Phenomenological Support of Theory of Identity as Encountered in Williams’ “The Self and Future”

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Phenomenological Support of Theory of Identity as Encountered

in Williams The Self and Future

byBrian Bridson

204705885

AS/PHIL 4090: Metaphysics

Professor Paul Raymont

06 December, 2004


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Phenomenological Support of Theory of Identity as Encountered

in Williams The Self and Future

In the opening paragraph of his essay, Williams asserts that a persons identity is

the sum of their memories, and, I presume, their beliefs, desires and other mental states.

Having taken this Lockean regarding theory of identity, Williams then proposes that we

could take the memories, beliefs and desires of personA and those of personB, and place

them in the opposite bodies. What he demonstrates in the end, however, is that we

associate our identity more closely with our bodies than with our memories. Over the

course of this paper I will demonstrate that Williams was on to what I think is an

appropriate way of accounting for identity. He ends his essay with a problem; I hope to

resolve the same problem in this paper, and to do so by explaining the process by which

we develop identity or self-concepts. In this paper I will first provide a brief account of

Williams argument, accounting for what I believe to be its most important elements.

Secondly, I will provide my own account of what personal identity is, which is essentially

phenomenological and existential in nature, focusing on what the selfs relation to the

body is, and how we ought to conceive of the body. Thirdly, I will discuss what I take to

be the ambiguities in Williams position in the spirit of my own concept of self. Lastly, I

will consider a number of possible criticisms regarding my own view of personal identity

as well as provide my responses to these criticisms.

I

As I alluded to above, Williams proposes a thought experiment that involves

switching bodies in order to explore the concept of personal identity. He adopts a

position that is dissimilar to the one held by Locke, which states that continuity of

identity through time requires maintaining access to ones memories. It follows from this


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that if a person is told that they will be unable to recollect their memories for a particular

reason (e.g. amnesia), then that person will be apt to respond by saying that despite this,

or any other change in mental constitution, they will still associate their identity with the

body that is presently their own. This is what Williams hopes his thought experiment

and his analysis of it will demonstrate. Let us now consider the experiments that

Williams suggests.

The first experiment happens much like I have described above, except A and B

are told prior to the switch that afterwards one of them will be tortured and the other will

receive one hundred thousand dollars ($100,000) for their troubles. We are also told that

each of them is allowed to request which fate will befall them, though in our current

discussion the requests he has them make in his paper are irrelevant. Let us say that after

the experiment they can be said to have switched bodies: A is in the body ofB (whom we

will now call theB-body person) andB is in the body ofA (whom we will now call theA-

body person). This means that the B-body person identifies himself with the life ofA,

and theA-body person identifies himself with the life ofB. Thus, Williams claims that if

we torture theB-body person we will in effect be torturingA, and that if we give the A-

body person the money, we will actually be giving the money to B. Thus, as far as

Williams is concerned, at this point,A andB can be said to have switched bodies.

The second experiment is what Williams stresses as being more personal in nature

relative to the first. I am to suppose that someone who has power over me tells me that

tomorrow I am going to be tortured, and that because I am a normal individual, I am

naturally going to fear this. I am then told that directly prior to being tortured I am going

to be struck with amnesia so thorough that I will not remember a single feature of my life.


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But like the first bit of news, the revelation of assured amnesia will do nothing to

alleviate my fears. The reason, he says, is that I can imagine being told that I am going to

be tortured and then forget I am going to be tortured, but that despite this slip of the

memory, I will still fear the torture because I can still imagine it happening to me. He

then goes on to provide the six steps that will be followed during this experiment:

(i)A is subjected to an operation that produces total amnesia;(ii) amnesia is produced in A, and other interference leads to certain changes in hischaracter;(iii) changes in his character are produced, and at the same time certain illusorymemory beliefs are induced in him; these are quite the fictitious kind and do not fitthe life of any actual person;

