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#9 Amy Kind: Biometrics and the Metaphysics of Personal Identity
44 Plays1 month ago
Amy Kind is the Russell K. Pitzer Professor of Philosophy at Claremont McKenna College, as well as the Director of the Gould Center for Humanistic Studies. She is a leading philosopher in the philosophy of mind, with a focus on imagination and consciousness. Her books include Imagination and Creative Thinking and Persons and Personal Identity. Today, we’ll explore her recent article, Biometrics and the Metaphysics of Personal Identity.
Some of the topics we discuss are the metaphysics of personal identity and the question of whether biometric technology actually tracks personal identity. We hope you enjoy the conversation as much as we did.
For more info on the show, please visit ethicscircle.org.
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Transcript
Do loose words lead to loose thinking?
00:00:01
Speaker
So on the one hand, it's like, look, if it's just a very loose way of talking and we all know that it's a very loose way of talking, it's fine. I mean, when we're outside of the philosophy classroom or we're outside of a philosophy podcast, are loose ways of talking okay?
00:00:16
Speaker
Maybe, but I think the worry is that sometimes, and I wish I had a good example of him, but I think sometimes loose ways of talking sort of seduce us into loose ways of thinking and into making mistaken conceptual claims.
Imagination and Consciousness
00:00:46
Speaker
All right, welcome to today's episode. We're thrilled to have Dr. Amy Kind with us, professor of philosophy at Claremont McKenna College. Amy is a leading philosopher in the philosophy of mind with a focus on imagination and consciousness. Her books include imagination and creative thinking, as well as persons and personal identity. Today, we're going to explore her recent article, biometrics and the metaphysics of personal identity. identity So thanks so much for joining us today, Amy. Happy to be here.
00:01:14
Speaker
Great. Yeah, so to start, you know, for those less familiar with your work, can you kind of give us an overview of some of the key questions and ideas you've explored in your journal articles and books, um maybe particularly in the context of philosophy, mind and imagination?
00:01:29
Speaker
Sure, I'm happy to. So um I've done a lot of work over the years on imagination, um trying to understand what imagination is and the role that it plays in our mental life. And so lots of people think of imagination as fanciful. um It's something we do as kids. It's escapist.
00:01:50
Speaker
And in recent years, I've been trying to think about ways in which imagination can actually help play a role in knowledge production. So ways in which we can use imagination to learn about ourselves and about the world around us. So focusing on some of the more practical aspects of imagination.
Mental States vs. Brain States
00:02:09
Speaker
And also working on thinking of imagination as a skill that we can we can improve through practice, either explicit practice or more likely implicit practice through activities that we engage in. So that's some of my work on imagination. In philosophy of mind, I'm interested in questions about the mind-body problem. So in other words, what is the relationship between our mental states and our brain states?
00:02:38
Speaker
um And I am very interested in questions about the nature of consciousness. So for example, when you look at a beautiful sunset um and you have that sort of like pinkish experience at the sky, um trying to figure out like, what is that pinkish experience you're having? um You know, where there's something it's like to be looking at the sunset and philosophers worry about whether that can all be reduced to just states of the brain. So those are some of the questions in philosophy of mind and in philosophy of imagination that I focus on. That's awesome. Yeah. um all All those topics, I'm just thinking about how they connect to philosophy of technology right away. But like, you know, for example, you know, the the idea of imagination as a skill, um you know, that's obviously something a lot of people are worried about today that potentially, you know, the kind of,
00:03:34
Speaker
I don't know, form of life we've kind of fallen into with technology is reducing our imaginative abilities. So I think that, you know, interesting to think about
Personal Identity Over Time
00:03:46
Speaker
those connections. um Awesome. Like before we go know get right into your article on biometrics, ah could you also just describe a little bit um your book, Persons and Personal Identity? I'm just thinking this will really help us set the stage for, because That book engages similar themes as your biometrics research.
