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Were you once a foetus?This is a question of identity. It is asking if the person that I now regard as 'me' is identical with the foetus that existed in my mother's womb around 33 years ago. This does not mean qualitatively identical - clearly there are significant physical differences between a grown adult and a foetus. Rather it refers to numerical identity. Are the adult and the foetus the same person? Are they one single entity or more than one? While I can be more or less physically similar to a foetus, I either am or am not numerically identical. Identity is an all-or-nothing issue (Belshaw & Price, p61; S.E.O.P, sect.1) In this essay, rather than advocating a single account I shall examine both the bodily continuity account and the psychological continuity account, and shall also briefly address the bare locus view. I hope to show that those accounts which indicate a definite answer all agree that yes, I was once a foetus. First though I should take a moment to clarify a distinction between two subtly different issues. One is a metaphysical question about the nature of identity. What exactly is identity? What constitutes me as distinct from my body or my mind, if there even is such a distinction? What is it that persists over time? The other is the more empirical question of establishing identity - how can we know that identity is preserved (Belshaw & Price, pp61-62; S.E.O.P, sect.1). While I shall touch upon the first question at times, it is the second question that we are interested in here. I merely want to establish if I was once a foetus. I shall begin with the bodily continuity account. This states that person X at time T1 is identical with person Y at time T2 if they are physically continuous over the intervening period of time. As another brief aside, I should define what is meant by "continuous" in this context. Continuous does not mean the same. Rather it means that change takes place gradually and without any sudden jumps. An object is physically continuous over a period of time if, when that period of time is broken down into smaller and smaller chunks, the physical changes in the object get less and less significant. There should be no interval over which the object changes that cannot be broken down into smaller intervals over which the object changes by smaller amounts. Note that, because matter is composed of discreet units - i.e. atoms and molecules - there may come a point where there is discontinuity on an atomic level. However, for our current purposes we can simply assert that a change of one or two atoms in a person is an insignificant change and does not constitute a loss of identity. So, am I physically continuous with the foetus that existed 33 years ago? It should be clear that I am. While the change over 33 years has been substantial, the changes from one day to the next have been small, and the changes from one second to the next unnoticeable. Even apparently sudden changes such as the loss of a tooth or the removal of an appendix happen over a finite interval of time. Two or three milliseconds may not seem gradual, but it is not instantaneous, and thus continuity is maintained. I am physically continuous with a foetus and therefore by the bodily continuity account, I was once a foetus. While it might be uncontroversial that I am physically continuous with a foetus, it is less certain that this definitely means the foetus was me. After all, how do we define who we are? If I lose an arm, or even both arms and both legs, I would still consider myself the same person. Even if by some mechanism my arm was instantaneously destroyed or transformed - so there is a true physical discontinuity - I would surely insist I was still the same person? Upon my death I will be physically continuous with a corpse, even after extensive decomposition, yet I would not claim that the pile of bones and muck is me (was me perhaps, but not is me). Bodily continuity may not be a necessary condition for identity. By contrast, if aspects of my personality were radically changed, I might be less certain of still being me. If I suffered complete and permanent amnesia and had to rebuild my personality from scratch it's plausible to argue that I am no longer the same person, even if my body undergoes no change. Bodily continuity may not be a sufficient condition for identity. Rather than attempting to counter these arguments, I shall instead now examine the alternative account that these arguments support: the psychological continuity account. If both accounts agree on the question of whether I was once a foetus we can be confident of the answer without having to take sides. The psychological continuity account states that person X at time T1 is identical with person Y at time T2 if they are psychologically, or mentally, continuous over the intervening period. In this context, "continuity" refers to mental rather than physical changes, but is otherwise the same. While a foetus certainly has a body, it is far from certain that it has a mind. If my identity is to be defined in terms of mentality, and a foetus has no mentality, this suggests I was never a foetus. Even if we accept that a foetus has no mind though, we know that it will develop a mind. This mind must come from somewhere, but where? There are two possible claims: I] the mind appears spontaneously sometime later, or II] the foetus contains within it the components necessary to form a mind, but the mind remains undeveloped - a proto-mind if you will. The former claim raises a number of substance dualism type questions. Where does the mind come from? What triggers its arrival? How does it join with the body? These are profound questions that are arguably harder to answer than the questions of identity we were trying