Jarl CarlanderUse Locke's criterion of consciousness to evaluate the conditions under which it would be possible forhumansto become posthuman

Introduction: Explaining Posthumanism and Lockes Criterion of ConsciousnessPosthumanism is a currently unreached state in which some human persons acquire significantly increased capacities and/or abilities. Nick Bostrom offers the following definitions which I adopt in this essay. I shall definea posthumanas a being that has at least one posthuman capacity. Bya posthuman capacity, I mean a general central capacity greatly exceeding the maximum attainable by any current human being without recourse to new technological means. I will usegeneral central capacityto refer to the following: healthspancognitionemotion.[footnoteRef:1] [1: Nick Bostrom, Why I Want to be a Posthuman When I Grow Up in Max More and Natasha Vita-More, (eds), The Transhumanist Reader, Classical and Contemporary Essays on the Science, Technology and Philosophy of the Human Future, (ebook, Wiley-Blackwell, 2013), Chapter 3, I. Setting the Stage. ]

This essay seeks to discover the conditions which make continuous identity possible. I argue that using Lockes criterion of continuous consciousness, it is relatively easy to show that it is possible for humans to be posthuman. However, it may prove enlightening regarding the nature of persons to enquire exactly which conditions allow continuity. Also, it may be the case that certain conditions added to consciousness make continuity impossible, for example, the loss of memory, or the loss or addition of a soul.

Locke distinguishes between the identity of man, and the identity of persons. The same man is a continuous living human body,[footnoteRef:2] but the same person is a continuous intelligent thinking being.[footnoteRef:3] These are conceptually distinct entities; it is possible to have a living organism which does not think, or does not contain a thinking being within it, and it is also possible to at least conceive of thinking without a living system, or with a change of physical system. [2: John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, (Glasgow, Wm Collins Sons, 1690), p. 210.] [3: Ibid, p.211. ]

It is currently unknown if any of the more striking manifestations of posthumanity are realizable, but it is uncontroversial to say that ones bodily content or structure can change and the person remains the same. (This is why the body criterion is beneath consideration). Locke gives the example of the loss of a limb.[footnoteRef:4] Although a hand or a foot may be lost, the person remains the same person. In addition, the individual cells can be replaced. Consciousness seems to be the key to personhood, because it is a necessary condition of experience. Persons have experiences. Computers can perform calculation, but they do not have sensation or subjectivity. The moral status of animals is often argued on the basis of how much they can experience clearly few animals on earth have the depth of thought that humans do, but there are many that have considerable cognitive abilities, and they cause a moral crisis in many people who are afraid to inflict suffering on them this is the basis of moral vegetarianism.[footnoteRef:5] [footnoteRef:6] This appears to be a key difference between persons and automata. The criterion on consciousness appears to be a plausible one for this reason. [4: Ibid, p.213.] [5: There are also people who are vegetarian only for health reasons. ] [6: I am not arguing for moral vegetarianism, I am explaining the motive for it. ]

However, consciousness alone may be insufficient to account for personhood. One reason consciousness has merit as a candidate criterion for accounting for personhood is that it unites a plethora of disparate elements of a being if body parts are replaced, or lost, then the underlying subjectivity of that organism can be preserved. But since bodies can be fragmented or damaged, it should also be considered that consciousness is also susceptible to this. This is where the many puzzles of memory enter memory is what seems to bind a self-aware conscious experience and yet memories can be lost, confused, or even implanted. Thomas Reid gives an example of a boy who becomes a young man, who becomes an old man. The man can remember his days as a boy, and the old man can remember his days as a young man, but the old man cannot remember his days as a boy.[footnoteRef:7] How are the boy and the old man the same, on an account which relies on mental continuity? One may be tempted to throw out Lockes account at this point; however, this is not an insurmountable problem. First of all, it is not clear what sort of logic should apply to persons, who are innately in flux in all manner of ways. Aristotelian logic, where a thing is what it is, and not what it is not, does not obviously apply to anything. [7: Thomas Reid, cited in Anna Lnnstrm, Locke's Account of Personal Identity: Memory as Fallible Evidence in History of Philosophy Quarterly, Vol. 24, No. 1 (Jan, 2007), pp. 39-56. pp. 44-45. ]