00:04:07
Speaker
Sure, absolutely. So um in that book, I'm interested in questions about who we are and who we are over time. So questions about the nature of persons, questions about the nature of um personal identity over time. So what makes the person I'm talking to today the same person as the person who emailed me um a few weeks ago, of what makes um what What are the fundamental also, what are the fundamental characteristics that make you who you are? Those are some of the questions that i'm interested in and i'm sure these questions are going to come up as we talk today. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, great. Well, that's
Biometric Identification vs. Traditional Methods
00:04:48
Speaker
that that helps. That's very helpful. Okay, so now I guess let's turn more toward your biometric article ah your article on biometrics and you know before we get into your thesis before we get into your argument, maybe you can kind of just give us a sense of
00:05:01
Speaker
What is biometric technology? What is this technology that you are responding to? So I think probably for anyone who has an iPhone, you're probably familiar with some aspects of biometric technology. I mean, if you're using Face ID or something like that. So it's sort of something that's infiltrated our lives.
00:05:22
Speaker
But in general, biometrics is attempts to identify individuals based on um usually their biological characteristics or sometimes their behavioral characteristics as well. And so it might help to just sort of think about other ways that we can identify individuals. And so we're, I mean, we're in general, we're familiar with these kinds of things.
00:05:45
Speaker
But sometimes the way that we identify ourselves over time is is using a password. So but i when you log into your email, you enter your password every day or depending on how often your system prompts you ah to do so. And so you might think of that as what's called it like a knowledge-based method of verifying someone's identity. So it's like,
00:06:07
Speaker
Sam has has the knowledge, Sam knows the password, and so Sam can must be the person who has the right to access this email. So you can do that with passwords or pins, other things like that. Sometimes the way we identify ourselves as the person we are is using um Some physical object so you show your driver's license or you show your passport and that would be so notice You don't have to know anything there like it's not like you have to remember a password or remember a pen But you have to have the appropriate document um or the appropriate ID card and so that's one way of identifying you who you are but then another way of identifying who you are is using some kind of a biological feature so the representation of your face or your fingerprint and there are also a lot of other features that can be used in biometrics so it could be your palm print or your iris or it could be even your distinctive odor or your distinctive date.
00:07:09
Speaker
I'm the way the way that you are the way that you move so all different kinds of features but again the ones that are probably most familiar to us day to day would be the kind of fingerprint um ID or the kind of face ID that you would use with a smartphone.
00:07:24
Speaker
right and and in Intuitively, or in some ways, it certainly seems to be a big advancement like in the sense that, like you said, with a knowledge-based method, um you know someone could easily look and find potentially someone's password.
00:07:44
Speaker
And then when, you know, and then you use that password to log in and the system ah will still think it's the same person because, uh, because of the same path, the password being used. And so it's like, you know, you're going to have more inaccuracy, I guess, whereas it seems like it's going to be really hard for someone to steal my fingerprint or steal my facial um coordinates anyway. So it seems like it's a kind of an improvement um in terms of ah the accuracy of identification, I guess you could say. Yeah. I mean, I think that's the basic idea. So especially those of us who are foolish enough to write down our pass passwords and just like stick it under a keyboard. I was like, it could be so easily stolen because I'm thinking about the list of passwords I have. Anyway, sorry. Yeah.
00:08:36
Speaker
Or, you know, all the people who use password as their password um or who use their birthday as their, you know, as their pin. It seems like those things are either easy to steal or easy to guess. Right. And so they don't seem to be um Uniquely identifying um so someone else could have it and not be you so someone else can have the knowledge and not be you um and likewise with respect to a passport or a driver's license or an ID card.
