What happens when a person has a brain injury causing retrograde amnesia, or dementia, or Alzheimer’s disease and forget the details of their lives? Are those forgotten aspects of their identity just gone? Or can they live on through their loved ones? What happens when we die and lose all possible sense of self? Is it like we never existed in the first place?
Every person who knows you has a concept of you in their minds.
Yes, of course.
This is a part of your identity
I don’t agree with calling that concept “identity”. Others “concept of you” is just that, their idea of you. That does not define you, in any way.
It’s why people are negatively affected when others misgender them.
Actually, I think this bolsters my point, not yours. The whole reason being misgendered is a negative experience is because that person’s “concept of you” is wrong. They see you that way, but that is not the way you are. Your identity comes from you, and you alone.
In the end, it’s obvious we have different definitions of “identity” and that’s what our disagreement is rooted in. I define identity as the sum of what comprises one’s sense of self.
chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world 2 days ago
damnedfurry@lemmy.world 2 days ago
You can indeed become a completely different person when afflicted with Alzheimer’s, dementia, or a brain tumor. It doesn’t retroactively change who you were before, of course…but it can absolutely fundamentally change you.
I know this first-hand.
I never asserted that identity is immutable, nor that only that it is not defined by outside perception of other people.
chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Right but part of identity is our relationships to other people. If I get Alzheimer’s disease and forget who my mother is, she’s still my mother even though I no longer remember her.
damnedfurry@lemmy.world 2 days ago
part of identity is our relationships to other people.
I wouldn’t agree, simply because I consider relationships as existing between people, not within them individually, and more as ‘facts of the matter’, as opposed to immutable aspects of individuals themselves. But again, this is simply a disagreement on the definition of “identity”. I’m not saying your definition is wrong, but it obviously is different.
A familial connection is a fact about someone’s lineage, but it is no more a part of someone’s identity than to the extent that that individual chooses to make it so. If I was adopted and have never met the woman who birthed me, then yes, she’s still my mother even though I never knew her. But that being a fact has no inherent relationship to my identity. The same is true if I was raised by my birth mother but am now estranged, and she has no part of/in my life—she’ll always literally be my mother, but in this case, her existence is no part of my identity any longer.
Nonconsensual trauma that alters one’s sense of self against one’s will is the only thing that muddies this water at all, I think, but even in a case like that, it is only from within that whatever degree (whether zero or nonzero) those events shape one’s identity, can change.
dvoraqs@lemmy.world 2 days ago
I think you’re being too strict with your definition of an identity because it is not just one thing. Identities are multi-faceted and fluid. I think that you ignore an important part of the picture when you ignore perceptions of you as part of your identity. They add to a conceptual cloud that around you that is you and how you come across to others. I rather like to avoid oversimplification which I feel you are falling for, although I still do believe that one’s own identity is most important of those and ought to be respected by others.
Have you seen the Clayton Biggsby sketch on the Chappelle show with the blind black white supremacist? He had no knowledge of being black, but I think most people would still argue that it formed a major part of his identity regardless of his own concept of himself.
To nuance your previous point, being misgendered is a negative experience because that person’s “concept of you” does not agree with yours, becoming a point of conflict between you two and even inside yourself, not necessarily because they are wrong (although you are free to have that opinion). Sometimes people close to you will know you better than you know yourself.
damnedfurry@lemmy.world 1 day ago
But I’d argue that allowing those perceptions to shape your identity, to any extent, is equivalent to forfeiting part of who you are to them, and allowing others to define you. That seems really unhealthy to me.
I have, and yeah, I guess I just don’t see it that way. His identity ironically clashed with his biology, but it doesn’t make sense to me that an aspect of yourself you have literally no knowledge of can be considering part of your “identity”.
Maybe I just see the concept of “identity” as borne of, and residing fully in, one’s own consciousness.