In this particular case, there is a plausible answer, from which we can take two conclusions. The answer to Reids paradox is that since the young man can remember his days as a boy, and the old man can remember his days as a young man, there is sufficient overlap to make for a properly continuous process. The old man cannot remember his days as a young boy, but he can remember a time when he did. He may also remember that he remembered his days as a boy.

The two conclusions one can choose from are as follows. First, one could simply say that real identity in the strictest sense does not apply to humans, or any living organism, if Lockes criterion is to be favoured and therefore personal identity is an illusion. The second answer is to say that identity when applied to persons deserves to be considered in a more appropriate way the existence of overlap between the young boy and the old man has a prima facie plausibility to it. Consciousness may be malleable, as matter is, but it better captures the essence of a person than matter does. There is a continuity of growth, of change, and of learning in the life of the man. If identity proper is supposed to be static, unchanging, and unparadoxical, then perhaps it is better to consider human identity with a lower case I. It may be best to give an account of persons which does not try to gloss over changes because change is integral to persons.

It may also be the case that one persons modus ponens is anothers modus tollens. For example, what if the young man cannot remember the boy and the old man cannot remember the young man? Surely, then there is no unified personhood, but since we intuit that there must be unified personhood, we ought to discard Lockes criterion of consciousness. However, rather than accept that this constitutes a reductio ad absurdum, one might find plausibility in saying that there are distinct persons within the same body at different times. It may depend on the personalities of these three stages, and how they stage.

Rather than try to argue up from settling the questions Locke wrestled with, and then going on to argue about posthumanism, I will rather argue down and show how various scenarios from transhumanism can elucidate what constitutes an account of identity that accounts for the way we do think of persons, and also shows a way in which we ought to think of them. Posthumanist scenarios also present a number of interesting counter-examples to Lockes criterion. In addition, posthumanism also enables the falsification of other criterions of personhood.

I: Increased capability

i) With continuous consciousness

Imagine a mediocre pianist, who is given a pill, which radically improves his technique and his musical sensibility, and allows him to play all of the most difficult passages with unheard of ease and artistic taste. The presence of continuous consciousness would make this a scenario of fulfilment. It would be good for the mediocre pianist to take this pill, and it would be good for the pianist after the pills effects were manifested.

The implications of the absence of continuous consciousness also matter. If the continuity of the pianists personhood was possible without continuous consciousness, then this would show consciousness to be superfluous and therefore erroneous as a criterion. However, in this case, continuous consciousness is what makes fulfilment possible. It only makes sense to speak of fulfilment in the case of a conscious entity rocks are never fulfilled or disappointed. Fulfilment is also an innately temporal concept. It is also dependent on a relation. Fulfilment entails that a person gained something over some period of time. An agent in two states is united by a process the reaching of a goal, which is common to both. The pianist is the same person because he has continuous consciousness and the change is caused by a pursuit of a goal which is common to both the mediocre pianist and the posthuman virtuoso. Although fulfilment is not the reason why the mediocre pianist is the same person as the posthuman virtuoso, it is a symptom of it. So far then, consciousness is a necessary condition of the move to posthumanism.

Consciousness may not be sufficient however. Above consciousness was a necessary condition because it is the seat of certain other conditions such as growth and fulfilment which themselves indicate continuity. If the posthuman virtuoso is a fulfilled mediocre pianist, the virtuoso must be a continuation of the pianist.

