Six years have passed since I discovered that my son was using drugs,’ wrote Vincenzina Urzia in Anthony and Me (2014), a memoir of her son’s drug addiction. ‘I was really sad all the time and devastated, not to mention how worried I was about his wellbeing. My son was not the same person anymore.’
This is a puzzling idea, for someone to become ‘not the same person any more’. The phrase smacks of philosophy – perhaps even obscurity. Yet it is simultaneously apt, capturing the emotive sense of no longer recognising someone whom we once knew. Many have witnessed someone they loved change so profoundly that the person remaining seems an entirely different one.
Drug dependence powerfully exemplifies this phenomenon of not being the same person: a mother sees addiction transform her son into a shadow of his former self. Other examples can evoke the same feeling. A ruinous relationship or divorce leaves a friend so changed that he seems like a totally different person. So too can Alzheimer’s disease – which affects up to half of elderly Americans. A parent or relative develops severe Alzheimer’s, and it seems as if the person once known has disappeared. Across a range of experiences, profound changes can make well-known friends or family become entirely different people.
These examples suggest that change fundamentally challenges our sense of self. Yet, many other large changes don’t disrupt our identities. In fact, some profound changes actually seem to make us become really or truly ourselves. Consider finding one’s true self through romantic love; discovering a hidden life passion; committing to radically improving one’s health; or experiencing a religious or spiritual conversion. The same effect might arise from harder experiences, such as surviving a period of wartime or incarceration. All of these result in tremendous transformations, but they don’t threaten identity. Instead, these changes seem to unearth our core selves, making us become who we really are. This allows for a seemingly paradoxical statement: paradigm cases of continuing to be the same person involve becoming radically different. (...)
Our apparent purposes are broader than those given by nature or even culture. While the singular purpose of an acorn is to grow into an oak, humans are creatures of multifaceted and diverse potentiality. This implies an exciting – but dangerous – aspect of the purposeful self. Often, who we seem to be now becomes more lucid over time. To illuminate this feature, consider examples of great achievements. Imagine that a young child grows into a great artist. In such a case, we reflect back to years earlier and see the seeds of artistry in the younger person. This judgment might be an error or bias; maybe it is not truly their purpose. But it is undoubtedly a common story we tell.
And whether this story is right or wrong, it seeps into our morality. The philosopher Bernard Williams introduced a fictional thought experiment about ‘Paul Gauguin’ inspired by the life of the real artist. In the thought experiment, young Gauguin decides to leave his family to pursue his artistic ambitions. As Williams astutely noted, whether young Gauguin’s choice is blameworthy or praiseworthy seems to depend on how things turn out. Philosophers call this phenomenon ‘moral luck’. If old Gauguin fails as an artist, young Gauguin seems blameworthy, but if old Gauguin succeeds, we say, as Williams puts it in Moral Luck (1981): ‘a little grudgingly perhaps: “Well, all right then – well done.”’ A different way to understand the story is in terms of young Gauguin’s apparent true self and purposes. Upon seeing old Gauguin the successful artist, we attribute seeds of artistic potential in young Gauguin; pursuing his true calling seems more excusable. In the hypothetical world in which old Gauguin fails, we worry that the young man who left his family – years earlier – departed from his moral and familial purposes (as we now perceive that he did not really have an artistic one).
This interpretation of the self as purpose-driven also makes sense of a recent experimental-philosophy discovery: we have a tendency to see improvements as more identity-preserving than deteriorations. People judge changes for the better as more consistent with identity than changes for the worse. The hypothesis of the purposeful interpretation is that the change for the better informs our impression of the earlier person. When we see someone improve, we attribute this goodness to the potentiality of their earlier self. Upon seeing the growth of a magnificent oak, we are more confident about what the acorn was really meant to be. And upon seeing a person’s positive powerful improvement, we are more confident about that part of the person’s true self, at the time before the improvement. However, upon seeing a person’s deterioration, we worry that they have departed from their true callings.
This is a puzzling idea, for someone to become ‘not the same person any more’. The phrase smacks of philosophy – perhaps even obscurity. Yet it is simultaneously apt, capturing the emotive sense of no longer recognising someone whom we once knew. Many have witnessed someone they loved change so profoundly that the person remaining seems an entirely different one.
Drug dependence powerfully exemplifies this phenomenon of not being the same person: a mother sees addiction transform her son into a shadow of his former self. Other examples can evoke the same feeling. A ruinous relationship or divorce leaves a friend so changed that he seems like a totally different person. So too can Alzheimer’s disease – which affects up to half of elderly Americans. A parent or relative develops severe Alzheimer’s, and it seems as if the person once known has disappeared. Across a range of experiences, profound changes can make well-known friends or family become entirely different people.These examples suggest that change fundamentally challenges our sense of self. Yet, many other large changes don’t disrupt our identities. In fact, some profound changes actually seem to make us become really or truly ourselves. Consider finding one’s true self through romantic love; discovering a hidden life passion; committing to radically improving one’s health; or experiencing a religious or spiritual conversion. The same effect might arise from harder experiences, such as surviving a period of wartime or incarceration. All of these result in tremendous transformations, but they don’t threaten identity. Instead, these changes seem to unearth our core selves, making us become who we really are. This allows for a seemingly paradoxical statement: paradigm cases of continuing to be the same person involve becoming radically different. (...)
Our apparent purposes are broader than those given by nature or even culture. While the singular purpose of an acorn is to grow into an oak, humans are creatures of multifaceted and diverse potentiality. This implies an exciting – but dangerous – aspect of the purposeful self. Often, who we seem to be now becomes more lucid over time. To illuminate this feature, consider examples of great achievements. Imagine that a young child grows into a great artist. In such a case, we reflect back to years earlier and see the seeds of artistry in the younger person. This judgment might be an error or bias; maybe it is not truly their purpose. But it is undoubtedly a common story we tell.
And whether this story is right or wrong, it seeps into our morality. The philosopher Bernard Williams introduced a fictional thought experiment about ‘Paul Gauguin’ inspired by the life of the real artist. In the thought experiment, young Gauguin decides to leave his family to pursue his artistic ambitions. As Williams astutely noted, whether young Gauguin’s choice is blameworthy or praiseworthy seems to depend on how things turn out. Philosophers call this phenomenon ‘moral luck’. If old Gauguin fails as an artist, young Gauguin seems blameworthy, but if old Gauguin succeeds, we say, as Williams puts it in Moral Luck (1981): ‘a little grudgingly perhaps: “Well, all right then – well done.”’ A different way to understand the story is in terms of young Gauguin’s apparent true self and purposes. Upon seeing old Gauguin the successful artist, we attribute seeds of artistic potential in young Gauguin; pursuing his true calling seems more excusable. In the hypothetical world in which old Gauguin fails, we worry that the young man who left his family – years earlier – departed from his moral and familial purposes (as we now perceive that he did not really have an artistic one).
This interpretation of the self as purpose-driven also makes sense of a recent experimental-philosophy discovery: we have a tendency to see improvements as more identity-preserving than deteriorations. People judge changes for the better as more consistent with identity than changes for the worse. The hypothesis of the purposeful interpretation is that the change for the better informs our impression of the earlier person. When we see someone improve, we attribute this goodness to the potentiality of their earlier self. Upon seeing the growth of a magnificent oak, we are more confident about what the acorn was really meant to be. And upon seeing a person’s positive powerful improvement, we are more confident about that part of the person’s true self, at the time before the improvement. However, upon seeing a person’s deterioration, we worry that they have departed from their true callings.
by Kevin Tobia, Aeon | Read more:
Image: Paul Gauguin Self Portrait with Halo and Snake (1889).
