Philosophy teacher support material

Internal assessment: sample C

Sample C

Title: The Notion of the Continuity of the Self

Part of the syllabus to which it relates: The Core Theme—The question of self; our
existence in time and space
Word Count: 1640 words
Source material: Poem - “The Trees” by Phillip Larkin's

The central philosophical issue that arose for me when reading the Phillip Larkin poem, The Trees
is the problem of whether it is possible to “begin afresh, afresh, afresh”. This is an important idea in
relation to the question of the self. Are we necessarily the same self throughout our lives no matter
what physical and mental (if that is a valid distinction) changes we undergo? Is there a self that
could claim to survive physical annihilation yet remain in some sense the same as that before
death? People use phrases like, “she’s a new person” or “He’s much more like his old self”. What
do we really mean by these phrases? What do we understand from the concept of ‘self’? Of
particular interest are the philosophical issues raised by the possibility of the continuity of the self
and, indeed, the possibility of immortality.

The poem is based on observations and experiences. Phillip Larkin begins with descriptions of the
impact of the changing seasons on trees, which ‘are coming into leaf, Like something almost being
said’. He applies his observations to the human condition and compares the cycle of death and
rebirth in nature to the universal (‘we’) human experience of growing old. The philosopher David
Hume might have some sympathy with this outlook. Hume was an empiricist and therefore
regarded using the senses and the observations they collect and confer as the only way of arriving
at useful knowledge. For Hume to talk of a self, especially a constant immortal self, is ludicrous
because the self is unobservable. “When I enter intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble
on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade… I can never catch myself at
any time without a perception and can never observe anything but the perception”. In other words,
it is impossible to watch or examine your self because when ever you try you are confronted with
perceptions of the outside world only. Therefore for Hume the self is nothing but a collection of
experiences; it has no existence independent of those experiences and is certainly not immortal,
since no experiential data could confirm or deny the existence of self beyond death. According to
this view I suppose the self begins “afresh” with every new experience.

This view however was, and still is, very controversial especially with Christian thinkers. Immanuel
Kant was one such philosopher who objected strongly to Hume’s exclusive use of empiricism as
the best (and only) route to knowledge of the human condition. Kant said that you could not treat
experiences as discrete objects, as if they are sticks lying on the ground. They are in fact more
like craters on the moon, and although you can talk about craters without referring to the moon, it
is nonsense to say that they exist without it. Similarly it is nonsense to say that experiences exist
without a self. Kant therefore seems to imply that there is something discernible and constant that

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Philosophy teacher support material
Internal assessment: sample C

makes up the self so he would probably argue that it is not possible to begin completely afresh.
Indeed for Kant the existence of the self was a precondition of any route to knowledge since the
world, as it appears to us, has its forms imposed through the shaping of the mind. No tree could
be discerned without a mind to organise it, and since our world appears consistent there must be
a consistent self which can shape the world about which we speak.

Kant and Hume were contemporaries, which meant that Hume had the opportunity to reply. As a
counter, Hume said that Kant’s analogy of the moon is not valid. It is true that we can talk about
craters without referring to the surface of the moon but we are made aware of the moon’s surface,
i.e. we can experience it. We are never aware of the self and so the comparison is flawed.

Kant’s own view was that the self is a convenient point of view. The self is a requirement for
experiencing and for organising those experiences, so our minds experience the world through
what we call our ‘selves’. Whatever the reality of the ‘self’, its continuity is assumed.

A very different view from that expressed in the poem is that of Thomas Reid. Reid argued for the
conventional Christian view of the immortality and constancy of the self. His argument is that the
self is simple, not composite. Therefore you cannot divide up the self as you can the body. All
change and decay is the coming together or falling apart of composite things. Therefore if
something is not composite, it cannot change and decay. The self, being not composite, therefore
does not change or decay. One of the real problems with this view is the kind of immortality that it
implies. Not only does it imply life after death, but it also implies life before birth. If life after death
has the same degree of continuity as our life before birth has, it does not seem a very meaningful
kind of immortality, nor does it look like the kind of continuity of the self implied by the Christian
tradition of the immortality of the soul.

Having said that, there does seem to be something appealing about Reid’s argument. We are
called the same name throughout our lives; this suggests that there is something that remains the
same. John Locke approaches this problem and, aptly for this essay, uses an analogy of a tree.
An oak tree is the same tree throughout its existence even though its cells are changing all the
time. Therefore the thing that stays the same is not a physical thing. His solution was to say that
what makes something the same is unity of function. The tree carries on doing what a tree does
despite the physical changes or molecules and cells. This idea also gives scope for immortality
because it divorces the essence of ‘self’ from our physical selves. However Locke recognises that
when discussing immortality it does not help to say that the self is non-physical. This is because if
a person can have the same identity despite physical changes, then why could they not survive
mental changes as well. The self could be something that exists on a level above the mental, or
something on the level above that – and so on ad infinitum. So Locke offers an alternative; he
says that it is continuity of consciousness that makes a person, rather than a tree, the same
throughout life. At first this idea seems very attractive because it avoids the problems inherent in

 © International Baccalaureate Organization 2007

 Philosophy teacher support material
Internal assessment: sample C

trying to identify the self with something physical, mental or supra-mental. However, this view has
some problems of its own. If Bob is in a car accident and is brain damaged so that he loses his
memory, does he become a completely different person? In some sense perhaps yes but it is
difficult to sustain that he is a completely different person from the Bob before the crash. While
Bob’s family may speak of his being ‘a different person since the crash’, it is still Bob about whom
they refer, and whom they visit! There is a more difficult problem if Bob loses half his memory from
Alzheimer’s disease for example. This again raises the problem that Reid identified, of whether
you class the self as being simple or composite. If you think that the self is composite then
perhaps there is scope for someone with Alzheimer’s being classed, to some extent, as the same
person they were before the disease. However, if you think that the self is simple – i. e. indivisible
– this kind of flexibility becomes much more difficult.

In the modern Western world, the appeal to immortality of former generations has been replaced
by an acceptance of material reductionism. Indeed it is the reliance on analytical approaches to
questions of human experiences that raised the issue in the first place, since what is divisible, as
Reid said, cannot assume a continuous reality. In the East the notion of self-continuity both within
one life and throughout the cycle of lives of the Samsara is unquestioned, through the assumption
of the soul – atman – as the defining building block of life. In the West more people today think of
the gene as the basic building block of life. Consequently, in a secular age, the common hope of
a life ‘in glory’ to come, is receding while in its place people take solace from the continuity of the
genes in successive family generations. Companies have even sprung up to offer the conversion
of the carbon remains of dead persons into diamond jewellery – offering an attempt at immortality
as far as physically possible!

But the replacement of the immortal soul by physical ‘reality’ is not complete in the West. Poems
often move us because they express something universal that we all recognise in our experience.
“The Trees” is a poem of this type, and engages the universality of its theme by the ‘we’ in the
analogical application of the tree to the human condition. Poets and philosophers both explore
aspects of the experience of being human. The issues of identity and immortality raised in this
poem are some of the most fundamental questions for both art and philosophy to tackle.
Personally I am most persuaded by Locke’s argument because of its ingenuity and appeal to
common sense. I feel like the same person I was a year ago because I can remember what I did
and thought then. However this, of course, is not a complete solution to the problem since there
seems to be something else above experience and memory that remains the same. The intensity
that surrounds this problem means that I am sure it will remain a central problem for philosophers
and poets.

Bibliography:
Blackburn, S. Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy. Oxford Paperbacks. London 2001
Notes from class

© International Baccalaureate Organization 2007