Self and Personal Identity (with reference to Sci-Fi)

I've just read John Locke's 'Essay Concerning Human Understanding' regarding Self and Personal Identity.

This post may contain spoilers for Altered Carbon (the Richard Morgan book), and it's sequels, and in fact his other work too.

This is probably evident to everyone who has read Altered Carbon, but still, I didn't really think about it before. Altered Carbon itself seems to be an exploration of the notion of self, Takeshi Kovacs (the protagonist of the books), changes different physical bodies at different points, and yet we consider him at all times to be the same man. Which is pretty much what John Locke meant by a man wearing different clothes is still the same man, no matter if he sleeps and is unconscious between changes of clothes. Here we have Takeshi potentially spending time between being conscious in different bodies, and yet when he is 'awake' he is a continuation of the previous Takeshi.

There are of course many variations to this, and they can be interesting thought experiments. If there are two Takeshi's, branched at a known point and occupying the same temporal frame of reference (ooh, cool undergrad phrasing there...), then they start as the same person, and Richard Morgan has basically the same character slowly diverging. The two Takeshi's accept that after a short period one must cease to be. Thus we have to consider if this is murder, or suicide maybe? Also - one set of memories, one Takeshi potential, is lost, but Takeshi, lets call him Takeshi Prime continues to exist. If secondary Takeshi only existed for a short time then experience is lost, but does it matter? Not a great deal, possibly, although we could easily argue that it doesn't matter which Takeshi died, or if both did, a person died. Hmm.

And then there is an exploration of what this means to justice. Again touched on by John Locke. Locke implies that if 'man' is separate from 'person', then just as it is possible for one person to transfer to another body, and be the same person, so different 'personal identities' could inhabit one body. If the consciousness that inhabits Takeshi's body does something, does that mean Takeshi is responsible for it? This is played out in a couple of different ways. A third party having a score to settle with the previous owner of the body Takeshi is in, and their wish to settle that with 'Takeshi'.

Further, John Locke wonders whether acts done whilst sleepwalking can be held against the person who is not conscious of them? Locke argues that we have to hold the awake person responsible as we are unable to determine if the sleepwalker was really aware. Richard Morgan asks us to consider if a person could rewind and wipe a section of experience and decisions, restore themselves to an earlier state, then can we hold that person to justice for the actions that took place in the wiped section of experience? Can the restored person in any way be said to be guilty of the crimes another version of that person carried out?

This theme of restoring a previous version is investigated further. If a person is defined by their experiences and decisions, and can be transferred between physical bodies, then what if a previous version, lacking certain critical experiences, were restored? Unlike the two Takeshi's before - are an early Takeshi and a more... mature Takeshi the same person? Could it be that two different instances of the same person, one lacking some later experiences, would be in direct conflict, would in fact hate each other. This goes both ways - would an early me hate the person I have become? Would I now, if I met an early me, hate what I was?

Obviously we also get to explore notions of person outside of body, or placed in a body that has physiology that affects decisions and performance. Both as attempts to induce weakness and strength - does strength of personal identity override physiology? How do the two interact, and affect each other?

Other fun things we get to ponder, if a personal identity is restored in a damaged state, can the resulting person be said to be a continuation of the previous person? Should we pay that new person the respect and/or hatred that is due the previous person? Also - if there is something killing people but saving their personalities, is that murder? Does our view of the morality of the event change from murder to storage?

Another approach to this is seen in Richard Morgan's Black Man - here we have personality driven by genes. In this case the question is whether the person is a slave to his genetic makeup. If we say a dog acts as a dog, because 'it' is in a dogs body, then is a man with a certain genetic predisposition really responsible for all his actions? Interestingly this book was named Thirteen in the US.

References
John Locke at Wikipedia
An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume 1 by John Locke at Project Gutenberg. (It is CHAPTER XXVII. OF IDENTITY AND DIVERSITY. which I just finished reading.)