Identity: How do you define it?

[John K]

This raises a problem though. If you can believe you are something you're not, then the subjective sense of identity isn't very reliable

But I AM The Walrus of course .....

I feel instinctively that identity isn't expressible in terms of I am <predicate> unless, possibly, the predicate is simply an explicitly created unique label. These are things that are manifested by rather than being the identity. The whole thing has a feel of trying to see the back of your own head directly.

I've found myself intrigued by who my ancestors were when researching my family history. Most of them are dead of course, and most of those for a long time. We tend to think of people usually as in the now, but I found I was seeing my ancestors across their whole completed lives, which is a very different perspective. Their identity is bound up with their completion, the total from birth to death across their lifetime. No one instant of their lives is them, it is somehow associated with all their years.

 

[Deleted member 16771]

This raises a problem though. If you can believe you are something you're not, then the subjective sense of identity isn't very reliable. It also suggests that there is a real, objective identity with which it can be compared. Also, the problem with how others perceive us is that they can also be wrong.

This is a more general problem with self-perception, i.e. that it is fallible. At the same time it would sound strange to say that identity itself is 'fallible'. It's more plausible that it should just be what it is (changing or not). I think this may be a good argument against the view that identity is purely based on perception.

There are huge problems with this line of thinking - invocations of unsubstantiated axioms just based on semantics, &c. Grammar is not logic. I'll explain tomorrow.

Their identity is bound up with their completion, the total from birth to death across their lifetime.

Reminds me of the 'world-line' in physics.

 

[Ren]

There are huge problems with this line of thinking - invocations of unsubstantiated axioms just based on semantics, &c. Grammar is not logic. I'll explain tomorrow.

No problem. I'll remind you if you forget I'm wondering about what you mean, as I didn't have grammar/semantics in mind there, and I don't think the argument needs to rely on that. I would agree intuitively that a purely linguistic interpretation is always to be taken with a pinch of salt.

I feel instinctively that identity isn't expressible in terms of I am <predicate> unless, possibly, the predicate is simply an explicitly created unique label. These are things that are manifested by rather than being the identity. The whole thing has a feel of trying to see the back of your own head directly.

Do you think one implication of this view is that identity can't be defined in terms of self-perception?

 

[Krypton]

It's a little bit subjective where I end and you begin, hah. But I think that identity would be personality, with certain traits (life goals, favorite activities, etc.) likely being weighted more heavily than others.

You could debate whether certain changes are changes or just your self responding to new circumstances. I think the answer to this depends on how much of your behaviour results from the circumstances or your response to them.

 

[Ren]

One thing that I've always thought is,

Nobody ever really changes. They just embrace the parts of themselves that they rejected before. They become more of who they always were.

I think that in a sense this is true, but isn't the process of embracing/forgetting those parts also a kind of change? Not change in terms of addition or subtraction of facts but maybe in terms of recombinations.

 

[John K]

Do you think one implication of this view is that identity can't be defined in terms of self-perception?

Well it gets hard - I certainly have a sense of my own am-ness which needs no qualification, but it's an inner world sense that I can't communicate except directly, because I can't get outside myself to see what it is that is sensing that am-ness, so I can't tell you anything other than that I am.

But as I explore identity with you and the others here, I'm increasingly conscious that we probably all mean something different by 'identity'. I'm certainly taking it as something like: whatever cannot be removed conceptually without me no longer being me, but stripped of everything else that can be removed. I'm thinking that other people may well define it quite legitimately as a person's unique characteristicts rather than fundamental 'ontology'.

 

[PapillonT]

I've found myself intrigued by who my ancestors were when researching my family history. Most of them are dead of course, and most of those for a long time. We tend to think of people usually as in the now, but I found I was seeing my ancestors across their whole completed lives, which is a very different perspective. Their identity is bound up with their completion, the total from birth to death across their lifetime. No one instant of their lives is them, it is somehow associated with all their years.

This is intriguing, John - can we question then if it marries elements that are "inherited" (from our past, and our ancestral identities), as well as elements we choose ourselves through self-perception, in the realms of spatial and temporal dynamics, too? Ultimately, does it depend only of ourselves - or is it at the same time shaped through contacts and relations with others, how we view them and how they see us?
@Ren this is not based on philosophical perspectives, just my own ramblings.

