A Multidisciplinary Approach to Exact Personal Identity Location

Received: 21-Aug-2024, Manuscript No. CSRP-24-145935; Editor assigned: 26-Aug-2024, Pre QC No. CSRP-24-145935 (PQ); Reviewed: 10-Sep-2024, QC No. CSRP-24-145935; Revised: 17-Sep-2024, Manuscript No. CSRP-24-145935 (R); Published: 24-Sep-2024, DOI: 10.3371/CSRP.HJ.082424

Description

A recent paper ("A framework for personal identity location: The structural foundation of values"), describes the human subspecies, Homo sapiens, facing a severe personal identity crisis [1]. Personality assessments, values clarification programs, and even philosophy courses to discover who they really are fail in their purpose, because they are self-reports of personal descriptions of behaviour, instead of what one has done as a result of core values. What a person thinks is not what they do.

The framework paper outlines a chain of procedures leading to a validation of personal identity that expresses core values underpinning one’s behaviour. Overall, any discussion of identity must settle on that word’s meaning, such as "sameness", "essence", and "self-awareness". Many dictionaries mention mathematics. Reference framing implies order, or arrangement. Order implies precision and, in turn, measurement, i.e., mathematics.

Values-laden words and academic controversies over axiology (study of value), behaviour classification (Diagnostic and Statistical manual of Mental disorders, DSM), and ethics are riddled with vagueness and mere opinions, not unlike political and religious debates [2]. (As a sidebar, "disorder (s)" is the negative essence of identity.) If identity is compromised, so is order. Validation rests on the principle of induction (the future resembles the past), predictive worth, reproduction of a phenomenon, and accuracy, all relying on quantification. Hence, locating personal identity by verbally describing values is insufficient.

Personal identity ostensibly implies oneself as a discrete reference frame generating thoughts and actions (logical identity and definite description). If one’s identity is described accurately, both abstractly and physically, it should be relocatable. Over time and with assessments conducted by different persons under different conditions, the same account of one’s identity should emerge.

An identity probe has been developed initiating a primary phase of reporting one’s actions reflecting core values (and preferences), the Voris method. A central reason for studying philosophy is to "know thyself" (displayed on the Temple of Apollo in Delphi, the ancient Greek precinct). More explicitly, philosophical investigation reveals one’s identity, given that teaching values and ethics are traditionally found in philosophy departments. One’s uniqueness is discovered by questions revealing one’s "being" (authentic side), "doing" (synthetic side), and rejuvenator, "an alternate way of both ‘being’ and ‘doing’.”.

Any mentalist’s view of identity is "consciousness", but there is no end of argument over that word’s meaning, as in David Chalmers and his "hard problem". Correlating neurostructures to mentation suggests a material, or physical, counterpart. Such is a result of arguably the most dramatic statement in early-modern philosophy by Rene Descartes (31 March 1596–11 February 1650), we have “...to divide each of the difficulties under examination into as many parts as possible, and as might be necessary for its adequate solution” [3]. Descartes also posited a mind-body distinction, but, given quantum physics, we have failed to find a demarcation line [3]. Heisenberg and those of the Copenhagen school (double-slit experiments) discovered that the observer may determine the outcome of an experiment [4]. Further, physicists cannot observe the ultimate smallest of the smallest, as "particles" flick in and out of existence, the apparent nothingness of vacuum space [5]. Physicists only observe effects, not sources [6]. The Voris probe reflects this [7]. How do we discern the biophysics aspect?

The most fundamental law manages the mind-body conundrum. Something exists because of what it is not, i.e., the ancient "unity of opposites". We cannot apprehend anything alone, but only because of difference. Hence, it is not enough to locate personal identity in the abstract but tangibly ("physically"). A complete personal identity location requires the abstract identity probe and material exploration, the Cartesian reductionism leading to core values validated by actions (abstract) and atoms in neural structures, describable by geometry. Given the most fundamental law, we have: a) the physical validating the mental and vice versa, and; b) the convergence of both into a "singularity" of personal identity.

Modern physical identity location starts with Phinneas Gage, where, on 13 September 1848, a railroad tamping iron slammed into his head, forward of his left mandible, exiting the sincipital bone [8]. People noted his transformed personality, clearly demonstrating a correlation between behaviour and brain structure/composition. Emil Wilhelm Georg Magnus Kraepelin, surely aware of this incident, published his Compendium der Psychiatrie: Zum Gebrauche für Studirende und Aerzte (Compendium of Psychiatry: For the Use of Students and Physicians (1883). Yet, it would be a century later for philosophers to rompt a revitalization of Kraepelin’s view, with Patricia Churchland in 1986 leading the way with her Neurophilosophy: Toward a Unified Science of the Mind-Brain.

Research by the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), with its Research across Domains Criteria (RDoC), is attempting to find both genetic (DNA) and neurocorrelates to human behaviour, realizing DSM’s inadequacy [9]. Representative brain "reproduction" projects include Riken’s Center for Brain Science [10], The Human Brain Project, the Blue Brain Project, and IBM-Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics (SyN-APSE) [11,12].

An interdisciplinary merging of mental and physical research occurs on several fronts. Piaget, both logician and psychologist, showed how a child acquires apprehension of spatiotemporality through containment or set-theoretical arrangements [13]. Indeed, neuroscientists recognize the cerebellum as at least the metaphorical repository of spatiotemporal processing. Geneticists and mathematicians use Valence-Shell Electron- Pair Repulsion (VSEPR) theory "...to predict the geometric shape of the molecules based on the electron repulsive force" [14]. We cannot forget Artificial General Intelligence, chatbots, Qubit supercomputers, and, biocomputers merging with the above, these building blocks constructing quite a mighty castle to house understanding the foundations of identity [15].

The train of development of identity is ontology-epistemology, fundamental law and singularity, quantum-cosmological context (number and spacetime), order/arrangement, math/logic, geometry, atomic structure, transition from dynamism, molecule (valence-applying Maxwell’s geometry), DNA, genetics (created by DNA), and neural substrates [16-18]. Psychological probing and self-reports can be validated by neurocorrelates (e.g.: NIMH, Human Brain Project, and others), and, conversely, operative of the most fundamental law, the unity of opposites.

Acknowledgments

Without the abiding moral support of my companion, Patricia Pimentel Gonzalez and influence by dear colleagues and friends Deborah Elizabeth Hepburn, Nagib Callaos, and Risa Blair, research and writing the work herein described would have much more daunting.

Conflict of Interest

The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare and no financial interest to report. The submission is original work.

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Citation: Horne Jeremy. “A Multidisciplinary Approach to Exact Personal Identity Location.” Clin Schizophr Relat Psychoses 18 (2024). Doi: 10.3371/CSRP.HJ.082424.

Copyright: © 2024 Horne J. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.