(iv) the same as (iii), except that both the character traits and the memoryimpressions are designed to be appropriate to another actual person,B;(v) the same as (iv), except that the result is produced by putting the information intoA from the brain ofB, by a method which leavesB the same as he was before;(vi) the same happens to A as in (v), but B is not left the same, since a similaroperation is conducted in the reverse direction.1

Now he argues that if I am likely to fear the prospect of torture, with or without

the induction of amnesiac states, then it seems as though there is little reason why I

should not fear the step (iii) in this experiment. And if I have reason enough for fearing

step (iii) then I have just as much reason for fearing step (iv), because whether the

memories put in my head belong to a real or a fictitious person, it still seems as though it

is me it is happening to. Step (v) changes nothing, except that the mental state package2

in my head is exactly the same as that which is in Bs also, so I seem to have just as much

reason to worry.

1 Williams. The Self and the Future. p. 1902 Mental state package, or package of mental states, is a concept I use that contains within it memories,beliefs, and desires. Though Williams only discusses memories, I believe that beliefs and desires, as wellas other mental states will likewise be included in the transfer between individuals. However, we shouldremember that despite the fact that I stress all mental states would be transferred, Williams only makesreference to memories.


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Step (vi) changes matters, for now it can be said that I now reside in the body ofB

and that B exists in my body. Williams now starts to work backwards, beginning with

inferences he draws from considering step (vi) and applying these to earlier steps in the

process. If it seems as though in step (vi) I am theB-body person and not the A-body

person, then it makes sense that in (v) I am not theA-body person and can in fact be said

to not exist,3 though this is unsettling. And if I can accept that theA-body person in (v) is

not me, then perhaps theA-body person in (iv) is not me, and likewise in (iii). Williams

now claims that the problem entails where we should draw the line in this reverse line of

inference; he is unwilling to go beyond step (iii).

He claims that what the person fears must be taken into consideration in this

scenario, and that if a person can fear steps (i) through (iv), then it seems likely that they

will fear step (v). And if the person fears step (v) then they could fear step (vi). And thus

constituted, if I wereA as he has characterized him, then if given the choice prior to any

of these events unfolding, I should request that the B-body person receive the torture,

even though the evidence from the first experiment suggests that the B-body person will

in fact be me.

He concludes his essay by asserting that the first experiment was neat and was

able to avoid the problems that arise when the experiment is presented to us in a first-

person manner. It is the fear of what will happen to my body that will make me want to

avoid letting it be tortured, and this is because I am prone to considering that identity is

associated with bodily continuity, rather than Lockes continuity of memory. He

concludes his essay with a problem:

3 I would not exist, he argues, because my body is now inhabited by the package of mental states thatconstitutes B, and because my package of mental states has not been similarly re-embodied, I can beeffectively said to not exist. p. 192


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As against this, the principle that ones fears can extend to future pain whateverpsychological changes precede it seems positively straightforward. Perhaps,indeed, it is not; but we need to be shown what is wrong with it. Until we areshown what is wrong with it, we should perhaps decide that if we were thepersonA then, if we were to decide selfishly, we should pass the pain to the B-

body person. It is risky: that there is room for the notion of a risk here is itself amajor feature of the problem.4

I will now attempt to provide a solution to the problem posed by Williams. I will

explain how it is that we come to have a sense of self, or identity, and why it is associated

with bodily identity rather than the continuity of memories or other mental states. In the

end I shall have demonstrated why this is less of a risk than he takes it to be.