to address. By contrast the latter claim raises rather less difficult questions about the nature of the proto-mind (e.g. how and when does it develop into a fully functioning mind) that can mostly be left to neurologists and psychologists. Therefore, in the absence of any compelling reason not to, we should adopt this second claim. Once adopted, we can extend our mental continuity back through our infant mind and to the foetus's proto-mind. Psychological continuity with a foetus is established, and thus I can again say I was once a foetus. If the idea of extending psychological continuity, and thus identity, beyond the full functionality of the mind seems dubious, let's consider an analogous case at the other end of life. Many people are faced with having to care for elderly relatives whose mind has been massively degraded by Alzheimer's disease or similar. The relative may have no memory of who they are, or awareness of where they are. They may have little or no functioning mind, and are recognisable only physically. Yet even after it is clear the mind's functionality has gone, there can be evidence of fragments of the mind remaining - relics of character traits and mannerisms. The mind has been reduced to a similar proto-mind state as in a foetus. However, the change has been a gradual erosion rather than an instantaneous change from mind to no mind. This fulfils the basic criteria for continuity, and so we can say that I will be psychologically continuous with the senile old man I become, and thus by analogy I am psychologically continuous with the foetus I once was. An objector might concede that I am psychologically continuous with a foetus, but that the psychological continuity account is defining identity in terms of minds. If the foetus's mind is not fully a mind then it cannot be fully me, and thus - as identity is all-or-nothing - it cannot be me at all. To extend the account beyond the mind is to misinterpret the account. To counter this objection, let's take the account back to its roots. The psychological continuity account is the modern version of accounts such as that of John Locke (Locke 1997, Book II, ch.XXVII), which define identity in terms of consciousness. So what is consciousness? Consciousness can be thought of as a pure, featureless ego, without character or memory. This is the "bare locus" view. Because there are coherent arguments to show that neither physical nor psychological continuity are necessary for identity to be maintained, some writers have argued that identity is a fundamental, primitive property, independent of both (Swinburne 1973; also Wiggins 1991). While this view has some merit, it leaves identity utterly beyond the reach of any kind of empirical investigation (Swinburne: p7). In short, it is a metaphysical answer, but we are asking an epistemological question. A more practical view of consciousness, and one closer to that understood by Locke, is that consciousness is our awareness of ourselves and our actions. It is "the perception of what passes in a man's own mind" (Locke 1997, Book II, ch.I, §19: p118). This concept of self-awareness is a purely subjective property, and is locked in the present moment in time. It is also beyond empirical consideration - much like the featureless ego. Thus it is of no use in answering our current question. However, if we modify Locke's definition slightly to become "the perception of what has passed in a man's mind", we arrive at memory. If I have a memory of an experience then - assuming it's not a false memory - I know it was me that had that experience. I cannot have a memory of someone else's experiences. If I remember writing this essay then it was me who wrote it. If I remember being a foetus, then I was a foetus (S.E.O.P, sect.2). I do not remember being a foetus though, so does this mean I never was a foetus? Memory might arguably be sufficient for identity, but it is not necessary. There are many times of my life I don't remember. I don't remember the hours when I sleep. I don't remember anything from last Saturday after the eighth pint of beer. To suggest that at these times I was not me seems far fetched (S.E.O.P, sect.4). If not me then who? If not me, then where do I go? It raises all the substance dualism type questions encountered earlier. A second criticism turns on our understanding of memory itself. For a memory to actually be a memory assumes the remembered experience to be true - otherwise it is not a memory but a delusion of some sort. Similarly, for it to be a remembered experience assumes that it was the subject that did the experiencing - otherwise it would be a memory of something witnessed, rather than experienced. Thus memory assumes identity. Therefore it is circular to use memory to demonstrate identity (Belshaw & Price, p90), and thus the fact that I do not remember being a foetus does not show that I never was one. I shall finish with a brief discussion of a view advocated by Mark Johnston (Johnston 1987). This states that a human being is a mind essentially embodied in a human organism. In other words, my mind and my body are both integral parts of me. To adopt the psychological continuity account in isolation implies a person is a disembodied mind. To adopt the bodily continuity account in isolation implies that there is no qualitative difference between a person and a brute animal. Therefore both bodily and psychological continuity are required for identity to persist. I have shown that if we define identity in terms of bodily continuity or psychologically continuity, then yes I was once a foetus. I have also shown that arguments relying on memory, or on featureless egos cannot give a definite answer. Therefore I conclude that yes, I was once a foetus. Bibliography
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