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CHANGING_IDENTITY

                                              September 23, 2001


   "Joshua Brooks" wrote on alt.gothic:

   "i suppose you could say right now my views are still
   being shaped... the most interesting recent development
   was a debate with my professor in Philosophy of Mind
   about whether or not we are the same person we have been
   in the past, even the past few moments. i hold that i'm
   not the same person i was six months ago, and i believe
   she holds that each of us is the same person we have
   always been because we have a constant 'mind' instead of
   a changing one. "

      I think that the question of continuity
      of identity is more complicated than                   SELF
      either position.

      Take a few examples of the way people
      actually regard "identity":

         Say you killed someone six months
         ago, and your defense is that you
         were a different person back
         then, so they've arrested the
         wrong guy.  No one is going to
         buy that.

         On the other hand, if you were a
         politician with some scandalous
         behavior lurking in the past, you
         might try the "I was young then"
         defense, and you might very well
         get away with it (even if you
         were 45 at the time).



                 When someone is drunk/drugged do we
                 see their "true" personality (or at
                 least some new aspect of their "true"
                 personality), or are we looking at an
                 entirely different personality?


                 Consider the differences between
                 on-line and off-line personas.  There
                 are often big differences between the
                 two, but I can't see any justification
                 for calling one the "real" persona, and
                 the other a distortion.


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