II.a

Identity is not intrinsic to anything whatsoever; rather, it is a designation and

meaning that we create. I will first explain what it is I take identity to be, as well as its

relation to the body. Following this account I will turn my attention to how it is I

conceive of the body. In order to help explain what I mean, I will briefly discuss the

philosophies of Heraclitus and Hegel with regard to their understanding of identity. In

his collected work of fragments Heraclitus writes, For wisdom, listen not to me but to

the word and know that all is one.5

He also writes, That which always was, and is, and

will be everlasting fire, the same for all, the cosmos, made by neither god nor man,

replenishes in measure as it burns away.6 What Heraclitus means is that the world is an

appearance and in a constant state of flux; nothing can be what it was, nor can anything

be what it will be. Thus, because reality is in a perpetual state of flux the only thing that

does not change is the fact that everything changes. Being such as it is, we must

understand that while identity is useful for understanding the world around us, it is

4 Williams. ibid. p. 1985 Heraclitus. Fragment 26 Heraclitus. Fragment 20


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fleeting. And thus identity, like the rest of reality, must remain a way of coming to know

that whose meaning always changes and is never the same twice. This is the concept of

identity found in the fragments of Heraclitus.

Hegel functions in a similar manner. He notes that we make reference to the

world around us with indexicals: concepts like here, now, etc. Just as Heraclitus

asserts that the world is in a constant state of flux, so Hegel too notes that these indexicals

can never refer to the same thing twice; that which was here a moment ago is not what

here is now, nor does what I mean by the term now at this moment mean the same as

it did a few hours ago or what it will mean a few hours from now. He writes, Here is,

e.g., the tree. If I turn round, the truth has vanished and is converted into its opposite:

No tree is here, but a house instead. Here itself does not vanish; on the contrary, it

abides in the vanishing of the house, the tree, etc., and is indifferently house or tree.

Again, therefore, [it] shows itself to be a mediated simplicity, or a universality.7 It is, I

am sure, clear what connection Hegel next makes. I is likewise a universal, for it

depends on who uses the word, as well as where and when it is posited. Hegel writes,

The I is merely universal like Now, Here, or This in general; I do indeed mean a

single I, but I can no more say what I mean in the case of I than I can in the case of

Now and Here.8 Thus, I, like every other deictic is not static; it means something

new to every person who utters it, and its meaning changes with every new experience in

the world.

These examples provide us with what we need to know in order to begin our new

investigation regarding what personal identity, or the I for each of us is and how it is

7 Hegel. Phenomenology of Spirit. 988 Hegel. ibid. 102


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created. This investigation necessarily commences with Being-in-the-world or Being-in-

and-for-itself.9

As such, even though each of us exists as an individual, we exist

simultaneously and necessarily as a part of the world, something which has worldly

experiences which affect it both internally and externally. To say it plainly, our existence

in the world is private and public and our experiences affect us in ways that necessarily

change us, even if only at times in very minor ways; as Heraclitus often remarked,

everything is change. And if everything is change (or changing), then we must accept

that we, as beings in the world, also change. We must also remember that as Hegel and

others remark the I or self is something posited by each of us, changing with each new

experience according to what that experience is and both how it affects us and how we

interpret these effects.

At this point it would be apt to ask what it is that this I refers to. There must be

something that with each postulation this I refers to necessarily. This is not to say that

its meaning is static, but rather that its meaning always refers to the same localization in

the world, and this I take to be the body. This being the case, then the body is the

localization in the world whereby the self has experiences and posits itself in light of

these experiences and all the information it has available to it. This means that insofar as

it makes reference to the body it is associated with, it also makes reference to any

memories and other mental states it has access to, as well as all relevant knowledge of

history. It is this ability to make reference to memory specifically that allows us to have

what is generally referred to as continuity of self.

But what is it we should take continuity of self to mean? It is a fair question to

ask, given what I have said above regarding the perpetually changing nature of the I.

9 These are popular expressions of Heidegger and Hegel, respectively.


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All that I mean by continuity of self is the ability to recognize previous selves associated

with this same body to be sufficiently similar to how the self now associated with body

identifies itself; it is not to say that they are identical, for this is impossible. This is able

to happen because when we posit the self we make reference to all information that is

available to us: memories, other mental states, history and the body we are in. Sufficient

similarities can be understood as similar identities.

However, there can be cases in which we have fewer or no memories or other

mental states to make reference to due to the onset of a condition like amnesia.

