Am I my 10 year old self?

 This is a photograph (of a photograph) of me as kid, wading in the water where conch were being kept in little coral corrals next to a pile of discarded shells off the coast of Carriacou. Carriacou is a small island that is part of Grenada, where my mother conducted research for her graduate work in geography. We visited several times when I was growing up and I have many distinct memories from those visits. I remember making kites with my friends, laying in the bottom of the sailboat feeling sea sick, being gifted a beautiful mango, drawing ruins, playing make-shift cricket and getting sunburned on my 13th birthday, making drinking chocolate, another kid (a family friend) standing in front of the crashing surf yelling "Peace and love! Peace and love to all the world!", a friend arriving with a pet cat in a sack for us (with a piece of bread that had a bite taken out of it), which we named Professor McGonagall, watching my brother lose a footrace to some very fast girls, watching bonfire-lit vigils on the hillside graveyard on All Souls Night, watching the incredible view of the Milky Way from a plastic chair on our cistern, watching the rain come in fast over the water, and more.

Am I that person? The very one who experienced those things?

My information encoded in my body's DNA is (mostly) the same, although many of the cells in my body are not. Some of my personality traits, quirks, and faults are recognizable in this young person wading among conch. But I am significantly different than her too. I have had more experiences, learned more, made more mistakes, and changed my mind. I am now responsible for things that she was not, and could not have been.

In John Perry's well-known piece from 1978, "A Dialogue on Personal Identity and Immortality" he displays some of the thorny problems of personal identity through an imagined dialog occurring at the death bed of an ailing philosopher as she entreats her friends to try to convince her, one last time, that in a meaningful sense it is possible that she could could survive the death of her body. The dying philosopher wonders not about whether the atoms of her body will survive, but if she, the person, will. After the death of her body, could there be someone else related to her in the right sort of way--a person whose experiences she would be correct to anticipate, and for whom it would be right to remember what the dying philosopher has thought and done, and to be responsible for her wrongdoings and good deeds alike? Suppose her brain was transplanted into a different living body? (Some people have tried this on animals...) Or suppose the structure of her brain was replicated in another medium? Would it still be her?

In Perry's dialog, the dying philosopher argues that in order to be truly her, the later being would have to actually remember, rather than merely seem to remember her memories. But how could we tell the difference? One thought is that actual memories are causally produced by the right sort of events. Would those relevant causal relationships be preserved across the sort of death-transcending transformations we are contemplating? What if there were two, or many, replications? 

I can't help but thinking of the strange and tragic efforts that some people have already made in pursuit of immortality (cryogenic freezing of bodies being one, biohacking with gene therapy for anti-aging being another). There is something so desperate and sad about them, like a watching an insect stuck in a bathtub too steep to climb out of. Even if some new-fangled technology were to be invented in my lifetime that promised indefinite survival, I don't think I would opt in. First, I don't really want another body. I love and cherish the one I've got, imperfect and mortal as it is. My embodiment is an important part of how I experience the world and therefore, what it is like to be me. Moreover, I think there is actually something really beautiful--and really human--about accepting mortality, living life fully while we have it, growing into our aging bodies with grace, and then eventually making room for other beings on this planet. 

I do not think that I will survive the death of my body. But to really know this deeply, to accept the deep truth of it, is difficult. It is hard to hold onto and easy to push away, much of the time at least. For me, facing my own mortality takes attention and needs to be revisited. Memento mori. Which is why, for instance, I took the time to visit the Seldec Ossuary when I was nearby in Prague.

But what is almost more difficult to reckon with, is the strange elusiveness of personality identity at all. When I look for a stable core self, I don't find it. There is a certain quality to my experience that is difficult to describe, and I cannot have your experiences in the same way that I have mine. There is some familiarity, some resemblance, and some continuity between my life now and the life of the kid in the photo. But there doesn't seem to be a an identity in the sense that Perry's dialog discusses. I would love to understand more fully and intimately what Buddhists mean by emptiness, and no-self. I bet they are on to something important!

If I have no stable, core identity, then am I really responsible for my own past actions? Am I really right to anticipate my own future experiences? If not, is all accountability shattered?

Perhaps even if it turns out that I am not responsible for my past actions (either because the person who performed those actions is not identically me, or because there is no such thing as me, really) it could still be reasonable for me to think fondly on the memory of those actions, or to feel remorse and try to make amends now and in the future. Reasonable, because I care (now). Or perhaps because I am the closest one to being responsible. Similarly, while it may not upon reflection make much sense for me to anticipate my future experiences (in what sense will they be mine?) it might nevertheless be reasonable to act now so as to do well by future beings, out of benevolence if not self-interest.