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The Informational Nature of Personal Identity

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Abstract

In this paper, I present an informational approach to the nature of personal identity. In “Plato and the problem of the chariot”, I use Plato’s famous metaphor of the chariot to introduce a specific problem regarding the nature of the self as an informational multiagent system: what keeps the self together as a whole and coherent unity? In “Egology and its two branches” and “Egology as synchronic individualisation”, I outline two branches of the theory of the self: one concerning the individualisation of the self as an entity, the other concerning the identification of such entity. I argue that both presuppose an informational approach, defend the view that the individualisation of the self is logically prior to its identification, and suggest that such individualisation can be provided in informational terms. Hence, in “A reconciling hypothesis: the three membranes model”, I offer an informational individualisation of the self, based on a tripartite model, which can help to solve the problem of the chariot. Once this model of the self is outlined, in “ICTs as technologies of the self” I use it to show how ICTs may be interpreted as technologies of the self. In “The logic of realisation”, I introduce the concept of “realization” (Aristotle’s anagnorisis) and support the rather Spinozian view according to which, from the perspective of informational structural realism, selves are the final stage in the development of informational structures. The final “Conclusion: from the egology to the ecology of the self” briefly concludes the article with a reference to the purposeful shaping of the self, in a shift from egology to ecology.

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Notes

  1. In writing this article, I relied especially on (Martin and Barresi 2006), (Perry 2008), and (Sorabji 2006).

  2. On the information turn as a fourth revolution in our self-understanding, after the Copernican, the Darwinian and the Freudian, see (Floridi 2007, 2008a, 2011a).

  3. The informational analysis connects this article to previous work on the ontological interpretation of informational privacy, see (Floridi 2005b, 2006).

  4. The reader unacquainted with the method of levels of abstraction in computer science might do worse than just imagining a LoA as an epistemic interface. The interested reader might wish to check (Floridi 2008c).

  5. In the paper I use “auto-” instead of “self-” in order to avoid potential confusions whenever necessary.

  6. See for example the symposium in (Hayes et al. 1992) or the debate between (Densmore and Dennett 1999) and (Churchland 1999). To the best of my knowledge, Aaron Sloman has been the first to call attention to the computational theory of virtual machines as a way to model the mind, see (Sloman and Chrisley 2003) for a more recent statement. I agree with (Pollock 2007) that, in general, the whole approach seems a refined version of the sort of classic functionalism originally developed by (Putnam 1960). As such, “virtual functionalism” does not seem to be much more instructive than the old fashioned kind. For example, Pollock writes “If I am a virtual machine, which virtual machine am I? The proposal is that I am a virtual machine that cognizes. But there is more than one such virtual machine implemented on my body.” Clearly it is the concurrence of machine-like processes that is “solved” by the virtualization of the machine itself, a gain that does not seem to be a substantive progress with respect to any alternative analysis in terms of multi-functionality. Unfortunately, virtual machines generate virtual problems about virtual minds virtually conscious.

  7. In (Floridi 2005a) I have defined this as the I before Mine hypothesis, or IBM.

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Acknowledgments

The research for this article was funded by an AHRC grant on “The Construction of Personal Identities Online”. Previous versions of it were discussed at the following meetings: “Who am I Online?”, 10–11 May 2010, University of Aarhus, Kaløvig Centre, Denmark; “Personal Identities Online and Information Ethics”, 21–22 May 2010, Department of Philosophy, Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey; “Identity in the Information Society, Third Workshop”, 26–28 May, 2010, Hotel Victoria, Rome, Italy; E-CAP 2010 Conference, 4–6 October 2010, Technical University Munich, Germany; Research seminar, 7 December, 2010 Philosophy Department, University of Reading (Reading); Research seminar, 11 March 2010, Balliol College, Oxford, UK; “Personal Identities after the Fourth Revolution”, 17 June, 2011, University of Hertfordshire, UK. I am grateful to the organisers and the participants for their feedback and the opportunity to improve the ideas presented in this article. I am sure I should have taken better advantage of it. A final thanks goes to Gregory Wheeler for his feedback on the last version of this paper and to Penny Driscoll for her skilful copyediting.

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  1. Department of Philosophy, University of Hertfordshire, de Havilland Campus, Hatfield, Hertfordshire, AL10 9AB, UK

    Luciano Floridi

  2. Faculty of Philosophy and IEG, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

    Luciano Floridi

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Correspondence to Luciano Floridi.

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Floridi, L. The Informational Nature of Personal Identity. Minds & Machines 21, 549–566 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11023-011-9259-6

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