An enactive resolution to Hume's problem of personal identity

Tom Froese

Life and Mind #22

Outline of the talk

• Hume’s problem of personal identity– Identity of living bodies– Identity of mind– Causality

• The enactive account of identity

• A phenomenological resolution

A “bundle” theory of identity

• Hume famously observed that “when I turn my reflection on myself, I never can perceive this self without some one or more perceptions; nor can I ever perceive any thing but the perceptions. ‘Tis the composition of these, therefore, which forms the self” (THN. App.15).

• In other words: “the mind is kind of theatre, where several perceptions successively make their appearance; pass, re-pass, glide away, and mingle in an infinite variety of postures and situations. There is properly no simplicity in it at one time, nor identity in different; […]. The comparison of the theatre must not mislead us. They are the successive perceptions only, that constitute the mind” (THN. 1.4.6.4).

A psychological account

• On epistemological grounds Hume rejects the existence of a substantial self as a possible explanation for why we tend to attribute identity to some of our changing perceptions. That’s an issue for metaphysicians.

• For Hume this psychological propensity can only be explained in terms of distinct perceptions and certain relations, most notably resemblance and causation.

• He is interested in how our belief in identity gets formed. Under what circumstances is identity disclosed in our experience? How is it constituted?

Different kinds of identity

• Hume identifies 3 different kinds of identity which are disclosed to our experience:

1. The identity of inanimate natural objects2. The identity of inanimate artificial objects3. The identity of animate objects

• The identity of mind (i.e. personal identity) most closely resembles that of animate objects (i.e. living bodies).

• How are these different identities constituted?

Inanimate natural identity

• Hume provides a psychological explanation of how we come to ascribe an identity to a particular subset of the total perceptions which constitute the ongoing flow of our experience, leading to a belief in an identical object

• He appeals to the relation of resemblance: there is a “smooth and easy” transition between the different perceptions so that through our imagination we are led to believe “that ‘tis nothing but continu’d survey of the same object” (THN. 1.4.6.8).

• Nevertheless, if sufficient small changes in such an object add up to a considerable change in proportion to the whole, the ascription of identity ceases.

Inanimate artificial identity• Hume notes that our propensity to attribute identity is increased

when the imagination is faced with an object where there is “a reference of the parts to each other, and a combination to some common end or purpose” (THN. 1.4.6.11).

• As an example he considers the classic story of the ship, which over time has a considerable amount of its parts and materials replaced, but is still considered to be the same ship.

• When faced with humanly designed artifacts “the common end, in which the parts conspire, is the same under all their variations, and affords an easy transition of the imagination from one situation of the body to another” (THN. 1.4.6.11).

Identity of living bodies

• “But this is still more remarkable, when we add a sympathy of parts to their common end, and suppose that they bear to each other, the reciprocal relation of cause and effect in all their actions and operations. This is the case with all animals and vegetables; where not only the several parts have a reference to some general purpose, but also a mutual dependence on, and connexion with each other. The effect of so strong a relation is, that tho’ every one must allow, in a very few years both vegetables and animals endure a total change, yet we still attribute identity to them, while their form, size, and substance are entirely alter’d.” (THN. 1.4.6.12)

Mechanisms of identity attribution

• The 3 different types of identity are ordered in increasing propensity for identity attribution due to the following mechanisms:

1. Inanimate natural object: resemblance

2. Inanimate artificial object: common end

3. Animate object: reciprocal causality

• What about the identity attributed to mind?

Identity of mind

• In order to proceed in this manner will not be easy, since “to explain it perfectly we must take the matter pretty deep, and account for that identity, which we attribute to plants and animals; there being a great analogy betwixt it, and the identity of a self or person” (THN. 1.4.6.5).

• “’tis evident, the same method of reasoning must be continu’d, which has so successfully explain’d the identity of plants, and animals, and ships, and houses, and of all the compounded and changeable productions either of art or nature. The identity, which we ascribe to the mind of man, is only a fictitious one, and of a like with that which we ascribe to vegetables and animal bodies” (THN. 1.4.6.15).

Identity as a fiction?

• Hume often refers to aspects of our experience as fictions. These are generally constituted by the imagination and strongly compel our belief.

• In the case of personal identity it is our belief in a simple identity even when faced with a composite identity.

• “what we call a mind, is nothing but a heap or collection of different perceptions, united together by certain relations, and suppos’d, tho’ falsely, to be endow’d with a perfect simplicity and identity” (THN. 1.4.2.39).

Identity of mind

• Hume proposes that, like the identity of living bodies, personal identity is a non-substantial, non-localized, relational, composite identity.

• This identity is autonomous and self-organizing.

• It has the capacity for active constitution and generating interaction through simple mechanistic principles such as habit/custom and different kinds of association.

So far, so good…?• So what is wrong with this account of personal identity such that

Hume famously disavows it in the Appendix to the Treatise?

• “all my hopes vanish, when I come to explain the principles, that unite our successive perceptions in our thought or consciousness. I cannot discover any theory, which gives me satisfaction on this head. In short there are two principles, which I cannot render consistent; nor is it in my power to renounce either of them, viz. that all our distinct perceptions are distinct existences, and that the mind never perceives any real connexion among distinct existences. Did our perceptions either inhere in something simple and individual, or did the mind perceive some real connexion among them, there wou’d be no difficulty in the case.” (THN. App.20-21)

• We have already seen why Hume rejects the notion of substance identity. But what about the second principle?

Causality• Hume’s rejection of the “real connections” needed for his account of

identity is based on his account of how causality is disclosed to us.

