Can I assuage my feelings of guilt over a long past misdeed by telling myself that I was a different person then? Not very well. I was different all right, but not numerically.
One could try to soften strict numerical identity of a person over time by adopting a bundle theory of diachronic personal identity. (Roughly, a person at a time is a bundle of mental data; a person over time is a bundle of these bundles.) But even if such a theory were otherwise in the clear it is difficult to square such a theory with what appears to be a non-negotiable datum: I and no one else did such-and-such 30, 40, 50 years ago; I am the source of that misdeed; I could have, and should have, done otherwise. We convict ourselves in memory knowing that the one who remembers is strictly the same as the one who did the deed.
The mystery of the self!
Recent Comments