127
Whether humans will persist or not depends on or arises out of the hope that we might continue to exist when we die. Many world religions, particularly Christianity and Islam as well as many theological-cum-philosophical theories share this sentiment. According to them, biological death is not the termination of life or human‘s existence. Life actually continues after death. Then it raises the question, suppose I survive death, how would the person in this world or the next (that survives death) really resemble me? How would both of us relate to me as me now in order to be me, rather than someone else?
Furthermore, it raises the question, what does it take for a past or future being to be me? Do people have the same persistence condition? Take, for example, if what it takes for us to persist might depend on whether we are biological organisms or thinking beings, this would be different if we are referring to immaterial people such as gods or angels, as what it takes for them to persist might be different from what it takes for a human person to persist. Suppose the person that will eventually survive death will be immaterial or incorporeal being (soul or spirit) how will it be me now in this world that is material or embodied being? This takes us to the persistence question
128
y? These two formulations may look the same but on a closer inspection we see that they refer to different accounts of personal identity theory. Eric T. Olson stated the argument thus:
Those who ask 1 (the first formulation) rather than 2 (the second formulation) usually do so because they assume that every person is a person essentially: nothing that is in fact a person could possibly exist without being a person. (By contrast, something that is in fact a student could exist without being a student: no student is essentially a student, and it would be a mistake to inquire about the conditions of student identity by asking what it takes for a student existing at one time to be identical to a student existing at another time.) This claim, ―person essentialism‖, implies that whatever is a person at one time must be a person at every time when she exists, making the two questions equivalent. Person essentialism is a controversial metaphysical claim, however. Combined with one of the usual accounts of personhood, it implies that you could not have been an embryo: at best you may have come into being when the embryo that gave rise to you developed certain mental capacities. Nor could you come to be a human vegetable. For that matter, it rules out our being biological organisms, since no organism is a person essentially:
every human organism starts out as an embryo and may end up in a vegetative state. Whether we are organisms or were once embryos are substantive questions that an account of personal identity ought to answer, not matters to be settled in advance by the way we frame the debate. So it would be a mistake to assume person essentialism at the outset. Asking question 1 prejudices the issue by favouring some accounts of what we are, and what it takes for us to persist, over others. It rules out both animalism and the brute-physical view… It is like asking which man committed the crime before ruling out the possibility that it might have been a woman (italics mine).304
There are two versions or ways of looking at the persistence question—perdurantism and endurantism. Perdurantism or perdurance theory is a philosophical theory of persistence and identity.305 It is the view that an individual has distinct or separate temporal parts throughout its existence. It is usually presented as the antipode to endurantism, the view that an individual is wholly present at every moment of its existence.306
Endurantism or endurance theory on the other hand is a philosophical theory of persistence and identity. According to the endurantist view, material objects are persisting three-dimensional
129
individuals wholly present at every moment of their existence, which goes with an A-theory of time—the description of the temporal ordering relation among events which together with the B-theory of time was introduced by the Scottish idealist philosopher John McTaggart in 1908 as part of his argument for the unreality of time.307 This conception of an individual as always present is opposed to perdurantism or four dimensionalism, which maintains that an object is a series of temporal parts or stages, requiring a B-theory of time.308
The theories of endurantism and perdurantism— going by the use of the terms— ―endure‖ and
―perdure‖ to differentiate two ways in which an entity or an object can be considered or thought to persist is traceable to the work of American philosopher David Kellogg Lewis (1986).
Accordingly, ―[…] something persists iff, somehow or other, it exists at various times‖.309 On the other hand, objects endure iff they exist at more than one time.310
Given the undeniable reality of change that takes place from the day a person is born, until the time he or she dies, it would, the discussions of personal identity are exercises in futility. The implication of this is that, and what makes the discussion fashionable from the time or moment a person is born and to the time he or she dies, is that he or she is not the same person but many persons. The reason is that there are times we are unable to remember or annexe our actions to our past experiences. Then, if we accept we are different persons, this raises serious (moral and religious) problems and if we accept we are not then it raises the problem; how do we justify or explain the apparent change (bodily or psychologically) a person undergoes from time to time?
It is for this reason we are going to examine the claims and counter claims of the sundry theories of personal identity. Some of the theories naturally spring up from the study of the human nature and traits composition. Other theories certainly arose as an attempt to disprove or counter
130
existing theories of personal identity. What is important and instructive is that these theories in one way or the other provided a rational explication of the identity of the human person, either biologically, psychologically, physically or a combination of two of the aforementioned. This research shall therefore delve into the analysis of these theories, examining their merits and demerits.