Identity and the (Illusionary) Self

Identity and Self. (Thanks to Gagan for his inspiration for this topic).
a. Physicality
Story #1: Derek Parfit (1995) features an agent who enters a “teletransporter” on Earth. He presses a button, then the machine scans his body and sends the information to Mars, where another machine makes a perfect copy of his body with all the memories of the Earthly inhabitant. The original is the deleted. Are they dead? Parfit ends up concluding that personal identity is not what matters. What matters is psychological continuity and connectedness. We can still talk about personal identity, but it will just be a convention.

Story #2: In Greek mythology, Theseus was a great hero, known for slaying the Minotaur and safely returning rescued children to Athens. The Athenians preserved his ship as a memorial to this victory. As time passed, the wooden parts of the ship began to decay and were gradually replaced with new parts, one at a time. Years became decades, and decades became centuries, until eventually, none of the original parts remained.

If every part of the ship has been replaced, is it still the Ship of Theseus? What about us? The human body replaces nearly every cell over the course of approximately 180 days— is our identity the same? If your brain could be downloaded into another body, would you still be you?

b. Ego identity is the sense of identity that provides individuals with the ability to experience their sense of who they are, and also act on that sense, in a way that has continuity and sameness. It encompasses the memories, experiences, relationships, and values that create one's sense of self. This amalgamation creates a steady sense of who one is over time, even as new facets are developed and incorporated into one's identity. Personality traits, abilities, likes and dislikes, your belief system or moral code, and the things that motivate you — these all contribute to self-image or your unique identity as a person. People who can easily describe these aspects of their identity typically have a fairly strong sense of who they are. What are the chances that they would be accurate in their assessment?

c. The Illusion of self (a secular and Buddhist conception - A heavy bit;): "self illusion (ego identity as in above) is probably an inescapable experience we need for interacting with others and the world, and indeed we cannot readily abandon or ignore its influence, but we should be sceptical that each of us is the coherent, integrated entity we assume we are," Bruce Hood is currently the Director of the Bristol Cognitive Development Centre at the University of Bristol. It makes sense to talk about people as discrete entities entitled to their autobiographical memory, personality features, and other global aspects of their mind. But as a matter of experience there is no self separate from the experience itself. There is just experience. And you are identical to it in the present. Can you conceive of there not being a self?
d. Identity politics is politics based on a particular identity, such as ethnicity, race, nationality, religion, denomination, gender, sexual orientation, social background, political affiliation, caste, age, education, disability, opinion, intelligence, and social class. - Here is a conception of identity that most people conceive of when they think about it**. Questions arise such as how much should the law treat a person as an individual rather than as a member of a group?**

For a very long time, American law and American institutions answered that question unequivocally. People were defined primarily by the group they belonged to, and if they happened to be Black or Native American or a woman, they were going to enjoy fewer rights, fewer privileges and fewer opportunities than the people who belonged to the categories white and male.

Increasingly, at a minimum, justice demands that a nation and its institutions cease and desist from malicious discrimination. But doesn’t justice demand more? Doesn’t it also require that a nation and its institutions actually try to provide assistance to targeted groups to help increase diversity in employment and education and help targeted groups overcome the systemic effects of centuries of discrimination?

Harvard grants “an admissions preference to identified victims of discrimination.” It can also take into account their individual struggles with, say, income or health.

Systemic injustice will always have individual effects, and addressing those individual effects will ultimately result in systemic change. Can you use skin color, sex or sexual orientation or intersectionality (two or more of these “victim’ traits) as a proxy for adversity? What 3 (more or less) descriptors would you use to express your identity?