Research Proposal on "Personal Identity"

Research Proposal 5 pages (1444 words) Sources: 0

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Identity Dialogue

Cinemacrates

BOB: Why, Cinemacrates! What are the odds of seeing you walk by? Where have you been this fine afternoon?

CINEMACRATES: I've been at the movies, and I swear I had an out of body experience. I'm still not really feeling like myself.

BOB: Well who are you feeling like? How it could it be possible to feel like anything but you? If you feel different now than you did before the movie, doesn't that just show a shift in you, without your needing to experience this sudden (and apparently uncomfortable) change in identity?

CIN: Oh, you're in one of those moods. Look, all I meant was I got so involved in the movie that I forgot where I was for awhile and actually felt like I was in the movie, like I was one of the characters, you know? I guess its just something that can happen with a really good actor -- the way they really embody the part and transform themselves has a really similar effect on me.

BOB: But do you really think that you didn't feel like yourself, as you just now said, therefore implying that you felt like someone else? Exactly what part of your identity did you feel you had lost? For that matter, how much of the actor do you think is left behind when they transform? Do they have a similar experience as you, only deeper perhaps? Do the actors literally become the character when they are doing their job correctly, or they really still the actor?

CIN: Obviously they're still the actor, and I am still me. Our bodies didn't change, or anything; we still have the same height, proportions, and everything. They go home from the set, I go back to my house from the movie theatre -- or I stop an have weird conversations on the streets of Athens, Texas that always seem to get too intense too quickly -- and everything ends up normal.

BOB: What you're saying, then, is that the body is what forms identity, and that although your mind (and possibly the actor's) was transformed for a time, you retained your identity throughout. In other words, the mind has nothing to do with identity, but only the collection of atoms that is your body.

CIN: You're jumping ahead of me again. The mind certainly has something to do with identity. I don't know...maybe I really wasn't myself for awhile in the movie. Or maybe -- and this is more likely, because the actor was speaking and moving as someone else, whereas I was just sitting there watching -- maybe actors really does transform when they are doing their jobs well; maybe the change in their mind makes for a true shift in their personal identity, if only for a time.

BOB: Then identity is not permanent.

CIN: Well...no, I guess not. I mean, its always changing, isn't it? Especially if identity is connected to the mind and emotions, as in the case of the actor. Human beings go through many different phases of mind and emotion, translating into a wide range of interactions with the world that aren't always alike, and therefore cannot be said to be consistent with one identity...right?

BOB: Perhaps. But what you are saying is that personality and identity are identical. This raises many further questions. First of all, if what you are saying is correct and all shifts in personality correspond to shifts in identity, then the entire concept of identity becomes meaningless -- as you say we go through many such shifts every day, and therefore any concept of identity or sense of self would either be false or completely temporary. I cannot believe that you truly mean you do not have the same identity as you had before the movie, or yesterday.

CIN: No, I guess that isn't what I really meant...I just didn't expect a sort of Spanish Inquisition.

BOB: Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition. Luckily, I don't speak Spanish. But back to the issue at hand -- if personality is identity, but minor changes in personality do not correspond to true change sin personality, the identity is truly a complex thing indeed, encompassing all of our moods no matter what they are in response to. This seems more reasonable. But in cases where personalities go… READ MORE

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