00:09:08
Speaker
and it seems like those sorts of things can can be faked. um So we could have you know an ID card with your name on it, but with someone else's picture and then they represent themselves as you. um So I think this is why this this um attempt at improvement of accuracy and also of ease, um because right it's hard hard to remember these long passwords and you're not supposed to repeat passwords and they get super complicated. You have to have a number and a special character and a capital letter and a lowercase letter and all of a sudden you can never remember it. But it seems like your fingerprint is going to stay the same as your fingerprint um and there's nothing that you have to do. So it's also not only supposed to be more accurate but easier. Now, of course, there are all these, you know, Mission Impossible kinds of spy movie scenarios where someone can use the special
00:10:00
Speaker
You know glue to get your fingerprint or that you know, we don't want to think about the more gruesome scenarios where they gain access to your iris or something like yeah um But in any case it's not going to be a perfect accuracy and it's not going to be perfect ease but the thought is that it is um and improvement And I think that's why we're seeing increased use of biometrics, for example, at ti with TSA at the airport. So TSA is increasingly relying on biometric information. If you have pre-check, you can um
00:10:37
Speaker
enroll in a special program so you don't even have to show your ID at certain TSA checkpoints. And then many ah many listeners are probably familiar with the fact that now when you go to TSA at many airports, they take rather than just looking at you and comparing what the agency is to your ID card, They're actually taking a picture of you that they're allegedly not storing, but they take a picture of you and the picture is compared in an automatic fashion to the ID picture. And so that is yet a further increase of biometric technology that probably many people are are familiar with.
Privacy and Security in Biometrics
00:11:22
Speaker
So we barely mentioned the technology, biometrics, and already all these ethical concerns are have been flagged. This is going to be, I'm excited, and this is going to be good. So, okay, we have the technology in mind, biometrics, ah and usually, like you mentioned, the concerns the ethical concerns have to do with privacy and data security and you know how my my Social Security number is getting leaked whenever there's a data breach by whatever AT and&T. Your paper is examining biometrics from a lens of metaphysical issues. so Can you explain to us what what that is, what that means, and and how you know it's it's something that seems to not be covered by other theorists?
00:12:09
Speaker
Yeah, um I mean, i think it's I think it's a lot of fun. So I'm happy to talk about it. But yeah, a lot of times the worry is just it is like, who's going to steal my fingerprint, right? and and Or how can I protect the data? um you know TSA says they're not saving the image, but who knows what's really going on and that kind of thing. Not that I'm questioning TSA. But so those are, as you say, ethical questions. but The metaphysical questions are questions about whether biometric technology is really um measuring what it claims that it's going to be measuring. So if biometric identity or biometric technology is aiming to tell us something about personal identity, then there would need to be a match between the notion of biometric identity and personal identity.
00:13:05
Speaker
And that's what a lot of the researchers assume. So they say things about biometrics telling us whether we have the same person. And that is what the philosophical issues about personal identity are precisely about. So when do we have the same person? And does having the same fingerprint mean that we have the same person?
00:13:28
Speaker
I think that's a question that's been under explored by a lot of biometric researchers. I think um it hasn't really been their their main focus. And so that is where the philosophers come in to try and sort some of this out.
00:13:43
Speaker
Awesome. Yeah. that So that gives us a kind of excellent, like initial appreciation of kind of what you're doing here. You know, you're kind of questioning whether biometric identity is really the same thing as personal identity. And you're kind of critiquing the ways in which a lot of researchers talk about ah personal identity in their work. And so, you know, before we kind of get fully into those ideas, maybe we can, um, just back up a little bit into the metaphysics that you were kind of
What Defines Personhood?
00:14:14
Speaker
hinting to there. So in your work, you kind of distinguish really helpfully three questions that animate ah the metaphysics, the metaphysical research on personal identity. The first question is the identification question. The second is the re-identification question. And the third is the characterization question. So I thought that maybe we can just kind of go through each of these questions
00:14:38
Speaker
um one by one to get a real feel for the metaphysics of personal identity before diving into, ah before unpacking your thesis more fully. And so yeah, maybe let's start with what is the identification question?
00:14:53
Speaker
Sure. So um the identity that excuse me the identification question is a question about what makes ah what makes us persons. okay So what personhood is? um So what makes someone the person that they are?
00:15:11
Speaker
And now that might seem like a simple question, but I think it's important to note that the notion of person might very well be a different notion from the notion of human being.
00:15:24
Speaker
So you can um think about the fact that we often talk about sophisticated animals. um So whether it be dolphins or the great apes, we often think that we we often might refer to them as persons, right? And saying that they have personhood. Now a dolphin does not have human DNA. A dolphin is not biologically a human.