Traditionally, or at least conventionally, something like this can be said to cause this

individual to become a new self, and while I do not disagree with what is being said, I

must take issue with why it is being said. Colloquially this utterance is meant to mean

there is a novel disjunction between the self that was and the self that now is, as though

up to this point, the individual in question has been the same self. But if what I have said

above relates to what is existentially the case, then we should not approach the issue with

this colloquial frame of mind. Every positing of the self is a simultaneous process of

self-destruction and self-creation; never can the self or I when posited be equivalent to

any other I that has been or will be posited. What happens in the case of someone in an

amnesiac state is that in self-positing they will have less information to make reference

to, but what will not change is that it is the same body with which it is associated. This

can, and more than likely will result in new self positing that is distinct to such a degree

that it shares no specific similarities with former self-expressions associated with this

body. Thus, while it will be said that the self in this instance is a new self, we must


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understand this in light of the existential understanding thus far reached, and not to take it

to mean what it would in colloquial ways of speaking.

If what has been said above is reflective of the reality of the situation, then what

we understand to be the self or I is associated with the body as its way of having a

localization in the world, and that it makes reference to memory and other mental states,

but that these are in no way necessary in order for the self to exist. Memory is thus

something that is used by the self or I when it is positing, as it is available, but the

absence of it in no way devalues self-positing nor does it make self-positing impossible;

the I is in no way contingent upon memory.

This understanding will make it much easier to understand what is involved in

cases whereby memories are not occluded, but rather, they are replaced or modified, so

that what they reflect either never happened or, at the very least, never happened to any

of the previous selves associated with this body. An example of such a case would be

someone who wakes up tomorrow and is for one reason or another, say due to memory

replacement, convinced that they are and always have been Loki, the trickster of Norse

mythology. Again, colloquially people are no doubt apt to say that this individual not

only has a new self concept, but that this disjunction between the new and the old self is

radical. But this radical disjunction is in no way problematic; all the information that the

self could make reference to when self-positing will be that all the previous selves

associated with this body have similarly identified themselves as Loki the mischief

maker. We must keep in mind that memory is only a tool that is used when the self is

positing what it is. The posited self is always a new self; never the same as it ever has

been before. Thus, as we responded in the case of the amnesiac, we must acknowledge


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that there has been a change and that the self that is posited as a result will necessarily be

a new self, but that this is not in any way intrinsically different from how the self is

posited at any other time.

Thus, we exist in a world that is in a constant state of flux, in which the only

constant is change itself. This reality is all-encompassing, meaning that universals like

Here, Now, This, and I change whenever and wherever someone utters or makes

use of them. That said, whenever I is posited it necessarily means something novel,

whether its new meaning is markedly similar or distinct to which it has meant in the

past. What is constant is the body that the I is associated with. And in this

understanding, memory is a tool used much as knowledge of history is, for it provides the

self with information it can use when it posits itself, but that a uniform memory is not

required for the self to continue to posit; and as we have seen above, the self is

completely capable of positing itself even if there is no memory to which it can make

reference.

II.b

I have remarked above that the self is associated with the body, which provides

the self with a constant localization in the world. It is of course easy to say that this

opinion conflicts with what I have said regarding the perpetually changing nature of

reality. Thus, what I would like to do here is demonstrate what it is that I mean by a

constant body and resolve the seeming contradiction in what I have written.

The colloquial understanding of my body or any body for that matter, is that it

is a physical thing in the world, and this conception is certainly fair, given that it is a

physical thing. However, this way of understanding the body is purely ontical; concerned


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with the appearances of things, or their being-at-hand, not with their Being-in-the-

world.10

It is this ontological conception of the body that I have in mind, which is, as we

shall see, distinct from the ontical conception that seems to be taken as being the case by

most.

