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Who am I? We all ask this question, and many people like it. Is my personality determined by my DNA or am I a product of how I grew up? Can I change myself, and if so, how much? Is my identity one thing or can I have more than one? From the very beginning, philosophy has dealt with these issues, which refer to how we make choices and how we interact with the world around us. Socrates believed that self-understanding is necessary in order to know how to live in general and how to live well with oneself and with others. Self-determination depends on self-knowledge, on the knowledge of others and the world around us. Even forms of government are based on how we understand ourselves and human nature. So the question "Who am I?" has far-reaching implications.
Many philosophers, at least in the West, have sought to define the immutable conditions of identity. A widespread approach is known as the view of the psychological continuity of the personality, when the personality is consciousness with self-awareness and personal memories. Sometimes these approaches present the "I" as a combination of mind and body, as Rene Descartes understood it, or as the primary or only consciousness. John Locke's thought experiment "The Prince and the Pauper", in which the prince's consciousness and all his memories are transferred into the body of a shoemaker, illustrates the idea that personality is associated with consciousness. Philosophers have further developed numerous thought experiments involving personality transference, brain splitting, and teleportation to explore the psychological approach. Modern philosophers from the "animalist" camp are critical of the psychological approach and argue that "selves" are, in fact, human biological organisms. (Aristotle may also be closer to this approach than to a purely psychological one.) Both the psychological and animalistic approaches are "container" frames, postulating the body as a receptacle for psychological functions or a limited arrangement of bodily functions.
All of these approaches reflect the desire of philosophers to focus on what is the distinguishing or defining characteristic of the person as a thing that will distinguish itself and identify itself as "I", regardless of their particular differences. From a psychological point of view, "I" is personal consciousness. From the point of view of animalists, "I" or "self" is a human organism or an animal. This tends to lead to a somewhat one-dimensional and simplistic view of what “I” is, disregarding the social, cultural and interpersonal traits that are also characteristic of the “I” and are often central to self-identification. Just as different selves have different personal memories and identities, they can have different social and interpersonal relationships, cultural backgrounds, and personalities.
Recognizing the influence of these factors, some philosophers opposed such simplistic approaches and proposed for discussion a principle that recognizes the complexity and multidimensionality of people. The networked self emerges from this trend. Since the end of the 20th century, philosophers have moved towards a broader understanding of the self. Several philosophers offer narrative and anthropological approaches to understanding the self. Communitarian and feminist philosophers advocate a relational view that recognizes the social, interconnectedness, and intersection of human selves. According to relational views, social relationships and identity are fundamental to understanding personality.
Social identity is a personality trait that arises on the basis of membership in communities (local, professional, ethnic, religious, political), due to attribution to certain social categories (such as race, gender, class, political affiliation) or due to the role in interpersonal relations (for example, spouse, brother or sister, parent, friend, neighbor). This implies that not only the embodiment and not only the memory or consciousness of social relationships, but the relationships themselves also matter for who the self is. The so-called "4E concept" - for embodied, embedded, enactive, and extended cognition - is also a pivot to a more relational, less containerized view of the self. Relational views signal a paradigm shift from reductionism to approaches that recognize personality complexity. The networked view of the self develops this line of thinking and argues that personality is made up of not only social but also physical, genetic, psychological, emotional, and biological relationships that together form the networked self. The “I” also changes over time, gaining and losing features due to new social places and relationships, even if it remains “the same” “I”.
How do you identify yourself? You probably have many aspects of your self-image and will resist being reduced to stereotypes. But you can still identify yourself in terms of your background, ethnicity, race, and religion: identities that often play an important role in identity politics. You can identify yourself in terms of other social and personal relationships and characteristics: "I am Sister Mary." "I am a music lover". "I'm Emily's Supervisor." "I'm from Chicago." Or you can define the characteristics of a person: "I am an extrovert"; or commitment: "I care about the environment." "I'm honest." You could call yourself comparatively: “I am the tallest person in my family”; or in terms of political opinion or affiliation: "I am independent"; or in terms of time: “I'm the person who lived down the hallway from you in college,” “I'm getting married next year.” Some are more important than others, some are fleeting. The point is, who you are is more complex than any of your identities. Thinking of yourself as a network is a way to make sense of this complexity and volatility.
Let's take a specific example. Consider Lindsey: She is a spouse, mother, writer, English-speaking, Irish Catholic, feminist, philosophy professor, car driver, psychobiological organism, introvert, fearful of heights, left-handed, carrier of Huntington's disease, New Yorker. It is not an exhaustive set, just a set of traits or identities. The various traits connect to each other to form a network of interrelated traits. Thus, Lindsay is an inclusive network. The general character - the integrity of the self - is determined by the unique relationship of its specific kinship traits, psychobiological, social, political, cultural, linguistic and physical (see Fig. 1).
Rice. 1 is based on an ecological network modeling approach; nodes represent features, and lines represent relationships between features (without specifying the link type).