 

[Ren]

@Ren this is not based on philosophical perspectives, just my own ramblings.

Your 'ramblings' are every bit as legitimate a philosophical perspective as any other

 

[John K]

This is intriguing, John - can we question then if it marries elements that are "inherited" (from our past, and our ancestral identities), as well as elements we choose ourselves through self-perception, in the realms of spatial and temporal dynamics, too? Ultimately, does it depend only of ourselves - or is it at the same time shaped through contacts and relations with others, how we view them and how they see us?

Your question leads me down a totally different path on which to explore our identity. One of the ways is to see where we come from in terms of our family history. I feel a very strong affinity with my roots as a result of my research. Half my family came from Ireland if I go back 3 and 4 generations. My father’s side were Catholic’s and some of my mum’s were Presbyterians from Ulster - a weird blend lol. I had a Y-dna test done and traced my male line back to North West Ireland going back maybe a thousand years by estimate. I traced my actual English ancestors on my mums side back to middle class farmers and a vicar in the 1600s. There is a great sense of anchoring comes from knowing this. There’s more than just a few birth marriage and death dates too - but amazing stories of struggling and surviving against hardship and adversity. There are rogues too of course.

Family naming is a particularly intimate tie. My two given names are after my two grandads, and one of those names is very rare and goes back for hundreds of years through my mother’s family, as I found out. I have passed it on to one of my sons and my other son has passed it in to his son.

I have a powerful sense of how all this helps me to understand who I am. With it goes what I said before - particularly as I get older I see myself as my whole life, not just as I am in each present moment.

 

[PapillonT]

Your question leads me down a totally different path on which to explore our identity. One of the ways is to see where we come from in terms of our family history. I feel a very strong affinity with my roots as a result of my research. Half my family came from Ireland if I go back 3 and 4 generations. My father’s side were Catholic’s and some of my mum’s were Presbyterians from Ulster - a weird blend lol. I had a Y-dna test done and traced my male line back to North West Ireland going back maybe a thousand years by estimate. I traced my actual English ancestors on my mums side back to middle class farmers and a vicar in the 1600s. There is a great sense of anchoring comes from knowing this. There’s more than just a few birth marriage and death dates too - but amazing stories of struggling and surviving against hardship and adversity. There are rogues too of course.

Family naming is a particularly intimate tie. My two given names are after my two grandads, and one of those names is very rare and goes back for hundreds of years through my mother’s family, as I found out. I have passed it on to one of my sons and my other son has passed it in to his son.

I have a powerful sense of how all this helps me to understand who I am. With it goes what I said before - particularly as I get older I see myself as my whole life, not just as I am in each present moment.

Thank you for sharing your family story - that must have been very exciting research to do.
It is interesting though the aspect you brought. Few years ago, I worked on a project in oral history, and rootedness emerged as one of the key elements constituting not only people's sense of belonging (both to the place and community), but also as the way they identified themselves.
Perhaps we need transdisciplinary answer to this thread after all.

 

[John K]

Perhaps we need transdisciplinary answer to this thread after all.

Definitely- these are all complementary ways of thinking about it. They are all feeling the same elephant from different angles if you know the Indian parable.

 

[Ren]

But as I explore identity with you and the others here, I'm increasingly conscious that we probably all mean something different by 'identity'. I'm certainly taking it as something like: whatever cannot be removed conceptually without me no longer being me, but stripped of everything else that can be removed. I'm thinking that other people may well define it quite legitimately as a person's unique characteristicts rather than fundamental 'ontology'.

Maybe that's the case, but I think it can easily be shown that the second sense is somewhat trivial. (I mean this in a non-derogatory way.) Once you've said that identity is each and every person's unique characteristics you just have to describe the characteristics in question, or assume they can be described in principle; but you no longer have to bother explaining what identity itself is. In fact you've made identity redundant, because it can just be said that identity is identical to the characteristics in question.

So I think the first sense—the one you subscribe to—is either the right path or at least part of it. Not to mention that if we take identity as a bundle of characteristics, we're once again leaving open the question of what it is that unifies them into a 'self'. So we've not really done away with the first sense regardless. The first sense is therefore, it seems to me, more fundamental than the second, and not eliminated by embracing the second understanding of identity.