What we are going to be concerned with in this investigation is developing a

concept of body that is ontologically and phenomenologically understood as a Being-in-

the-world, which we will see coincides with the terminology of localization in the

world. It is true that we do think of our bodies when we are acting in the world; as

remarked above, they are the means by which we gather information of the world and the

means by which we interact with it. Hence, the body really can be understood as the

localization in the world of the self, or, that-by-means-of-which the self is situated in the

world and as that via which the self has experiences. The body is understood in terms of

experience-in-the-world, rather than in mechanical or essentially physical terms.

This no doubt will be a point of contention between my critics and myself. The

body, they are apt to say, is understood primarily as a physical and mechanical thing in

the world. They may even make reference to their own experiences or to everyday

language, e.g. Im bending my arm, or My back is sore, or I stubbed my toe, and so

on. But what is true about all of this uttering is that they describe a self, in this case this

is me, who is acting in or experiencing the world, and that this is done with my body; my

body is the way in which I experience the world. InBeing in Time, Heidegger provides

an insightful passage from the work of Scheler: But an act is never also an object; for it

is essential to the Being of acts that they are Experienced only in their performance itself

10 Heidegger. ibid.


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and given in reflection.11 What Scheler means is that in this primordial or

phenomenological way of viewing the body, it is never anything to us in experience

except experience itself; the body is that by which we experience and interpret the world

around us. If we were to treat the body as merely a physical thing in the world, instead of

as the way in which we experience the world, we would be failing to recognize the role

the body actually has in our experiencing of the world.

Hence, when I discuss the body being the constant localization in the world of the

self, I am not guilty of committing any contradictions, for I am not conceptualizing the

body in a colloquial sense. I could not be considering the body to be essentially

something physical, for doing so would create a blatant contradiction, because everything

changes, therefore nothing can be constant. However, phenomenologically we

understand the body as that medium by which the self experiences and interprets the

world. And because the body is essentially this medium and remains so throughout our

experiences, the body can be said to not change, or to be constant, despite our experience;

what does change is how the self interprets these experiences and chooses to express or

posit itself. The body can be said then to have a dual nature: in one sense it does change,

and in another it is constant. We may then authentically say that the self is associated

with the body, and that the body is a constant localization in the world.

Given our new understanding of what self-identity is and its relation to the body,

we can redirect our attention to Williams essay and help flesh out the problem of self-

identity as he encountered it and to help make sense of his thought experiment.

11 Heidegger. ibid. p. 48. I reference Heidegger here, and not Scheler, due to an ambiguity in the textregarding where to find this passage in Scheler.


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III

In this account of Williams essay, I will discuss only the second experiment

because it considers all the possibilities discussed in this essay, and in doing so will avoid

duplication in analysis. What I hope to do is demonstrate how it is that Williams

conclusions were appropriate, while simultaneously providing a solution to his problem

and to show that his movement does not entail the risk he thinks it does.

At no point in the experiment do we come to a step which we can view as

problematic, given our understanding above, because we have seen that no change in

memory or the erasure there of, alters how we understand the process of self-positing to

work. At each step in the experiment we are willing to admit that the self in question will

be distinctly different than the self at each prior step, but that this resultant difference is

in no way intrinsically different than how the self is posited without such dramatic mental

modifications. Thus, while we can question whether this experiment is practical or not,

this seems to be the only real problem we encounter. The issues that we have to deal

with, which I believe are two in number, are the interpretations of the experiment that

Williams provides.

First is the ambiguous concept of self that he is working with. He works with the

assumption that someone is telling him that he is going to be tortured, and that prior to

the torture his mental state package is going to be transferred, such that his memories will

be in the body of someone else, namelyB, and thatBs will be in his body. He is further

told that he and B can request which body will be tortured afterwards. And despite the

conclusions he drew in the impersonal first experiment, his own better judgment, so to

speak, is inclined to request that the B-body person be the one to receive the torture. He


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decides as he does because no matter what mental changes he can envision happening,

his body is still his own, and the pains and pleasures of his body will likewise be his own.

