So do people with amnesia have a personal identity? What about short term memory loss? I have a hard time trying to believe that people who have no memory have no personal identity. I know that people with amnesia have no memories of themselves and therefore don't know their own identity, but other people know his or her identity so the identity still still remains. Personal memories are lost but friends and family can help at least give them back by recounting the events. Is it necessarily memories that make an identity or is it history and events that make a person who they are. Like Theseus' ship, the identity is made up of the things that the ship has been through, so I think loss of memory doesn't mean the loss of personal identity. I know a guy who hit his head last year and as a result got amnesia. We all knew him and to us he was the same person, he just didn't remember himself. Since then he has regained his memory and has continued his life and knows himself to be the same person as he was before the accident. What do you think, is identity all about memory?
posted by BrianG at 3:45 PM
3 Comments:
I would agree with you that amnesia patients can't just lose their identity because they've lost their memory. And along those lines, what about people who have brains damage somehow and their personality changes? They might still have some of the same memories, but they're a different person, right?
However, I think Rowlands is claiming that amnesia patient or not, no one has a personal identity. He says we're all just "survivors", "a very close survivor of the you of yesterday." (p.117) So, it seems to me that, following his argument, they wouldn't be any different from anyone else except that they aren't survivors. They haven't survived from their previous selves. However, then what about when they start to regain their memory? Were they actually survivors all along, or did they resurrect themselves? And there are some cases that don't recall anything ever, so are they classified as survivors or non-survivors before the memory recovery or lack-thereof, or only after they either recover it or die without it? Wow, this really should have been a post. :)
i do not belive that identity and memory are the same, i have had a concussion and forgoten many of things but that did not mean at that time that i did not have an identity
Identity to me, for the most part, is the way you are perceived by the people around you. The majority of who you are is determined by your friends, family, and the cultural influences. Therefore, if someone was to develop amnesia, their identity would not be lost unless their surroundings (including people, place, and culture) were changed in the process of developing amnesia. For example, the movie The Majestic, when Jim Carrey's character develops amnesia he lands in an unfamiliar town with unfamiliar people who perceive him to be someone else. He takes on this new identity. He himself believes he is this person until his old identity is recollected by something of his past.
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