What is Personhood and Identity Who is still the same

I have approached this question from a Neuroscience perspective, to understand on what is personhood and identity. According to Wagner et al., main criteria for personhood are rationality, conscious mental states and intentionality, capacity for verbal communication and self-consciousness. Figure 4 shows the anatomy of human brain, from which we can evidently see that frontal lobe and temporal lobe are connected with reasoning, memory, speaking, understanding language, thinking initiation and behavior. These lobes are critical for the existence of one’s own identity.

Hypothetically, if we can swap one’s brain with another, they will retain their old memory and thinking and hence will not be able to recognize their newfound body.

According to Wagner et al., personal identity relates to different psychological relations between mental states and events like the associations involved in memory. The authors call this as “psychological connectedness”, but just this will not help with personal identity. In simple terms, identity means the state of being the same.

They cite an example where if an old man is able to recall what happened during his middle years but could not recall his childhood years, then the person is not identical to the child anymore, i.e. the person is not able to relate to his self completely. It is this concept of self, where a person’s identity lies. According to the American Heritage dictionary, identity is the set of characteristics by which a person is ultimately known, and it is “one’s consciousness of one’s own being or identity”.

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There are definite set of individualities a person has, which defines that person and if those traits are changed, then the person would be a considerably different person.

Based on these definitions, after the procedures have been completed, Ethan is still Ethan, because his brain is still intact. Personhood and identity are related to character, memory, reasoning and consciousness and as Ethan still has his brain in a robotic body, he is still the same person and his behavior and reasoning will continue to be same as earlier. Even if Ethan had his whole body replaced in a single procedure, rather than multiple, with a robotic one, still he would continue to be Ethan and would not have lost his personhood nor identity. However, how will he behave with his whole self in a different body is a different question. It is my assumption that person with the same brain, will continue to behave as the same person, though there is no proof from any research.

Sofia on the other hand, has her entire brain replaced, retaining the same body. Therefore, she is not the same person as before. Brain holds one’s memory and once she lost it, she is not the same person. She will not have any memories of her past and will not be able to identify herself as the same person. As part of the procedures, she had her frontal and temporal lobes replaced first, which carry the core functionalities of memory, reasoning and consciousness. Thus, she lost her personhood and identity on the initial stages of the procedure, when both frontal and parietal lobes were substituted. Though, the contents of her brain were scanned and included with each replacement, she might retain her memory, but we cannot be sure that her behavior and reasoning will still be the same as before with an artificial brain. Therefore, Sofia could be a clone or an instance of herself, but not the same person as before. Even if Sofia’s brain had been replaced at once, instead of phases, she would have ceased to be the same person.

For Akhila, she had all the procedures that both Ethan and Sofia had. Therefore, she does not have anything biological left from her original body or brain. Thus, she ceases to be Akhila anymore, for the same reasoning as defined for Sofia. The order of procedures will be important to determine at which point of time she lost her personhood and identity. Assuming, she had all procedures of Ethan first, followed by procedures on her brain, Akhila lost her identity when her frontal and temporal lobes were replaced. In other words, she would have had same identity, until her brain was replaced. Even if an entire copy of Akhila was built back from a backup, she will still not behave and reason the same as before.