Neuroethics, Neo-Lockeanism, and Embodied Subjectivity

There are two standard positions that dominate discussions of the essence of personal identity—neo-Lockean or psychological theories and bodily identity theories. Beck (2013) is concerned with what is perhaps an internecine dispute between psychological theories that pits the Parfitian or functionalist views against narrative views. A neuroethically grounded narrative approach to personal identity therefore is of interest in that it goes beyond narrative to real essence (Gillett 2008; Locke 1689). Beck’s functionalist take on Parfit’s neo-Lockean or psychological continuity account is an anti-narrative view (as is that of Galen Strawson [2004]), but to engage with it, the analytic tools of neuroethics must first be applied to essentialism and the metaphysics of identity.

Neuroethics is an attempt to relate contemporary neuroscience to philosophical ethics by drawing on cognitive neuroscience and neuroimaging. One version of neuroethics is, broadly, Aristotelian and is deeply influenced by phenomenology (particularly that of Merleau-Ponty). ‘Psyche,’ ‘soul,’ and ‘mind’ are regarded as terms picking out that set of characteristics distinctive of a living human being and therefore internally related to personal identity. Neuroethics of this stripe holds that the real essence of the human psyche is to be elucidated, inter alia, by examining how a human being engages with a world of meaning created within (and abstracted from) human discourse.¹ The stance is holistic and naturalistic, and teases out the logical entailments and grounds to yield a clear and distinct idea of proper instances of the metaphysical species ‘living human being’ as articulated in terms compatible with our best current knowledge in relevant natural sciences—prominently psychology in general and cognitive neuroscience in particular.

The relevant neuroethical variant of that approach treats metaphysical essences as abstractions (quasi-logical constructions nested in an inferential structure) from the multiplicity of our ways of understanding the natural phenomenon that is human life. It is committed to the idea that conceptions and inferences (or, the elements of truth-bearers) are not the actuality (the truth makers) that make them true (Armstrong 2004) and that we should not mistake what lies in the means of representation for what lies in the thing itself. This distinction between essence and existence, when applied to debates about personal identity, confounds most varieties of essentialism and favors a mindfulness about the gap between representation and reality that allows something to be indefinable provided that we can track the actuality being discussed through its various modes of presentation.

The essence of human identity in the views under discussion is taken to be either:

1. 1. a set of psychological states that are related in some principled way, for example, “links of memory (or, rather, apparent memory), continued beliefs, desires, projects, emotions” and so on (Beck 2013, 34) or

2. 2. a narrative thread or continuity of voice, an authorial/editorial function unifying experiences—“sense of self involves seeing experiences and actions as part of an intelligible whole” (Beck 2013, 34).

For the psychological theorists Beck defends, the links in 1 are based in:

a causal process that is doing the work for identity (38) [comprising] causal connections between experiences and (apparent) memories . . . continuing beliefs, desires, intentions and so on which will under certain conditions be causally effective with other beliefs, desires and experiences and will sometimes be unactivated dispositions.

(Beck 2013, 38)

I will (i) critique the adequacy of the causal, psychological connectedness view, (ii) deny that the critique of the narrative view touches a neuroethical (real essence) view, and (iii) offer some remarks on the forensic relevance of the neuroethical view.

Beck’s causal view assumes that the link between thoughts and behavior is causal, but that thesis is a highly suspect and, some would argue, unsustainable view, in that thoughts are essentially constructions of meaning that act through their role in discourse and causes are brute forces of nature. It follows that causality cannot be the basis of the effect of reasons on behavior unless one accepts a (materialistic) metaphysics of mind that is, arguably, deeply suspect for several reasons (Gillett 1992, 2009). For instance, one might notice...