how blockchain technology is reshaping personal identity
TRANSCRIPT
December 18, 2014
Slides: http://slideshare.net/LaBlogga
The Future of Personal Identity:
A Multidisciplinary Inquiry
Melanie Swan
December 18, 2014
Personal Identity
What is Personal Identity?
Intuitively appealing views
Persistence, continuity of memory, what it is
like to be you over time
1. Immaterial souls, pure egos (religion)
2. Psychological continuity (Locke) Overlapping chains of direct psychological
connections between beliefs, desires,
intentions, experiential memories, character
traits, and actions
3. Our bodies
Brute physical relation with the environment
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December 18, 2014
Personal Identity
Hypothesis
If the evolutionary biological drivers that caused personal
identity to develop as a fitness adaptation were to
change, the need for personal identity too would change
and perhaps disappear
Main evolutionary biological and cultural drivers:
Resource acquisition, status garnering, mate selection, group
acceptance, gender roles (Hrdy)
Absent these drivers, how would the adaptation benefit
conferred by personal identity change?
Examples of shifts in social goals and outcomes
Worldwide birth rate declines
Below replacement population declines (Japan, Italy)
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Personal Identity
Personal Identity: Multidisciplinary Question
3
Philosophy of Mind Psychology
Evolutionary Biology
Evolutionary Psychology
Philosophy of Biology
Theoretical Biology
Social Theory
Sociology
SociobiologyBiology
December 18, 2014
Personal Identity
Philosophical Views of Personal Identity
Traditional ‘philosophy of mind’ view
Assumes already-existing subject
Personal identity needed for continuity
and persistence
Personal identity is not required for
the survival of the person, relational
experience between past/future
selves and experience is (Parfit)
fMRI studies: We procrastinate because
we think of our future selves as strangers
Third persons no different than politicians
or celebrities
4
http://nautil.us/issue/9/time/why-we-procrastinate citing van Gelder JL, Hershfield HE, Nordgren LF. (2013). Vividness of
the future self predicts delinquency. Psychol Sci. 24(6):974-80, and Pronin, Emily. (2008). How we see ourselves and
how we see others. Science. 320(5880):1177-80.
December 18, 2014
Personal Identity
Philosophical Views of Personal Identity
Self is a flux of unconnected perceptions
(Hume, 1739)
Self as a constantly re-written, re-
interpretable text, written in difference to the
local relational context (Derrida)
Subjectivation is the important locus,
facilitated by the movement-image and the
time-image (Deleuze)
Individuation as a dynamic world process of
which the subject is an effect not a cause;
living beings exist on a capacity spectrum
for individuation (Simondon)
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Personal Identity
Literary View
6Proust, In Search of Lost Time, Within a Budding Grove, Seascape, with Frieze of Girls
Philosophical Issue:
Group, Individual, Particular
Proust, Albertine, the
‘little band’ of girls at Balbec
“…when I saw the little band again on the beach, and indeed long
afterwards when I knew all the girls who composed it, I could never be
absolutely certain that any of them — even she who among them all
was most like her, the girl with the bicycle — was indeed the one that I
had seen that evening , a girl who differed hardly at all, but was still just
perceptibly different from her whom I had noticed in the procession”
December 18, 2014
Personal Identity
Biology Basics: Why do Individuals Exist?
Classical Biological View: Kin Selection
Kin selection is the evolutionary strategy
that favors the reproductive success of an
organism's relatives, even at a cost to the
organism's own survival and reproduction
(Darwin, 1859)
Individuals are a mechanism for kin
selection; individuals are able to identify
their relatives (kin recognition); extended
labor force (Hamilton, 1964)
Evidence: red squirrel mothers adopted
related orphaned squirrel pups but not
unrelated orphans (2010)
7Gorrell JC et al. (2010). Adopting kin enhances inclusive fitness in asocial red squirrels. Nature Communications 1 (22): 1.
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Personal Identity
Biology: Individuals are not a Privileged Unit
What are the appropriate units in
biology?
Organisms do not play a privileged role
Genes, genomes, mechanisms,
phenotypes, gene pools
Individual is merely convenient
terminology
Individuals are spatiotemporally localized
entities that have reasonably sharp
beginnings and endings in time
8Hull, David (1980), "Individuality and Selection," Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 11: 311-332.
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Personal Identity
Biological View: Distinguishing Individuals
9
Wasps wired to distinguish
each other’s faces
Wasps identified colony
facial images faster and
more accurately than other
types of images (2011)
Wasps developed better
vision to identify others’ rank
and possibly allegiance
(fighting queens within
colonies); scent only
identifies the nest mate level
MJ Sheehan, EA Tibbetts. (2011). Specialized face learning is associated with individual recognition in paper wasps.
Science 334 (6060), 1272-1275. http://www.livescience.com/17259-paper-wasps-facial-recognition.html
December 18, 2014
Personal Identity
Biological View: Dolphin ‘Identities’
Dolphins have a unique name
in the form of a whistle
Dolphins responded when they
heard the sound of their own
signature whistle, repeating
that whistle back in a way that
seems to say, "Yes, I'm here -
did you call me?"