However, if there is a scenario wherein continuous consciousness is not present, and personhood remains the same, then Lockes criterion runs into problems.

ii) Without continuous consciousness

In the 2012 movie, The Amazing Spiderman, Peter Parkers transformation into the hero takes place while he is unconscious. Peter wakes up and becomes on Bostroms definition, a posthuman he has at least one posthuman capacity. It also seems intuitive to say that the human Peter and the posthuman Peter are the same person. Does the absence of continuous consciousness in this case cause a problem for this view? Locke argued that an interruption in consciousness does not affect the question of personal identity, so long as the consciousness continues.[footnoteRef:8] Locke seems to be correct here. By way of analogy, software on a computer is the same software, even if it is switched off and on again, so long as the software is not too radically changed. [8: John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, p. 212-213.]

So in the case of Spiderman, the fact that consciousness was interrupted and yet the person remained the same is not a problem for that reason alone. The consciousness was not strictly continuous, but it might be called properly continuous. It is the kind of continuity we expect from a conscious being. Although strictly continuous consciousness is sufficient for personhood, it is not necessary. It is enough that consciousness continue in a certain way, and what properly entails will be further developed below. What about an increase in capacity in addition to being unconscious? It seems what matters is the nature of the change. Spiderman still identifies as Peter Parker, and he continues Peters life as a student, and his relationships. (A useful aspect of fiction is that it allows us to see persons from the inside). He may be said to continue to self-identify as Peter Parker. Locke identifies this as an important aspect of personal identity. A thinking intelligent being, that has reason and reflection, and can consider itself as itself, the same thinking thing, in different times and places.[footnoteRef:9] [9: Ibid, p. 211. ]

But the corollary should also be considered. What if a posthuman ceased to identify with their previous state as merely human? In The Amazing Spiderman, Spiderman fights a scientist who is transformed into a lizard-like creature (and technically posthuman, since transformation is a posthuman capacity). Attempting to dissuade the lizardman, Dr. Connors, from his villainous pursuits, Spiderman says this isnt you. This introduces another puzzle. There is not only a question of whether a person self-identifies in a certain way, but whether they do so correctly or not. Dr. Connors has two responses to Spidermans assertion. The first is to say that the Lizardman is simply a more powerful Dr. Connors and therefore there is continuity. The second is for the Lizardman to disown his previous human state as unrepresentative of his true self. Locke does not distinguish between types of identification. It is necessary to seek clarification of considering itself as itself. Perhaps a useful distinction would be between explicit and implicit identification. Spiderman appears to identify as Peter Parker in both ways. He identifies explicitly in that he accepts the stipulation Peter Parker, and thinks of himself as the same person he was before his transformation. But his self-identification is also implicit, in that his cognition, memories, goals, values and fears are more or less the same. The Lizardman possibly only identifies explicitly as Dr. Connors. He accepts the designation Curt Connors provisionally, for pragmatic purposes (waiting for the right moment to show his true colours). He also accepts that he was Dr. Connors, and continues at times to behave as he was before the transformation. The question is, does the Lizardmans disavowal of his pre-transformation state make him a distinct person? Firstly, it is not enough that the Lizardman simply state that he is no longer Dr. Connors. One can label oneself whatever one pleases, but a changing a designation does not change the thing in itself. In order for the person to change, there must be an implicit change in identity this is the necessary and sufficient condition of change. However, as Locke says, When we see, hear, smell, taste, meditate, or will anything, we know that we do so.[footnoteRef:10] One can deny a higher-order awareness of oneself, even to oneself, but that awareness would nonetheless be there. What this means is that as long as there is continuous consciousness, there cannot be a change of person; persons can only change. An analogy to explain what this means; a stick figure can be painted in different colors, but it is not by virtue of this visual change, a different stick figure. And this means that a good person who becomes evil is still the same person. Spidermans assertion to the Lizardman can therefore be dismissed as rhetoric. Because consciousness is accompanied by an inalienable higher-order awareness, properly continuous consciousness is a guarantee of personhood. [10: Ibid, p. 211.]