We immediately notice the complex relationship between Lindsay's characteristics. We can also see that some traits appear to be grouped, that is, associated more with some traits than others. Just as the body is a very complex organized network of organismic and molecular systems, the self is a highly organized network. Personality traits can be organized into clusters (nodes) such as body cluster, family cluster, social cluster. There may be other groups, but it is enough to limit ourselves to a few to illustrate the idea of clustering (see Fig. 2).
Rice. 2. A highly organized network of "I" consists of various personality traits, which are organized into clusters.
Figures 1 and 2 are simplified representations of the bodily, personal, and social relationships that make up the self. Traits can be closely grouped, but they also overlap and intertwine with traits in other clusters. For example, the genetic trait “carrier of Huntington's disease” (HD in Figures 1 and 2) is associated with biological, familial, and social traits. If the carrier's status is known, there are also psychological and social relationships with other carriers, as well as with the family and medical communities. Clusters, or subnets, are not isolated or closed complexes and can regroup as they develop.
Some traits may dominate other traits. Being a spouse can make a big difference to Lindsay, while being an aunt is not so important. Some features may be more prominent in some contexts than others. In the eyes of her neighbors, it's more important for Lindsay to be a parent than a philosopher, while at university the latter is more important.
Lindsay can gain a holistic experience of her multifaceted, interconnected network identity. However, her experience can be fragmented, for example when others accept one of her identities as defining her entire personality. Suppose, in the context of employment, she is not promoted, receives a lower salary, or is not considered for a job because of her gender. Discrimination is when identity (race, gender, ethnicity) becomes the way that someone is identified by others and therefore can perceive themselves in a reduced or alienated way. This is arbitrary or unfair selection of a character trait out of context.
Lindsay may feel conflict or tension between her identities. She may not want to be reduced to a single identity or even a stereotypical characteristic. She may feel the need to suppress or hide some of her identity, as well as associated feelings and beliefs. She may feel that some of them are not important to who she really is. But even if some of them are less important than others, and some have a lot to do with who she is and how she identifies herself, they are all still associated with Lindsay.
Figures 1 and 2 above show Lindsay's network self over time, say, from early to middle age. What about the volatility and mobility of the personality? What about other stages in Lindsay's life? Lindsay, 5, is neither a spouse nor a mother, and Lindsay's future stages of life may include different traits and relationships: she may divorce, change careers, or undergo a transformation of gender identity. The network self is also a process.
At first it seems strange to think of yourself as a process. You might think that processes are just a series of events, and you imagine yourself to be more. Maybe you think of yourself as an entity that is independent of relationships, in the process of changing which some permanent and unchanging core that forms it is not affected. If so, you will be in good company. Philosophy has a long history dating back to Aristotle, who argued the difference between substance and its properties, between substance and relations, and between essences and events.
However, the idea that "I" is a network and a process is more plausible than you might think. Entities such as the body are systems of networks that are in constant process, even when we do not see it at the macro level: cells are replaced, hair and nails grow, food is digested, cellular and molecular processes continue as long as the body is alive. Consciousness, its flow is in constant motion. Psychological dispositions or attitudes can vary in expression and manifestation. They are not fixed and unchanging, even if they are to some extent well-established aspects of the personality.
Social traits evolve. For example, Lindsay-as-a-daughter is evolving and changing. Lindsay the mother is connected not only with her current character traits, but also with her own past, with the way she lived her life as a daughter. Many past experiences and relationships have shaped her current life. New beliefs and attitudes can be acquired and old ones revised. There is also consistency, as not all traits change at the same rate, and some may not change at all. But the temporary mobility of the "I" means that the "I" as a whole at any moment is the cumulative result of what it was and how it is projected forward.
Instead of the underlying immutable substance, which gains and loses properties, we change the paradigm and view the “I” as a process, as an aggregate network with a changeable integrity. The cumulative network is structured and organized like many natural processes, whether we think about biological development, physical or social processes. Think of this consistency and structure as the stages of superimposing "I" on top of each other or juxtaposing with one another. For Lindsay, being a sibling overlaps with the time period from Lindsay's six-year-old until the death of her brother or sister. Being a spouse coincides with the period from 30-year-old Lindsay to the end of marriage. Moreover, even if her brother or sister dies or her marriage collapses, the brother and sister will still remain traits of Lindsay '
If a person is her story, does that mean she cannot change much? What about someone who wants to free themselves from their past or current circumstances? Anyone who emigrates or flees family and friends to start a new life, or undergoes a radical transformation, never ceases to be who he was. Indeed, the experiences of change belong to this “I”, to the one who changes, transforms, emigrates. Likewise, imagine experiencing regret or denial. You did what you now regret that you will never do again, which you thought was an expression of yourself when you were so different from who you are now. However, regret only makes sense if you are someone who has acted in some way in the past. When you regret, deny and apologize, you acknowledge that the changed “I” is a continuation of your past and owns it as the author of the deed.
