Midterm Post—On Issues of Personal Identity: Can we even really know who the hell we are?

Greetings, fellow CoPhilosophers!  My name is Jon (for those of you who don’t know me) and this is my midterm report.  Huzzah!  Okay, that’s quite enough of that.  Here we go.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Brothers, Sisters, Comrades, Friends…Romans, Countrymen…make like Van Gogh and lend me your ear.  The subject into which I am about to delve is personal identity.  That’s a fairly broad topic, but honestly, it’s one of the most important philosophical questions to be asked: “Who am I?”  Of course, the answer is not a simple one to give, nor is it one that anyone outside of oneself could create.  Nevertheless, it is important to discover just what the hell “oneself” is.  There are a lot of cheeky ways to answer the question, for example: 

“Who are you?” 

“I am Jonathon Michael Gill.”

Okay, yes, that is my name (misspelled first name and all), but it simply does not answer the question any deeper than the given name…which is, honestly, sheer accident of birth.  So, okay, we have a BS answer.  But really, is the question itself BS?  Can we even truly know ourselves?  I mean, is it even an objective question?  I honestly think it’s purely subjective, personally--so on some level, I believe that identity is purely relative.  We exist in a very unique and strange plane wherein our entire lives happen somewhat through causal chains--and we are constantly changing because of that.  So as this post goes along, while the main theme will be personal identity, the question of free will may--no, MUST--arise.  Who are we?  Where did we come from?  Why are we here?  Do we have control over our lives?  Perhaps most importantly, can we even know these things?  Is there even such a thing as truth?

I think, perhaps one of the most interesting assignments we received in CoPhi so far was the introduction, at the very beginning of class.  I’m not going to post my whole intro here…if you want to see the whole thing, you can go HERE (http://cophilosophy.blogspot.com/2013/01/introductions.html?showComment=1358841309938#c5359992631611164811).

The questions Dr. O raised were simple but deep.  Who are you, and why are you here?

I began my answer with the very typical description of who I physically was.  (By the way, it’s not completely jive to comment on something I’ve already written to write something new, is it?)

“I was born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana in February of 1993. In 2005, following Katrina, I relocated to Baton Rouge, LA, where I attended a private Southern Baptist school (read: indoctrination institution) for 5 years.”

This really offers very little insight to who I am, doesn’t it?  I mean, it doesn’t inform any philosophical discussion at all, does it?  I mean, except for maybe the fact that I went to a Baptist school, you could’ve done without that entirely and still be just as well off in understanding me, right?

I followed up immediately with something considerably more useful in understanding me philosophically.  “Incidentally, I'm the farthest thing from a Southern Baptist as there could possibly be—I'm a non-believer and I'm proud of it.“



There, that’s better, isn’t it?  You now know I’m an atheist, so that informs you a little bit more of who I am and where I stand philosophically, doesn’t it?  I mean, it gives you no insight to my personality, but you at least get some clue of my mindset, right?

The remainder of the “who are you” segment of my response just continued to answer things about me, not even offering any insight to my personal identity any further.  So now we’ve hit our first brick wall.  I’m doing what anyone might do in this situation.  I’m avoiding answering questions about my true personal identity and presenting outer-layer BS as though it truly answers the question of who I am.  After I posted that, I spent a bit of time thinking…you know, who am I?  Of what relevance was that information?  Does any of that have to do with who I am in my heart of hearts?  Well, maybe.  Yes and no.  As I gave it more thought, I tried thinking…what can I say about myself that is truly meaningful to understanding who I am?

Who the hell am I anyway?

I started thinking, deeply and thoroughly.  What makes me, me?  What do I have going on inside my head that people don’t necessarily recognize from without--what is there that can only be understood from within?  These are real questions.  Questions to which, I’m afraid, there are no really good answers.  I believe one of the main purposes of life is to try to identify some inkling of who you are.  The real problem, though, is that identity is very relative…and that brings us to even bigger questions. 

A real problem arises in trying to answer a deeply philosophical question like the one of identity.  The problem is in relativism…which asks, “can we even have true answers to our questions?  Is there even such a thing as truth?   If we can't know truth, is there any point in trying to obtain it?”

The human brain is a beautiful thing.  Our brains, even though we’re the most intelligent beings on Earth, are stunningly weak.  We’re practically unable to perceive so very many things in the world.  There are so many things we don’t know, about the world, about the universe, about ourselves.  I think it’s just simply fascinating to think about that…it brings me some level of peace to think about just how many answers we don’t have, and maybe never will.  Most people would take that thought and say, “we may never know about it so why even bother asking?”  I look at it as a challenge.  I think it’s of utmost importance that we, as thinking beings, actively try to answer the unanswerable questions.

I think, when we try to answer the open questions of the universe, that is when we discover our true selves.  What that means is that we must continue on attempting to answer the questions of the universe.  Whether or not there is an answer is wholly irrelevant.  The important thing is that we discover our identity in thinking.

This is the true nature of philosophy.

I’ll leave you with this.  This is a great insight to the ultimate foundation of ourselves.  It’s from American Astrophysicist Dr. Neil Degrasse Tyson. 

           

“We are the universe, and the universe is in us.

We are each other, and as such, our duties are ultimately to love one another unconditionally as we'd love ourselves.

We're all we've got.

Why are we here?

Who knows?

But, since we're here, let's make the best of it!



Yours in Peace, Love, and Music,



Jon”

-the final lines from my introduction.