 

[Ren]

Perhaps we need transdisciplinary answer to this thread after all.

Yes, for sure! I think we've implicitly been doing this from the beginning, actually. There's no doubt heritage (and therefore, in some sense, history) comes into play in the understanding of what identity is. An entirely philosophical answer would be purely formal, which wouldn't be very interesting, although it can help to demarcate what belongs to the domain of identity and what doesn't.

Some strands of existentialism would deny that heritage plays a role in the definition of identity, but I don't think those views are very credible.

 

[John K]

Maybe that's the case, but I think it can easily be shown that the second sense is trivial. (I mean this in a non-derogatory way.) Once you've said that identity is each and every person's unique characteristics you just have to describe the characteristics in question, or assume they can be described; but you don't have to bother explaining what identity itself is. In fact you've made identity redundant, because it can just be said that identity is identical to the characteristics in question.

So I think the first sense—the one you subscribe to—is either the right path or at least part of it. Not to mention that if we take identity as a bundle of characteristics, we're once again leaving open the question of what it is that unifies them into a 'self'. So we've not really done away with the first sense regardless. The first sense is therefore, it seems to me, more fundamental than the second, and not eliminated by embracing the second understanding of identity.

I agree with you completely in philosophical terms, but what's intriguing me is that 'identity' like 'love' is a single word used across many different meanings, and they are each worth exploring. For example identity in terms of a unique label, like a social security number, obviously picks someone out in a similar way to how a word points beyond itself to something else - or even non-unique labels such as our names, or our email addresses. That takes us away from the deep identity issue, but into a different sort of depth: I'm sure we have had discussions before on the extraordinary way that an arbitrary sign can take on a powerful significance as a place holder for the thing it points at.

I can’t help feeling that there is something in the exploration of characteristics too that is more than trivial, though they are peripheral to the core issue of identity. I wonder for instance if they can set a boundary within which, in some sense, someone’s identity lies – if we know enough of them. This is obviously the sort of way that the police try and identify who committed a crime and the prosecutors try and prove it beyond reasonable doubt. In a more whimsical way – how do you know that the woman who has just come in through your front door at 6:30pm is your partner returning home from work? There is something important going on with these situations that isn’t dealing with ontology but with a sufficiency of practical identification between people in everyday life. The Imposter is a fascinating documentary drama about this very issue.

 

[mintoots]

It's actually quite a hot field of research at the moment. There are many postdoc positions in the philosophy of biology, and I'd say it will only get bigger.

Another fascinating field is the philosophy of animal psychology.

Really? Wow! By chance, have you encountered a paper discussing the philosophical epistemology of biological molecules? Like something that compares the behavior of adenosine triphosphate to Kantian views... I'm serious here, I'm not joking. I would love to read that.

Scratch that! I googled! It's a rabbit hole! See ya!

 

[Rit4lin]

This raises a problem though. If you can believe you are something you're not, then the subjective sense of identity isn't very reliable. It also suggests that there is a real, objective identity with which it can be compared. Also, the problem with how others perceive us is that they can also be wrong.

This is a more general problem with self-perception, i.e. that it is fallible. At the same time it would sound strange to say that identity itself is 'fallible'. It's more plausible that it should just be what it is (changing or not). I think this may be a good argument against the view that identity is purely based on perception.

A good argument indeed, and admittedly one which perplexed me when I was thinking of how to reply to this. But I'm not one to back down ;D
Yes, one's sense of their own identity is not reliable I would agree - it ties into my belief of how identity is partly 'fluid'. There will likely always be aspects of oneself that are ignored, misinterpreted or simply created for the comfort of the person. Self-awareness I believe plays a big part in not only how identity is formed, but how true such perception is. Of course there will always be those whom wrongly portray themselves, or declare themselves to be something which they are not; lauding themselves for being something which juxtaposes their actions.
I would say that there is indeed an aspect of a 'real, objective identity' even if it may be hard to realise. It is this identity which those closest to us, or whom spend a lot of time around our persons, can see to an extent. I am not saying that this perception-based view of identity encapsulates everything about a person - indeed, my focus on perception was just to give a more nuanced insight into my own view of this topic, aside from the usual 'genetics/experiences/value systems' etc. But there are parts of ourselves which are concrete, many of which can be recognised by others. To add a dash of MBTI to this (from my still-vague understanding), it is probably why Ni can be found to be quite 'invasive' as I recall reading on a thread some time ago.
Of course others can perceive us as wrong, but I did not mean adhering to others' perception as if it were Bible. However, it is also why I said that for myself at least, I only listen to what those close to me say, in order to get more reliable views that can be considered. Yes, they may be flawed, but that risk should not negate the validity of what they share. I have never had much issue with the perception of those closest to me, which is why I myself put such stock in it.

