The sense of diachronic personal identity

Abstract

In this paper, I first consider a famous objection that the standard interpretation of the Lockean account of diachronicity (i.e., one's sense of personal identity over time) via psychological connectedness falls prey to breaks in one's personal narrative. I argue that recent case studies show that while this critique may hold with regard to some long-term autobiographical self-knowledge (e.g., episodic memory), it carries less warrant with respect to accounts based on trait-relevant, semantic selfknowledge. The second issue I address concerns the question of diachronicity from the vantage point that there are (at least) two aspects of self-the self of psychophysical instantiation (what I term the epistemological self) and the self of first person subjectivity (what I term the ontological self; for discussion, see Klein SB, The self and its brain, Social Cognition, 30, 474-518, 2012). Each is held to be a necessary component of selfhood, and, in interaction, they are appear jointly sufficient for a synchronic sense of self (Klein SB, The self and its brain, Social Cognition, 30, 474-518, 2012). As pertains to diachronicity, by contrast, I contend that while the epistemological self, by itself, is precariously situated to do the work required by a coherent theory of personal identity across time, the ontological self may be better positioned to take up the challenge.

Making the case that episodic recollection is attributable to operations occurring at retrieval rather than to content stored in a dedicated subsystem of long-term memory

“…It also gives us an “irresistible” sense of being the same person over time (e.g., Fivush and Haden, 2003; for discussion, see Klein, 2013b). But the case of R. B. indicates that this sense is dissociable from memory content.…”

“…Only autonoetic experience is assumed capable of providing the subjective requirements for mental time travel (e.g., Suddendorf and Corballis, 1997, 2007; Wheeler et al, 1997; Tulving, 2002; but see Klein, 2013b). Accordingly, episodic memory is tied directly to temporally-rich autonoetic experience.…”

Sameness and the self: philosophical and psychological considerations

“…Neurological case studies appear especially suited to shedding light on this issue (e.g., Rathbone et al, 2009; Illman et al, 2011; Duval et al, 2012; Picard et al, 2013; Klein, 2014b). Specifically, cases of neurological impairment offer the possibility of observing dissociations between a belief in one's temporal continuity and the neurological mechanisms posited to support that belief.…”

The nature, ontogeny, and phylogeny of episodic foresight

“…One recent study (Kwan, et al, 2013) suggests that, even though hippocampus-lesioned amnesiacs have trouble filling their representations with spatial content, they nevertheless still understand the relation between representations of the future and current reality (and they also have no trouble with false-belief tasks; Rabin, Braverman, Gilboa, Stuss, & Shayna Rosenbaum, 2012). This finding is consistent with Klein's recently articulated view that mental time travel is greatly enhanced by, yet can still be dissociated from, the episodic system (Klein, 2013a(Klein, , 2013b(Klein, , 2013c. The capacity for metarepresentation is probably powered not by the hippocampus, but rather by the expanded human prefrontal cortex (Fleming & Dolan, 2012;Wheeler, Stuss, & Tulving, 1997).…”

“…Reviews of the data from various clinical disorders and brain lesion case studies support the view that the episodic system consists of a number of cognitive components working in concert (Klein, 2013c;Klein, German, Cosmides, & Gabriel, 2004). introduced a theatre metaphor to describe the components that might be implicated in episodic foresight, with various cognitive processes analogous to the theatrical roles of stage, playwright, set, actors, director, executive producer, and broadcaster.…”