s.j. In Focus

When i ask myself that very question, i remember an
article i once read for my philosophy class. I forgot the Author’s name, but
what he wrote changed the way i saw myself. the title was "Who" and
it started with a simple question:

Who are you? Of course the first thing that comes in your
mind is your name, but your name isn’t who you are, it just refers to you. Who
then are you? The Article continues by asking how old you are. Of course you
know your age, but your age only refers to your body, so is your body that makes
you, you? Or is therefore your Soul the essence of you? The Author then comes up with the “Soul
Theory” which suggest that you refers
to an immaterial soul, which means you could be millions of years or even
infinitely old. Another theory in the
article compares you with a river
based on the “You can’t step into the same river twice” aphorism. Since the
water of a river constantly changes, the river you stepped in once doesn’t
exist any longer. You too like the river are in a continuous state of transition. A following hypothesis proposes that you refers to your collection of neurons
– your brain, raises the question whether the brain matters to the preservation
of your identity and makes an analogy between people and sound structures which
considers that when you would make a qualitative equal copy of Beethoven’s
fifth Symphony onto an exactly similar type, what matters to the preservation
is the music not the tape on which the music is recorded and goes even further
with the scenario of teleporting where the exact pattern of your mental and
physical structure is replicated and the original destroyed. Would it still be
you? Another theory goes back to the age question and supposes if you refers to your mind, your mental
states – your sensations, emotions, and thoughts, then you can only be at most
a few seconds old, since your present conscious mental states are constantly
changing every second.

One of my favorite parts in the article was the
theory comparing ourselves with a river and its constant changing water. I think the theory originated from Heraclitus
and his flux doctrine, where he believed that beneath the apparent   harmony and stability of things, everything is in a state of flux and there is a constant battle between conflicting opposites. More  importantly    that   somehow these opposites are the same… "All things are one".

Suppose it is philosophical true that you cannot step
into the same river twice, which leads me to the question that therefore you
cannot meet the same person twice? For
the second time you will meet a person, he would have changed in many
ways. He would have new memories, for
example. So there are actually two
persons you’re going to meet. The Person you met first, and the person you will
meet on the second time. It doesn’t make
any “sense”. I try not to take it too
literally. The river has always been
symbolic for oneness of constancy vs. change. A cloud symbolizes the same thing. It is always changing while remaining the same cloud. People are constantly changing too, but
remaining the same person. We are
constantly being, while becoming.

In another part of the article the author comes up
with a teleporting scenario, where a person’s structure (physical and mental) will
be replicated and the original atoms destroyed. To me it is similar intriguing
as cloning, but in cloning,

there is a replica but the original isn’t
destroyed. When I underwent such a
procedure, would the replica of me still be me? My answer would be No, but what if you consider two bowling balls, both
of them weight the same, both of them are black, both of them share exactly the
same molecular and sub-molecular make-up. These two balls are qualitatively the same: they share the same
qualities. But they aren’t numerically one and the same ball: there are two
balls not one. So there can be qualitative sameness without numerical sameness.

The author talks about “masked” in the article, where
assumption-laden interpretations become so familiar that eventually they
generate a feeling of obviousness. When my Philosophy teacher asked me the
question “Who are you?” during a class, I was surprised, not of the question
itself, but because how hard I tried to think in that given time, I just
couldn’t find a clear answer to it. It
is another evidence that we take everything and also ourselves for granted. We
are not looking beyond of what is obvious, but every so often when I think
about life or while studying philosophy, I rather be satisfied with a “common
sense” kind of answer, than to break my head about different theories. I believe that everything that happens in our
lives happens for a reason, which sometimes get me to think too much. I end up
looking for signs and meaning in things and people, and I try to decipher the
why’s in my life, that I actually forget to just live it.

Going back to the River; suppose I went for a tour to
visit the  Mississippi River. In the first day
I would go to northern  Minnesota where the
Mississippi River origins from lake Itaska, then I would drive along the River and end up
somewhere in  Louisiana
the other week. You would agree that the
part of the River where I was the first week, and the part of the River where I
was the other week are parts of one and the same river, the  Mississippi River.

Why? Because the part of the river that I was the first week
and the part of the river that I was the other week are connected to one
another by a continuous series of other ‘parts’ of the river.

People are made of parts too; there is the Mind,
Soul, and the Body, and probably other parts or parts that belong to the other
parts, like emotions or memories, which may be connected to your mind. If you would take a part of the Mississippi
River away, it wouldn’t be the  Mississippi River anymore.

If you took a part of yourself away it wouldn’t be you any longer, and
therefore you in  “Who are you?” doesn’t
refer to only one part of you, but rather to you as a whole.