Lunch & Learners Question Their Reality

Are you the same person today as you were yesterday?

Dr. Timothy Eves, Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Bridgeport, posed this question at a recent Lunch & Learn seminar hosted by the College of Science and Society.  Attendees arrived at the Whalstrom Library’s Discovery Pavilion to get some complementary pizza and soda, settle into some comfy chairs, and listen to Dr. Eves’s presentation.  When they arrived, they assumed that they were the same people that they had been 24 hours earlier.  As Dr. Eves talked them through a series of philosophical problems, however, they may have started to feel less sure. 

Dr. Eves based his remarks on a chapter from his recently published Philosophy textbook, provocatively titled Who Am I?: An Introduction to Philosophy.  Rather than a traditional textbook, Who Am I? is a series of imaginative stories about a college Philosophy class that is a cross between The Magic School Bus and a Philip K. Dick novel.  The class is taught by the mischievous Dr. Sapienti, who conducts her students - including Phil, Sophia, and Jordan Lerner – through a series of mind-bending scenarios that function to disrupt their conventional attitudes about identity, ethics, and reality itself.  Occasionally, Dr. Sapienti’s students will be asked to put on their “experience machines,” neuro-interactive helmets that simulate surreal and occasionally grotesque “experiences” that the class can then go on to discuss (even if the students might never be sure when or if they have actually taken off their experience machines). 

Dr. Eves did not supply experience machines for his audience at the Lunch & Learn, but his narrative about the events taking place in Dr. Sapienti’s philosophy class served a similar function, allowing attendees to imaginatively share virtual experiences that illustrated philosophical conundrums, some dating back to antiquity and others of Dr. Eves’s own invention.  If a boat has been rebuilt plank by plank until all the parts have been replaced, is it still the same boat?  When a person teleports through the universe, are they still the same person when they are reassembled at the other terminal?  If a person gets a brain transplant, are they themselves or the brain donor?     

Throughout the talk, attendees may have found their own confidence in the continuity of their selfhood to be shaken.  The cells that make up their bodies are continually being replaced, the atoms that make up their cells are continually circulating through the cosmos, the subparticles that make up their atoms are continually blipping in and out of existence, the memories that make up their sense of self are continually being revised and reconstituted.  Even the concept of “sameness” itself seemed to become more difficult to believe in over the course of the talk. 

By the time Dr. Eves concluded his remarks, attendees might have found themselves exiting the Discovery Pavillion wondering if they were the same person they were 45 minutes ago, let alone 24 hours.  They were confused and unsettled, but they were also full of pizza and interesting things to think about, and they were grateful to Dr. Eves for taking them on a wild intellectual journey.

CSS Lunch & Learns are scheduled throughout the Fall semester.  Mark your calendars, come get some free pizza, and maybe have your consciousness radically disrupted.