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If a man appeared tomorrow possessing every conceivable attribute of Socrates, is there any chance that he is the same person as Plato's tutor?
The initial natural response to the question is that the person who appears tomorrow could not possibly be the historical figure Socrates, who died approximately two and half millennia ago, sufficiently long enough for his body to have disintegrated to be unrecognisable. It is quite clear that the Socrates that was Plato's tutor has long since become no more. At least at first glance, there would be little hesitation for any rational person to immediately question the credentials, or at least mental faculties, of this man. At second glance, however, this man's presence raises many questions as to what it is that constitutes a person, how we can find necessary and sufficient conditions for personal identity - that which makes one person the same person through temporal progression.
In day to day existence, we recognise persons by the body with which that person is associated. There are problems, however, with simply relating personal identity with the survival of the body. In the first place, there are problems with claiming that the body is constant. Cells are being constantly replaced on a regular basis, and it is valid for me to claim that I am the same person that I was when I was eight years old, and yet have a different body, as most of the constituent parts of my body have changed a great deal in the last ten years. Another way to question the idea that continuity of body denotes continuity of person is through the analogy of brain transplants. For example, if Person A's brain is transplanted into Person B's body, then it is conceivable that Person A will continue in Person B's body, thus nullifying the rather crude idea that it is the continuity of body which retains personal identity. This idea is crude because it is very easy to refine it into a more believable idea that the person will survive along as the brain survives.
Questions raised by this idea of the brain being the root of personal identity are concerned either with the division of the brain or with the possibility of removing and recording the information contained within it. The first of these brings about many questions when the brain is divided into its two separate hemispheres and each hemisphere is transplanted into two different bodies. It is very difficult to speculate as to the results of such an operation, and the effect it would have one the person who once was associated with the whole brain. It has been questioned whether or not it is possible for the person to undergo 'fission', where the person becomes two separate people, existing with two separate bodies. It is very difficult to find a claim that can support the idea of one person becoming two, and indeed it seems logically impossible for what was once one person to be identical to what is now two people. This has been attempted by the 'Multiple Occupancy Thesis', whereby it is claimed that there always were two people in the original body, but they have just now become spatially separate. In my view, this makes very little sense, and it is much better to regard the likelihood of one person becoming two as a logical contradiction.
The second challenge to the brain criterion for personal identity is far more damaging. If at some point in the future is becomes possible to record and store the contents of a brain, then it could be conceivable to 'install' this contents into a different brain. The original person would now exist in a totally separate brain from their original, and therefore the necessity for the continued survival of a brain for personal identity in the future is removed. The logical result of this is the claim that 'psychological continuity' is the necessary criterion for the continuation of person. This result is very attractive as no longer is survival of any part of the body required for survival of the person, and can be simply defined as the person surviving so long as the causal chain of his memory is not broken. This seems to be a very neat definition, and allows for religious philosophers to claim that phenomena such as rebirth or resurrection are possible. Also, it is the first idea that allows for the possibility that the man who arrives tomorrow could in fact be the same person as the tutor of Plato - that is, if somehow the information that was in Socrates' brain was somehow transferred into a different body.
This concept of psychological continuity being behind personal identity very similar to what Locke uses to find personal identity, except instead of memory as the item of continuity, Locke uses 'consciousness'. This term is far more vague, and although is used in a way that is very similar to the concept of memory, is nonetheless a better representation of personal identity. For example, I could argue that although I have no definite memory of being aged six, I am conscious that I was six years old. It may take something to jog my memory, but I am always conscious of it. Although this seems to be a very good way of looking at personal identity, holes can be found which question its comfortable appearance. These are the 'Circularity argument' and the 'Reduplication argument'.
The first of these points out that in detail the argument for Psychological continuity is circular. It would seem that in order to have a continuous chain of consciousness we require personal identity, and yet in order to have personal identity we require a continuous chain of consciousness. This seems to show that it is impossible to prove personal identity using the Psychological continuity criterion, as in order to show a continuous psyche, we must first establish consistent personal identity.
The second of these points is far more damaging to this criterion of personal identity. The 'Reduplication argument' is that if the information in a brain can be stored and downloaded into another brain - this is how we challenged the Brain Criterion - then what is to stop that process being repeated, creating the potential of creating an army of Socrates, if we so wished. The problems with the psychological continuity criterion, however, can be shown with the creation of only two new Socrates. It has already been shown with the fission argument that one person cannot become two people, and so it is logically impossible for these two Socrates to actually be Socrates.
There is a reply to this challenge, which attempts to reconcile the Psychological continuity criterion with the Reduplication argument. It is simply to say that when there are rivals for personal identity, the best rival shall win, and be deemed Socrates. This 'Revised Psychological Continuity Criterion' seems to make no sense in this example, however, where the two rivals are by definition precisely similar. Neither has the better claim to being the original person, and the Revised criterion fails to show if either of them is, although they can both argue they have psychological continuity, yet cannot both be Socrates. A clearer answer to this question is that in recording the exact state the brain is in and storing that does not actually store the person, merely a shadow a that person, and in the case of creating a being using that blueprint, the original person is not recreated, simply that a new person is created that thinks it is that original person - the original person does not leave the body when the state of the body is recorded.
This point brings into question exactly to what we are referring when we say person. If we uses a simple definition that a person is simply the structure of the body and the brain, and can therefore be recorded, then you come across a contradiction when it becomes possible to create two of apparently the same person. Surely, by definition, two people, sitting side by side, no matter how similar in body and thought, cannot be the same one person. This seems to indicate that person has little to do with any sort of physical or even psychological information, it is something completely different, possibly closer to the Cartesian 'res cogitans' - immaterial.