II: Change of RealityThe Matrix movies are predicated on the protagonist Neos world being an illusion. During the first movie, Neo leaves the manufactured digital reality, and exits to the true reality. It appears that personal identity is independent even of the nature of reality. Throughout the films, the heroes enter and exit the digital reality, while maintaining their personalities, and their other subjective experiences, continuously. This appears to corroborate the strength of Lockes account personhood is largely defined from the inside, and not based on posits external to the subject. For his entire life in the digital reality, Neo lies in a dream-like state, merely believing himself to be experiencing a real world. However, these experiences in the dream world are formative. They causally affect Neos decisions in the future, including the decision to leave the digital reality. It is hard to find any reason to object that the Neo in the digital reality is any different from the Neo outside of it. Neo is also a posthuman. The heroes can manipulate the digital reality and break the rules to give themselves posthuman capacities. Neo also gains and then loses his posthuman capacities, making him alternately human and posthuman. Lockes criterion is thus a far reaching one for consideration of posthumanity, extending even into alternate realities and allowing for a regression into humanity.

III) Digital divisionIn this section, I consider some examples arising from the uploading of mental content to physical locations other than the mind. i) Computer uploadsSome more extravagant accounts of posthumanity include uploading the contents of human minds to computers, the way one installs software onto a computer.if we can carry out the function of a mind both in a biological brain and in a brain that is composed of computer software or neuromorphic hardware (a hardware architecture with design principles based on biological neural systems), then that mind is substrate-independent. The mind continues to depend on a substrate to exist and to operate, of course, but there are substrate choices.[footnoteRef:11] [11: Randal A. Koene, Uploading to Substrate-independent Minds, in Max More and Natasha Vita-More, (eds), The Transhumanist Reader, Classical and Contemporary Essays on the Science, Technology and Philosophy of the Human Future, (ebook, Wiley-Blackwell, 2013), Chapter 14, I. Your Mind, but not Constrained to the Biological Brain.]

It is unknown if this will ever be technologically feasible for humanity to do this, but given that brains are physical systems; it is in principle possible for other physical objects to contain thinking entities. The question is whether minds can be moved from one location to another. Given that this is a scientific question, I will assume it is possible and consider the philosophical implications.In previous examples, persons changed body form, but they retained bodies. In this scenario, a person could well lose their body. If a person were to vacate their body, and moved their consciousness inside a computers hard drive, they would technically become posthuman, since being a machine is a posthuman capacity. Locke considers a thought experiment. Upon separation of this little finger, should this consciousness go along with the little finger, and leave the rest of the body, it is evident the little finger would be the person, the same person; and self then would have nothing to do with the rest of the body.[footnoteRef:12] Thus, a Lockean about personal identity is unperturbed by the bizarre nature of certain scenarios. Although the person in a hard-drive scenario is certainly strange, if the consciousness remains, so does the person. [12: John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, p. 216. ]

It is possible to object that consciousness would not remain, or that it would be fundamentally changed. Perhaps human persons, being biological creatures, would remain conscious, and yet not remain the same person. The ancient evolutionary drives of survival and procreation which have motivated humans for eons might have no place in a computer hard-drive. In addition, the emotional aspects of human cognition could be lost, because computers have no need of these drives, and no way to encode them. If this was correct, it would be constitute a counter example to Lockes theory, since it is an example of properly continuous consciousness without continuous identity.

However, the example is easily brushed aside. We can imagine humans losing all of these drives, and we would not say they had become different people. We would simply say the same person had undergone a change. An example would be a very ill person. It is possible that a person could be so ill and depressed that they lost certain emotional capacities, without losing their personhood.

ii) Computer uploads without vacation of the body

Locke considers whether there may be two distinct persons in the same body,[footnoteRef:13] but he does not consider two distinct manifestations of the same person. If a human uploaded their mind to a computer, but did not vacate their body, they would duplicate the contents of their brain into a computers hard-drive. Previously, it seemed correct to say that the uploaded mind was the same person as the human body. Given that both the human and the conscious hard-drive contain a properly continuous consciousness, there are two entities which meet the criterion for personhood, generated from one person. [13: Ibid, p. 215.]