It is because of this that he is inclined to say that his self is more closely associated with

his body than with his mental states and memories. This is plagued by ambiguity, but I

think that this can be cleared up if we apply our understanding of self to this problem.

According to our understanding of the concept of self, the self is associated with

the body, because the body is our localization in the world, the constant medium whereby

the world is encountered. We also understand that the self or I never has the same

meaning more than once. Thus when Williams talks about some unknown connection

between the self and the body, we can assist him by demonstrating what this connection

is. The connection between the body and self has been sufficiently stated above and need

not be accounted for again here. What does need to be accounted for is how he infers this

future connection. All that needs to be demonstrated in this instance is that this same

body will exist at the time in question, because what the self is concerned with at any

given time is the body. The self or I is merely a way of accounting for the experience

of the body in the world of flux; while the I changes, the body as that localization in the

world does not change. Thus, because we know that the only thing that remains constant

is the localization in the world of the self, knowing that the body in question is one of two

bodies that could be tortured, Williams and any one of us placed in the same situation,

would wisely decide as he does.

The second problem has to do with Williams worry at step (v) of the experiment,

in which it seemed as thoughAs self does not exist. Like the first worry, this is easy to

alleviate, given our understanding of the concept of self. The self is not the sum of ones


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memories; it is affected by the memories that it is able to recall at any given time because

these comprise information that it can use in self-positing, but it is not the sum thereof.

Thus, to dispose of the memories ofA and replace them with the memories ofB does not

mean thatA no longer exists in the colloquial manner of speaking, if we take A to be the

self that is posited by the body. It is true that self-positing is a perpetual process of self-

destruction and self-creation, and so in some respect A can be rightly said to no longer

exist. However, despite the changes in memory to the body of that isAs, self-positing

associated with that body continues as usual, for it does not discriminate what memories

it has or does not have. Therefore, all that happens is memories are removed and

replaced by other ones, and because the self or I is not the sum of the memories

associated with the body in question, Williams cannot say that in step (v) A ceases to

exist and in so doing still refer to what is has happened.

Thus, after fleshing out what it is that Williams is saying in his essay with our

own account of what constitutes identity, we were able to remove the ambiguities that

filled his discussion, and in doing so demonstrate that what he concluded was right.

Thus, not only were his intuitions appropriate, but we have also shown that because of

the link between the self and the body that he can safely, without risk, chose to have the

body ofB tortured instead of his own, if he is to choose selfishly. We were also able to

provide some resolve to the problem as he envisioned it precisely because we were able

to demonstrate what the connection between self and body actually is.

IV

In this final section of my paper I would like to consider some possible worries

regarding what I have written. The first is the worry that the self is not associated with


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the body as I have shown it to be. To the holder of this worry, I respond simply by

arguing that through all of my experiences, the one thing that my identity has referred to

consistently is my body. It is true that how I presently choose to define myself is similar

to past self-expressions, but not with all my previous past self-expressions. There was a

time in my life when I was a devout and practicing Catholic. But for some time now, I

have been unattached from any kind of formal religion. And despite these changes in my

self-identity, what has not changed has been that all of these refer to experiences relative

to the same localization in the world (or body). It is because of this relation of the self to

the body that utterances such as I am not the same person now that I was then make

sense. In these situations we do not take the individual to mean that their present body is

a different body than the one they had then, but rather how they conceptualize their self

relative to the same body is different. Thus, all the evidence seems to suggest that the

self is associated with the body in the manner which I have described. If anyone thinks

differently, the onus is theirs to demonstrate why it is not as I have described it.

The second worry is that I am employing mystical language and in doing so I am

making use of dualisms, specifically with regard to the self and the body. However,

positing is simply a process of a specific type of belief ascription, just as other belief

assertions, the acknowledgment of desires, and other such mental processes. I admit that

the language can sound unusual or mystical even, due to the fact that the concepts I

employ are distinct from how most people tend to think; but it does not mean that what I

am discussing is abnormal, nor does it mean that I am being dualistic. And because the

self, taken to be a form of belief assertion is what it is, and that the body is what it is, we


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can safely conclude that there is no dualism in my conception of what self-identity and its

relation to the body is.