This was a really nice point though. When you say 'more plausible that it should just be what it is'; what is it? Their identity, yes, but how would one measure it?

One thing that I've always thought is,

Nobody ever really changes. They just embrace the parts of themselves that they rejected before. They become more of who they always were.

I think that in a sense this is true, but isn't the process of embracing/forgetting those parts also a kind of change? Not change in terms of addition or subtraction of facts but maybe in terms of recombinations.

I think Ren said it best for part of what my reply would have been @slant
But also, what I was talking with PapillonT more or less adheres to this same line of thought: that once we find ourselves and recognise our capabilities - becoming comfortable with this view - it creates a 'foundation' of our identity which is rarely changed other than for

wisdom, academic understanding, emotional development and the like

- the more flexible aspects of our identity which are constantly influenced throughout our life. I don't agree so much that 'nobody ever really changes' - it is inevitable, and people are always undergoing change to an extent. Otherwise development would never occur.

 

[Deleted member 16771]

There are huge problems with this line of thinking - invocations of unsubstantiated axioms just based on semantics, &c. Grammar is not logic. I'll explain tomorrow.

No problem. I'll remind you if you forget I'm wondering about what you mean, as I didn't have grammar/semantics in mind there, and I don't think the argument needs to rely on that. I would agree intuitively that a purely linguistic interpretation is always to be taken with a pinch of salt.

OK, here it is...

This raises a problem though. If you can believe you are something you're not, then the subjective sense of identity isn't very reliable. It also suggests that there is a real, objective identity with which it can be compared. Also, the problem with how others perceive us is that they can also be wrong.

This is a more general problem with self-perception, i.e. that it is fallible. At the same time it would sound strange to say that identity itself is 'fallible'. It's more plausible that it should just be what it is (changing or not). I think this may be a good argument against the view that identity is purely based on perception.

'If you can believe you are something you're not'
This 'If...then' clause sets up your syllogism to follow, not by means of an actual logical case, but simply by the invocation of an axiom.

'If you can believe something you're not' implies the existence of objective identity, when that is the very thing in question. It doesn't invalidate the following syllogism, but it does make it a circular argument, because all you've said is 'If objective identity exists, then objective identity exists'.

If you were to construct the same clause assuming only that subjective identity is valid, it would read something like: 'If you can believe something about yourself that you do not believe about yourself, then...', and the whole thing is revealed as nonsensical.

When you say 'If you can believe you are something you're not', you've left the realm of 'identity' and have started to talk about the objective features of persons that may or may not constitute parts of their identity.

In terms of 'identity', in fact, it's perfectly possible to 'believe something you're not' without it having any effect on the 'truth' or 'reality' of the 'identity' whatever. For instance, there are plenty of people who believe themselves to be Jesus Christ, or Hitler, the reincarnations of historical figures or conduits for alien transmissions; different species, genders different to those they were assigned at birth, &c.

'I think this may be a good argument against the view that identity is purely based on perception.'
I think, instead, you've argued for the opposite case: that 'identity' is entirely divorced from 'objective reality' because it's perceptual only. The fact that some people have identities that overlap with objective features they possess is immaterial.

The identity that others impose upon us operates in exactly the same way except in reverse.