• Imagine: event A … then … event B!

• In this case all we can know is that B followed A. Even if the sequence repeats several times, there is nothing new about each individual situation. However, if we experience this sequence often enough we actually start to believe that A causes B.

• Accordingly, Hume claims that this sense of a necessary connection between the events is not intrinsic to the sequence but rather constituted by our mind through force of habit and then projected onto the events. It is therefore another fiction of our imagination.

• Why is this a problem for Hume’s account of personal identity?

Hume’s problem of personal identity

• We have no philosophical grounds to “transfer the determination of the thought to external objects, and suppose any real intelligible connexion betwixt them; that being a quality, which can only belong to the mind that considers them” (THN. 1.3.14.27).

• Now we are in a position to understand Hume’s problem of personal identity as resulting from an internal incoherence of his philosophy. Since he has rejected the notion of substance while still retaining the claim that perceptions are distinct from each other, it follows that the perceptions of the mind “form a whole only by being connected together. But no connexions among distinct existences are ever discoverable by human understanding” (THN. App.20).

• If Hume is unable to resolve this issue then when his philosophical framework is applied exclusively to the world (including other agents) it commits him to the undesirable position of idealistic solipsism, and when applied to his own personal identity it becomes self-refuting.

Enactive account of individuality

• Hume has been credited with “having brilliantly formulated the discovery of selfless minds, a discovery of fundamental relevance to the human situation”, but as unable to conceive of a “way to bring that discovery together with everyday experience” (Varela, Thompson & Rosch 1991, p. 129-130) through notions such as self-organization and emergence.

• While there is certainly a problem regarding the reconciliation of his account of personal identity with his own experience, it is not because of his discovery of selfless minds as such, but rather because he was forced to conceive of them as mere powerless fictions.

A shared problem?• The identity of the whole system is not substantial but rather

emerges out of the interactions of the parts, and “emergents, of course, do not have the status of ontological entities (substances)” (Varela, Thompson & Rosch 1991, p. 118).

• The identity of an organism is “nonsubstantially localized, and yet perfectly able to generate interactions” (Varela 1997).

• Maturana claims it is inadequate to attribute causal relations to living systems since “the notion of causality is a notion that pertains to the domain of descriptions, and as such it is relevant only in the metadomain in which the observer makes his commentaries and cannot be deemed to be operative in the phenomenal domain, the object of description” (Maturana & Varela 1980, p. xviii).

• The enactive account shares Hume’s problem. Can it resolve it?

An enactive resolution• The strategy pursued here will be to ground our notion of causality

in the experience of our lived body in action rather than following Hume in attributing it to the operations of a disembodied observer.

• The evidence of causality in our bodily experience is considered by Hume in two footnotes in the Enquiry but quickly dismissed for two main reasons: 1) the limited domain of applicability of the experience and the danger of anthropomorphism, and 2) the lack of conceptual clarity it can afford.

• Hume models his theory of perception on vision, which in its character is the most passive and objectifying sense. It is therefore the most conducive for knowledge, but easily leads to a dismissal of any kind of experiential evidence which, “being not a ‘datum’ but an ‘actum,’ cannot be ‘seen,’ i.e. objectified, but only experience from within when exerted or suffered” (Jonas 1950).

The lived body in action• If we remove the Cartesian straightjacket, which is constraining

Hume’s rudimentary phenomenology, and extend his empiricism to include the full range of our lived experience, then “the primary aspect of causality is not regular connection, not even necessary connection, but force and influence” and, more importantly, “that these are themselves original contents of experience” (Jonas 1950).

• “the source of this experience is, indeed, not sense perception, but our body exerting itself in action – the source which Hume summarily dismisses under the head of ‘animal nisus’” (Jonas 1950).

• A phenomenological re-conceptualization of causality!

• Note that this move entails (i) that causality is no longer just a groundless fiction of the imagination, and (ii) that a coherent non-substantial account of personal identity is now possible.

Concluding remarks

• This solution provides a good reason to follow Jonas (1950) in proclaiming that “the right of extrapolation from this source beyond its immediate range of deliverance is a question to be studied, without fear of the blame of anthropomorphism, by an organic philosophy”.

• Fortunately, the phenomenology of the lived body is a central aspect of enactivism (e.g. Thompson 2007).

• Moreover, since it already appeals to “the evidence of our intrinsic teleology in us” as a part of its account of autonomous agency (Weber & Varela 2002), it is only a small step to also include our lived bodily experience of the ‘animal nisus’ as another source of evidence.

References• Hume, D. (1739-1740), A Treatise of Human Nature, in: D.F. Norton & M.J. Norton (eds.), Oxford

Philosophical Texts, Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2000

• Hume, D. (1748), An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, in: T.L. Beauchamp (ed.), Oxford Philosophical Texts, Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1999

• Jonas, H. (1950), “Causality and Perception”, The Journal of Philosophy, 47(11), pp. 319-324

• Maturana, H.R. & Varela, F.J. (1980), Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living, Dordrecht, Holland: D. Reidel Publishing Company

• Thompson, E. (2007), Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press

• Varela, F.J. (1997), ‘Patterns of Life: Intertwining Identity and Cognition’, Brain and Cognition, 34, pp. 72-87

• Varela, F.J, Thompson, E. & Rosch, E. (1991), The Embodied Mind: Cognitive science and human experience, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press

• Weber, A. & Varela, F.J. (2002), “Life after Kant: Natural purposes and the autopoietic foundations of biological individuality”, Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 1, pp. 97-125