> If you could switch personality at will, would that make you a non-person?
Yes, just like the ability to switch bodies at will would make me a non-human. Being bound to a human body is part of what makes me a human.
Yes, just like the ability to switch bodies at will would make me a non-human. Being bound to a human body is part of what makes me a human.
I'm confused. Also, the original article talks a lot about how we can be convinced by actors that they are indeed a totally different person. You might say that actors can change their personality at will to suit their role. Are actors non-people?
Schizophrenics are multiple people inhabiting one body. The pithiest way I know of describing it is a line from a Pink Floyd song: "There's someone in my head but it's not me."
> Are actors non-people?
I don't know many actors so I can't really say. I like to think that underneath the pretense there is a "real person" but I don't actually know. I have heard tell of method actors who get so deeply into their roles that they are actually able to extinguish any real person who might interfere with their work. But this is far, far outside my area of expertise.
(Source: I am not a mental health professional, but I did spend some time interviewing and hanging out with schizophrenics, both under treatment and not, as part of a documentary film I made about homeless people about 15 years ago. https://graceofgodmovie.com/ )
My understanding is that the hallucinations experienced by schizophrenics do not rise to the level of being a "personality". Yes, for the person experiencing the hallucination, the source appears to be an "other". But the other in this case is usually single-minded and not a fully-formed personality.
OTOH, I certainly do not discount the possibility that for some schizophrenics this is not the case.
Rereading your comment again just now I think we agree more than we disagree and this probably comes down to semantics. : - )
https://www.livescience.com/55379-schizophrenia-multiple-per...
That's a fair point. I think some of my subjects reported being able to have conversations with the other, but this was a long time ago so I could be mis-remembering. But I still have the interview recordings if anyone really wants to dig into this.
I want you to pick one color of grey and tell me why everything lighter than that has personhood, and everything darker does not?
This is the philosophical nature of the argument that we all have occurring now. Two very well informed experts won't even pick the same spot on the gradient. Some people will never pick anything that's not pure white (humanity), others will pick positions very close to pure black. Hell, there may not even be any right answer. But, I do believe there are a vast number of wrong answers that will deeply affect or society for a long period of time due to the things we end up creating with reckless abandon.