Perhaps if Person 1 backs up his mental content on a computer and does not vacate his body, Person 1 remains and the hard-drive is person 1.1. Since Person 1 is the originator of all persons categorized under 1, any other persons 1 are derivatives and therefore should be classified as separate persons distinct from Person 1. Person 1 is fundamental, while 1.1 emerges from Person 1, and any copies of Person 1.1 would be called Person 1.1.1, 1.1.2, etc. This would solve the problem by showing that when persons branch off, they are not properly continuous.

The problem with this attempt to create a neat solution like this is that it contradicts the earlier solution of calling the person who did vacate their body into the hard-drive the same person. In the one case, there is continuity, in the other; there is a new taxonomy of persons.[footnoteRef:14] [14: Williams discusses this disparity without the posthuman context in Bernard Williams, The Self and the Future, in Raymond Martin and John Bareesi, (eds) Personal Identity, (Oxford, Blackwell, 2003), pp. 75-91. ]

One could counter this problem by saying that in the former case, there was a move from body to computer, while in the second case, there was a copy. These could well be distinct neurological operations, the way in which copy and paste is a distinct operation from cut and paste on a computer.[footnoteRef:15] But this is an empirical question. However it could well be the case that the manner in which consciousness is relocated could solve the problem. [15: Copy and paste duplicates the original file, whereas cut and paste removes the original file to another place. ]

Examples of division are also not new. Hazlitt also considers them, to undermine Lockes criterion. Hazlitts problem is theological based on what God could do. this self may be multiplied in as many different beings as the Deity may think proper to endue with the same consciousness; which if it can be so renewed at will in any one instance, may clearly be so in a hundred others.[footnoteRef:16] [16: William Hazlitt, An Essay on the Principles of Human Action and some Remarks on the Systems of Hartley and Helvetius (1805), (Gainesville, FI: Scholars' Facsimiles & Reprints 1969), pp. 135-136. Cited in Personal Identity, (Oxford, Blackwell, 2003), pp. 1-74, p. 57.]

In this particular case, there may be a sort of fudge. If God does not exist, then it does not matter what such a being could do. However, if there are no Gods, then there are no overarching reasons why posthumanism is impossible, and the same problems emerge again in a technological form. A God who creates multiple instances of a person is essentially just cloning them, and that may turn out to be technologically feasible.

Hazlitt argues that since the multiple distinct manifestations of a person are not concerned for one another, they ought not identify as each other. Am I to regard all these as equally myself? Am I equally interested in the fate of all?[footnoteRef:17] Hazlitt argues for his own criterion what matters is not consciousness, but what one cares about. [17: Ibid, pp. 57.]

However, this criterion does not work either. One could artificially manufacture concern in another person, using advanced technological means,[footnoteRef:18] and this would be insufficient for personal identity or anything like it. Persons A and B could care about the other in a first person way, and yet be distinct persons with discrete consciousness. [18: This could be accomplished by a chip in the brains of two persons, causing them to care about the other in the way they care about themselves. ]

The movie Dragonheart contains such an example. A dragon gives a prince his heart, which causes the dragon and the prince to share sensations of pain. They do not share each others thoughts, and they are in every possible way distinct persons, and their distinctness appears to be caused by their distinct consciousness. iii) Combined consciousness

It may seem as if there is a possible counter example to Lockes criterion in the following thought experiment. If distinct consciousnesses were uploaded into the same mind, into one combined consciousness, there would be a case of properly continuous consciousness, and yet it would not be the same person that is the claim I consider.

If there were two persons A and B combined into one consciousness, the contents of their consciousness memories, thoughts, fears, feelings and skills other cognitive traits would be combined. The resulting Person, AB, would remember both his previous states of A and B, but he would function as one person. In this example, AB would not have two distinct conscious processes within their brain; they would have a unified consciousness.