 

[Ren]

A good argument indeed, and admittedly one which perplexed me when I was thinking of how to reply to this. But I'm not one to back down ;D
Yes, one's sense of their own identity is not reliable I would agree - it ties into my belief of how identity is partly 'fluid'. There will likely always be aspects of oneself that are ignored, misinterpreted or simply created for the comfort of the person. Self-awareness I believe plays a big part in not only how identity is formed, but how true such perception is. Of course there will always be those whom wrongly portray themselves, or declare themselves to be something which they are not; lauding themselves for being something which juxtaposes their actions.
I would say that there is indeed an aspect of a 'real, objective identity' even if it may be hard to realise. It is this identity which those closest to us, or whom spend a lot of time around our persons, can see to an extent. I am not saying that this perception-based view of identity encapsulates everything about a person - indeed, my focus on perception was just to give a more nuanced insight into my own view of this topic, aside from the usual 'genetics/experiences/value systems' etc. But there are parts of ourselves which are concrete, many of which can be recognised by others. To add a dash of MBTI to this (from my still-vague understanding), it is probably why Ni can be found to be quite 'invasive' as I recall reading on a thread some time ago.
Of course others can perceive us as wrong, but I did not mean adhering to others' perception as if it were Bible. However, it is also why I said that for myself at least, I only listen to what those close to me say, in order to get more reliable views that can be considered. Yes, they may be flawed, but that risk should not negate the validity of what they share. I have never had much issue with the perception of those closest to me, which is why I myself put such stock in it.

Thanks for making the effort to detail your view, Rit, much appreciated.

There is nothing in there that disagree with, as a description. Maybe the challenge would be to try to unify the different elements of the description into a concept of identity. It's certainly not something I claim I could achieve, though I have attempted to on a couple occasions in my notebooks.

The last time I checked though, I came to the conclusion that what I had proposed was no longer very satisfying to me, so the question remains open.

When you say 'more plausible that it should just be what it is'; what is it? Their identity, yes, but how would one measure it?

Apologies, I think my wording may have been misleading. I just meant to say that plausibly, identity itself is not fallible. Whatever your identity may be, it is not the kind of thing that is liable to error. Maybe we can be in error about what our identity is; but that seems to suggest that there is an objective dimension to identity (as I think your post above indicates you agree with.)

OK, here it is...

'If you can believe you are something you're not'
This 'If...then' clause sets up your syllogism to follow, not by means of an actual logical case, but simply by the invocation of an axiom.

'If you can believe something you're not' implies the existence of objective identity, when that is the very thing in question. It doesn't invalidate the following syllogism, but it does make it a circular argument, because all you've said is 'If objective identity exists, then objective identity exists'.

If you were to construct the same clause assuming only that subjective identity is valid, it would read something like: 'If you can believe something about yourself that you do not believe about yourself, then...', and the whole thing is revealed as nonsensical.

When you say 'If you can believe you are something you're not', you've left the realm of 'identity' and have started to talk about the objective features of persons that may or may not constitute parts of their identity.

In terms of 'identity', in fact, it's perfectly possible to 'believe something you're not' without it having any effect on the 'truth' or 'reality' of the 'identity' whatever. For instance, there are plenty of people who believe themselves to be Jesus Christ, or Hitler, the reincarnations of historical figures or conduits for alien transmissions; different species, genders different to those they were assigned at birth, &c.

'I think this may be a good argument against the view that identity is purely based on perception.'
I think, instead, you've argued for the opposite case: that 'identity' is entirely divorced from 'objective reality' because it's perceptual only. The fact that some people have identities that overlap with objective features they possess is immaterial.

The identity that others impose upon us operates in exactly the same way except in reverse.

I'm not sure I understand your argument, Hos, but hopefully it will become clearer to me later.

 

[Ren]

@PapillonT Is there a particular direction you would like us to go for the next stages of the thread?

This is your thread so I would be happy to hear what you'd like us to explore/continue exploring.

 

[PapillonT]

@PapillonT Is there a particular direction you would like us to go for the next stages of the thread?
This is your thread so I would be happy to hear what you'd like us to explore/continue exploring.

Well, we can agree that we all have rather rather different perspectives that could come together in the end. As we're not in an academic setting, I wouldn't like to tell anyone what methodology or line of questioning they must pursue
Personally, I am interested in the role of memory and traditions, and I will probably look for more information on that. Do you have any particular line of thinking you'd like to explore further? Please feel free to do so if you do have.
I don't feel I am the owner of this thread only because I posed some questions, we're all equal