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Single Idea 7546

[filed under theme 16. Persons / D. Continuity of the Self / 2. Mental Continuity / b. Self as mental continuity ]

Full Idea

The real man, I believe, however the police may swear to his identity, is really a series of momentary men, each different one from the other, and bound together, not by a numerical identity, but by continuity and certain instrinsic causal laws.

Gist of Idea

A man is a succession of momentary men, bound by continuity and causation

Source

Bertrand Russell (The Ultimate Constituents of Matter [1915], p.124)

Book Ref

Russell,Bertrand: 'Mysticism and Logic' [Unwin 1989], p.124

A Reaction

This seems to be in the tradition of Locke and Parfit, and also follows the temporal-slices idea of physical objects. Personally I take a more physical view of things, and think the police are probably more reliable than Bertrand Russell.

The 22 ideas with the same theme [Self as the continuity of our conscious existence]:

1650 For Socrates our soul, though hard to define, is our self [Vlastos on Socrates]
21828 A person is the whole of their soul [Plotinus]
5511 For Locke, conscious awareness unifies a person at an instant and over time [Locke, by Martin/Barresi]
12509 If the soul individuates a man, and souls are transferable, then a hog could be a man [Locke]
1376 Identity must be in consciousness not substance, because it seems transferable [Locke]
12512 If someone becomes conscious of Nestor's actions, then he is Nestor [Locke]
12513 If a prince's soul entered a cobbler's body, the person would be the prince (and the man the cobbler) [Locke]
12514 On Judgement Day, no one will be punished for actions they cannot remember [Locke]
1397 Locke sees underlying substance as irrelevant to personal identity [Locke, by Noonan]
12973 We know our own identity by psychological continuity, even if there are some gaps [Leibniz]
21306 Causation unites our perceptions, by producing, destroying and modifying each other [Hume]
21311 Are self and substance the same? Then how can self remain if substance changes? [Hume]
7546 A man is a succession of momentary men, bound by continuity and causation [Russell]
7946 The memory criterion has a problem when one thing branches into two things [Williams,B, by Macdonald,C]
1393 One of my future selves will not necessarily be me [Parfit]
5521 If my brain-halves are transplanted into two bodies, I have continuity, and don't need identity [Parfit]
5522 Over a period of time what matters is not that 'I' persist, but that I have psychological continuity [Parfit]
5351 We only have a sense of our self as continuous, not as exactly the same [Flanagan]
23547 It seems absurd that there is no identity of any kind between two objects which involve survival [Fine,K]
5504 Maybe we should see persons in four dimensions, with stages or time-slices at an instant [Martin/Barresi]
5503 Maybe personal identity is not vital in survival, and other continuations would suffice [Martin/Barresi]
7947 In continuity, what matters is not just the beginning and end states, but the process itself [Macdonald,C]