It is not entirely clear what is going on here. It seems there are several possible responses.

i) Properly continuous consciousness is an inadequate criterion for personhoodii) The criterion of properly continuous consciousness is not met, despite ABs memories as A and B. iii) A new person is created, because two persons have been made into one. This preserves the criterion, because it is not necessary to account for continuity.

It seems that the third point is the correct one. Because the conscious process is changed, the person is also changed. It also seems easier to prove that the third point is the correct one by reversing the operation. If AB is the original person, who is divided into A and B, then it seems obvious that this change that this is not the same person; ABs personhood has literally been cut in half.

What this shows is that the properly aspect of properly continuous consciousness must entail some degree of autonomy is the conscious process. If the consciousness is taken into some larger whole, or divided, the person is not the same.

iv) Concluding digital examples

Previous examples considered changes of the containers of consciousness, or of the number conscious manifestations of a person, or the location of a conscious entity. The main problem seemed to arise from the disparity between the different ways of moving conscious processes. However, this is not necessarily a problem if there are certain constraints on how consciousness can be moved. It is not possible to say more, because the empirical research is still in its infancy. Aside from this, it seems that as long as consciousness is autonomous, it can be properly continuous. It seems that properly continuous consciousness is a robust criterion which can account for personal identity over a wide spectrum of changes.

IV: Theological defeaters of posthumanism

So far there have been no overwhelmingly strong defeaters of Lockes criterion. There have been many problems, which may or may not have answers. There may however, be an overwhelming objection on certain theological grounds. If there is a deity who is invested in the fate of mankind, and who has a place for mankind in scheme of things, there could be a possible scenario in which properly continuous consciousness is present, and yet personhood is not. If humans attempted to become posthuman, there could be two outcomes.

i) These attempts are impossible to realize, because God has set limitations in place which humanity cannot overcome. ii) These attempts are possible to realize, but they change the cosmic role of humans, and therefore change humans, causing an interruption in the conscious continuity, making some or all varieties of posthumanism impossible for humans to be identical with.[footnoteRef:19] [19: If humans became immortal, then they could find themselves deprived of some afterlife, wherein they receive eschatological fulfilment. They would be at the same time posthuman, but also sub-human, since they do not meet certain theological requirements that enable them to be fully humans. This is not plausible, but it is logically possible. ]

The second point is an overriding objection to Lockes criterion. Strictly speaking, it is impossible to rule this out, and interesting to note, but it is not worthwhile to consider them. The defeater is not a logical possibility that arises from within the confines of the theory, but it appears from without. Any comprehensive theory could be destroyed from the outside by the overarching machinations of a deity.

Final Conclusion

Lockes account of personhood, appropriately clarified, is strong. This is not to say it is unproblematic, because that is clearly false. Too much depends on empirical questions to give a conclusive answer. However, there are good reasons to be optimistic about Lockes criterion. The first is that consciousness is the condition of possibility for the first person experience. Another good reason is that personhood is a useful posit of our best theories. In all of the examples taken from fiction, it would be more extravagant to posit more persons, and it helps us to understand what is going on to posit continuity. If any of these fictional examples were to be instantiated in the real world, these posits would be just as necessary. Consciousness is the prime mover, in a sense. It is what unites the otherwise disparate natures of any two persons who undergo a radical change.

It is also worth noting that Lockes criterion depends on the absence of any prior conception of humanity, such as a theology that requires that humans remain in their current state. However, Lockes criterion is internally consistent, and this is what matters. The somewhat tentative conclusion of this work is that a person can continue through any change to posthumanity, so long as the persons consciousness remains autonomous, so that it is not divided, or incorporated into a larger whole. Strictly continuous consciousness is sufficient to satisfy continued personhood, but this is not necessary, as it is enough that an entity merely continue thinking.

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