Bottlenose dolphins can follow
"recipes" in preparing mollusks,
help other species in distress,
and possibly do math
10Friedman, W. (2013). PNAS. Jul 23, 2013. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/07/130722-dolphins-whistle-
names-identity-animals-science/
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Personal Identity
Theoretical Biological View:
Groups and Individuals
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Theoretical biology perspective of sociality
“He who understands the baboon would do more towards
metaphysics than Locke” (Darwin 1838)
Evolved biological individuals (not personal identity)
Revisionary view of individuality, adequate definition
Kin selection is insufficient to capture what is common
to all forms of groups evolving into individuals
A theory of evolving individuality requires a
sophisticated variety of concepts that
advocates some form of self-organization that supplements
natural selection, and
accounts for the most complex forms of individuality
From Groups to Individuals: Evolution and Emerging Individuality. Eds. Frédéric Bouchard and Philippe Huneman.
2013. http://www.livescience.com/17259-paper-wasps-facial-recognition.html
December 18, 2014
Personal Identity
Psychological View: Personal Identity is…
A person's conception and expression of
self-identity including with regard to
others' individuality or group affiliations
(Wikipedia; Psychology/Sociology)
The concept you develop about yourself
that evolves over the course of your life
(Education-Portal: Sociology)
Self-knowledge that derives from the
individual’s unique attributes (U Twente)
The distinct personality of an individual;
characteristics by which a person is
recognized or known (IEP)
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December 18, 2014
Personal Identity
Psychological View: Social Identity Theory
Multiple ‘levels of self’
A person has not one, personal self, but
rather several selves that correspond to
widening circles of group membership
Different social contexts may trigger an
individual to think, feel and act on basis of
his personal, family or national ‘level of
self’ (Turner et al, 1987)
Ecological Systems Theory
(Bronfenbrenner)
Multiple social identities
Self-concept derived from perceived
membership in social groups (Hogg &
Vaughan, 2002)
13http://www.utwente.nl/cw/theorieenoverzicht/theory%20clusters/interpersonal%20communication%20and%20relations/s
ocial_identity_theory/; Urie Bronfenbrenner & Ecological Systems Theory
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Personal Identity
Social Theory
Identity Politics
Political attitudes regarding the
concerns of social groups based on
identifications such as gender, race,
ethnicity, and sexual orientation
Anti-identity movement, text
without author
“Do not ask who I am and do not ask
me to remain the same, leave it to our
bureaucrats and our police to see that
our papers are in order” – Foucault,
1982
14Foucault, Michel. (1982). The Archaeology of Knowledge. Vintage Books: New York, NY. Page 17.
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Personal Identity
Evolutionary Biology View
Adaptation/fitness benefit conferred
Co-evolution of culture and personal
identity
Drivers of identity and social behavior:
Resource acquisition, status garnering, mate
selection, group acceptance, gender roles
“Apart from economic payoffs, social
status, seems to be the most important
incentive and motivating force of social
behavior” - John Harsanyi, Nobel
Laureate economist
15http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-psychology-of-social/
December 18, 2014
Personal Identity
What about the Future?
16
Major Computing Paradigms (One per Decade)
The connected world includes Bitcoin/blockchain technology as the economic overlay to
what is increasingly becoming a seamlessly connected world of multi-device computing
including wearables, Internet-of-Things (IOT) sensors, smartphones, tablets, laptops,
Quantified Self-Tracking devices (i.e.; Fitbit), smarthome, smartcar, and smartcity.
December 18, 2014
Personal Identity
Blockchain Technology View
Lessig: “Code is Law”
Legal regimes: technically-binding vs. legally-binding
Constructs of identity
Social (forgive-forget, redemption, reinvention, memory=imperfect)
Technological (on-demand memory of all artifacts forever)
Fourth-person perspective: connected world’s continuous witnessing
(QS gadgetry, IRC, Facebook, Gorgon Stare)
Identity: something intrinsic or 3rd party-bestowed?
17Antonopoulos, AM and Ellis, C. (2014). Let’s Talk Bitcoin #160: The Philosophy of Identity.
December 18, 2014
Personal Identity
Blockchain AI
Blockchain
Decentralized trustless transaction
system in the form of an encrypted
permanent public ledger
A system of checks and balances
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Terasem Movement Digital Mindfile Services: CyBeRev, Lifenaut
Possibility of enforcing
Friendly AI
Digital Intelligence
Confirm reality
environment
December 18, 2014
Personal Identity
Multidisciplinary Conclusion: Personal
Identity is Ephemeral and Constructive
Hypothesis is supported by these four fields
If the evolutionary biological drivers that caused personal
identity to develop as a fitness adaptation were to change, the
need for personal identity too would change/disappear
Biology
Individuality is not personal identity
Psychology/Sociology
Malleability of self
Philosophy
Relationality and subjectivation
Evolutionary Biology
Fitness adaptation
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December 18, 2014
Slides: http://slideshare.net/LaBlogga
THANK YOU
Personal Identity:
A Multidisciplinary InquiryMelanie Swan