our identity, and it's clear from the effects of drugs, accidents, operations, illnesses that a change in the body can bring about a change in the identity. But ... I'd like to underline this ... no-one has yet explained how the materials actually produce the thoughts that make us what we are. So are we servants of those materials? If not, what gives us control over our thoughts when we do control them, and what produces the thoughts we don't control? - Matt has talked of a tabula rasa. But is there such a thing? If the mind is controlled by the materials we're born with, the answer has to be no (because the core of the identity is already there). If it's not, why do some experiences leave their mark and others don't? Young children may not be sufficiently developed to make conscious choices or to produce calculated reactions, but they do choose and they do react in their own individual way. And so again, the basic identity is already there, and there is no tabula rasa. But if that core of identity is not material, what is it? (Just to clarify here, I'm not pleading for a "supernatural" explanation. I'm just asking questions.) - To sum it up, I understand that heredity, environment and chance all combine to make me who I am. What I do not understand is the mechanism that moulds these different influences into "me". If the mechanism is the material self with which I was born (heredity), all my responses to environment and chance have been pre-programmed. But if I have a degree of control over who I am and what I do ... and that, I'm sure, is what most of us believe ... what is the source of the conscious will that gives me that control?