Transformation can happen or it can be chosen. The choice can be positive or negative. It can be both liberation and weakening. For example, Lindsay undergoes a gender transformation and becomes Paul. Paul never ceases to be Lindsay, a person who has experienced a mismatch between assigned gender and his own sense of identity, although Paul might have preferred his story as Lindsay to be his non-public dimension. The cumulative network, now known as Paul, still retains many of the traits - biological, genetic, familial, social, psychological - of its previous configuration as Lindsay, and is shaped by the history of being Lindsay. Or consider an immigrant. She never ceases to be one whose history includes living and citizenship of another country.
The network "I" is changeable, but continuous, as it overlaps the new phase of "I". Some character traits become relevant in a new way. Some may cease to be relevant in the present, while remaining part of their own history. There is no prescribed path for the "I". “I” is an aggregate network because its history persists even if there are many aspects of its history that the “I” subsequently rejects, or even if the way its story relates to the case changes. Recognizing that “I” is an aggregate network allows us to explain why a radical transformation concerns the same “I” and not a different “I”.
Now imagine a transformation that is not selected, but is happening to someone: for example, a parent with Alzheimer's disease. He or she is still a parent, citizen, spouse, former professor. He or she is still their story; still the kind of person undergoing debilitating changes. The same can be said for a person undergoing drastic physical changes, such as the actor Christopher Reeve, who suffered paralysis of the lower limbs after an accident, or the physicist Stephen Hawking, whose abilities were severely impaired by ALS (motor neuron disease). Everyone was still a parent, citizen, spouse, actor, scientist, and former athlete. A parent with dementia experiences memory loss, impairment of psychological and cognitive abilities, and a decrease in part of their network. A person with quadriplegia (paralysis of the limbs) or ALS experiences a loss of motor ability and physical impairment. Each of these changes undoubtedly leads to a deformation of social traits and depends on support from other people associated with our personality.
It is sometimes said that a person with dementia who no longer recognizes himself or others is actually not the person he was, or maybe not even a person at all. This reflects an appeal to the psychological point of view, according to which people are identified with consciousness. But seeing the self as a network requires a different perspective. The integrity of the personality is broader than personal memory and consciousness. The diminished self may still have many of its features, but the history of that self can only be partially constituted.
A poignant story by Canadian bioethics specialist Françoise Baileys in "Still Gloria: Personal Identity and Dementia" (2017) on her mother's Alzheimer's disease reflects this view. By visiting her mother, Baileys helps maintain the integrity of Gloria's personality, even when Gloria can no longer do it herself. But she still remains herself. Does this mean that self-knowledge doesn't matter? Of course not. Gloria's regression is a contraction of her “I” and one of the versions of what happens to varying degrees with any aging “I” experiencing a weakening of abilities. And here is a lesson for anyone: none of us is completely transparent to ourselves. The idea is not new: Plato long before Freud recognized that there are unconscious desires and that self-knowledge is not an easy and temporary achievement. The process of introspection and self-knowledge continues throughout life, because we do not have fixed and unchanging identities:
This means that others also do not know us perfectly. When people try to fix someone's identity as a specific characteristic, it can lead to misunderstandings, stereotypes and discrimination. Our polarized rhetoric seems to do just that - restricting people to narrow categories: white, black, Christian, Muslim, conservative, progressive. But "I" is much more complex and richer. Seeing ourselves as a web is a fruitful way to understand our complexity. Perhaps it will even help break down the rigid and limiting stereotypes that dominate current cultural and political discourse and promote more productive communication. We may not fully understand ourselves or others, but our identities and points of view often coincide. Instead of looking at our multiple identities as separating us from each other, we should see it as a basis for communication and understanding, even if this understanding is partial. <...> Sometimes communication is difficult, for example, when some identities are ideologically rejected or seem so different that communication cannot get off the ground. But the multiple identities of the network self create the basis for the ability to find common ground.
How else can the networked self contribute to solving life's problems? One of the most important factors contributing to our well-being is the feeling that we are in control of our lives and in control of ourselves. You may worry that the plurality of the network self is determined by other factors and cannot be self-determined. One might think that freedom and self-determination starts with a blank slate, with a personality that has no characteristics, social relationships, preferences or abilities that could predetermine it. But such a self would not have enough resources to give itself direction. Such a creature will be exposed to the blows of external forces, not realizing its own capabilities and its own choice. This would be an accident, not a self-determination. On the contrary, instead of limiting the personality, the network approach views multiple identities as resources for a person who actively sets their own direction and makes choices for themselves. Lindsay may temporarily choose a career over motherhood, she may commit herself to finishing her novel, her philosophical work aside. Nothing the network self from freely choosing prevents directions or creating new ones. Self-determination expresses the self and is based on self-knowledge.
The networked view of personality implies enrichment of the self, offering many opportunities for self-determination, rather than prescribing a specific way in which the self should self-determine. This does not mean that a person has no responsibility to others and for others. Some responsibilities can be inherited, but many are chosen. It is part of the fabric of living with others. "I" are not only "networked", that is, in social networks, but are themselves networks. By embracing the complexity and volatility of ourselves, we come to a better understanding of who we are and how to live in harmony with ourselves and with each other.
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