Another worry that could be raised here is that of cloning. We could imagine that

someone is able to develop technology that facilitates the safe and efficient cloning of

human beings, and for the purpose of this experiment, that I pay to have myself cloned.

I go to the lab one morning, they take a sample of my blood and they use the genetic

information contained within it to produce a replica of my body. We might also assume

that they have the technology to make a copy of my brain, thereby having a duplicate of

all my mental states (beliefs, desires, hopes, and memories) and that they upload this

information into the head of my clone, and in so doing create a replica of my own brain.

When the process is complete, they would like to argue that this clone and I have

identical identities or self-concepts. This is a claim that I believe is false.

It may be true that the body of this clone is a genetic duplicate of my own, but

even at the genetic level there are going to be minute mutations due to errors in DNA

replication, as these are inevitable and happen in my own body such that I can even be

said to not be genetically identical to how is was when the cloning procedure was

undergone. In this sense our two bodies cannot be said to be identical. They are also

composed of material that while being the same, i.e. carbon-based, is not identical,

because we are after all occupying two different physical spaces. Furthermore, because

we are occupying two different physical spaces, we must necessarily be having different

experiences, even if only slightly. And because we are having different physical

experiences, we are interpreting different experiences, and thus are expressing our self-

identities differently. So it seems as though all that we can justifiably say is that


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physically we look the similar, even incredibly similar, but not that we are identical. The

same can be said for our self-identities, because having different localizations in the

world necessitates having different experiences, which in turn necessitates having

different self-identities.

V

Thus, that Williams is trying to get to the right place seems to me obvious; what is

lacking in his essay is a clear understanding of what he takes the connection between self

and body to be. My understanding of identity, which clearly situates the self in the world

which is perpetually in a state of flux, allows us to understand the nature of the self or I

and its relation to the body. And it is with this understanding in mind that we are able to

make better sense of Williams essay and in effect offer a solution to his problem. While

I feel that the Williams thought experiment was excessively dramatic, it did help us

work through the issue of identity and realize that despite what clever third-person

accounts may say about it, that body switching is not a possibility.

What we have come to realize during the course of this paper is that how we

develop our self-concepts, as well as the connection between self and body is

dramatically distinct from how these concepts are understood colloquially. The self as an

ascription of meaning is never complete; it is a process of perpetual death and rebirth, as

each new positing is distinct from those previous to it. This awareness necessarily brings

the ontological problem back to the fore, as it demonstrates how our knowledge is

lacking with respect to Being. To approach the issue authentically we must be willing to

set aside our indoctrinated beliefs about ourselves and the world, and to vigilantly do all


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that we can to honestly embrace the truth. I believe it is fitting to end with a passage

from NietzschesJoyful Wisdom:

How far is the truth susceptible of embodiment? that is the question,

that is the experiment.

12

12 Nietzsche. Joyful Wisdom. 110.


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Bibliography

Hegel, G.W.F. Phenomenology of Spirit. Translated by A.V. Miller. Oxford UniversityPress, New York: 1977.

Heidegger. Being and Time. Translated by Macquarrie and Robinson. Harper & RowPublishers, United States: 1962.

Heraclitus. Fragments: The Collected Wisdom of Heraclitus. Translated by BrooksHaxton. Viking, New York: 2001.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. Joyful Wisdom. Translated by Kurt F. Reinhardt. Frederick UngarPublishing Co., New York: 1960.

Williams, Bernard. The Future and the Self. In Personal Identity Edited by JohnPerry. University of California Press, Berkeley: 1975.

Documents

Phenomenological Support of Theory of Identity as Encountered in Williams’ “The Self and Future”