00:15:51
Speaker
And yet, if we think that a dolphin might be a person or we think that a ah chimpanzee might be a person, then it looks as if we're using the notion of person as a different notion from the notion of human being.
00:16:07
Speaker
So I think to start, it's best to think of human as being a purely biological notion. So in other words, what we mean by to say human is to say something like member of the species homo sapien. Whereas when we say person, we mean something else. So now what exactly do we mean?
00:16:27
Speaker
Well, one famous definition was given by the philosopher John Locke and he said a person is a being who has, I'm not sure I'm going to get this exactly right in his words, but he says a person is a being who has reason and reflection and can reflect upon itself as itself.
00:16:45
Speaker
And so that's something that might apply to a dolphin. It's something that might apply to a chimpanzee. It's something that might apply to a certain kind of sophisticated AI.
00:16:58
Speaker
um i This is getting less and less science fictiony as the days go by. um And all different sorts of questions arise about about who a person is and what the class of persons is.
00:17:13
Speaker
and how that class of persons intersects with the class of human beings. So if I could kind of have a sci-fi example of this, just to make sure we have the identification question clear. right The identification question, I know Ideally, if you can if you can generate some sort of AI algorithm that can can just point at something and say, yes, this is a person. No, that is not a person. Would would that be hi-fi or hi-fi a example of what a solver of the identification question is? Like a little scanner that says, this is absolutely a person. You point it at a dolphin. Yes, this is is a person.
00:17:54
Speaker
Are any point point it at a a table or a zombie and say that is not a person am i going too far there is that how you think of it. Well, if we had such an AI scanner, that would be awesome. I guess the question that I would want to know is how we programmed it. So we need to have some kind of an answer to the question. we need We need to have some sort of sense of what a person is in order to be able to program the scanner to correctly identify or not correctly identify.
00:18:24
Speaker
so um i ah So so we would we would, in one sense, solve the question if we had an AI scanner, but in the other sense, i'd I'd worry that we need to have the question solved in order to create the AI scanner that could do the work for us. but Yes, the idea is we, you know, we could do a sort of game show, right? Where we will someone in and it's like, are they, are they a person or not? And we would do whatever kinds of questioning we would want to do. And then we'd whip out the eye scanner and it would be like, you know, yes, we got it. um That would be that would be a great scenario. Yeah, because it's kind of a distinction between like, on the one hand, there's
00:19:09
Speaker
among the things that exist, at least, uh, which of these things are persons and which are not. And it would be interesting to know like, yeah, which of of the entities fall into the person category, which of them don't. But then there's the further question of for all the entities that are in the person category, why are they in it? What is it that they have?
00:19:32
Speaker
that makes them count as a person. And that's obviously yeah like a kind of a crucial question becoming more and more of ah a real like pressing question with the development of AI, because you have people saying, oh, you know, you know, it looks like Chad GPT is a real person and we have to grant it rights kind of thing. So anyway, you know, it's really important to think about, OK, what does it actually what features does a thing need as a being need to really count as a person? And, yeah.
00:20:02
Speaker
Yeah, definitely. And I guess I also should have specified that um we're talking about a notion of personhood that I think transcends just any particular legal system. So there might be um in a legal system, we might have doctrine that says who is going to count as a person. So for example, like a corporation might count as a person,
00:20:26
Speaker
in a particular legal system, but the notion of metaphysical personhood is sort of independent of any particular legal system. And so what but counts as a person for the purposes of law might be a different matter from what counts as a person from the um purposes of for the purposes of metaphysics and one would hope that in a good legal system the two matched up um but i just right right for listeners i think it's important to note that we're not just talking about like who legally is treated as a person but we're sort of looking at the metaphysical foundation of person right
00:21:10
Speaker
Right. Perfect. And so maybe now we can go to the second question that you like. Again, we're kind of going through the three main questions that motivate the metaphysics of personal identity. First question is identification question. And then the second is re-identification. So yeah, I think maybe just introduce us to that one.
Freaky Friday and Personal Identity
00:21:27
Speaker
Sure. and So now I feel like we're going to get the real science fiction scenarios going. But so the re-identification question asks what makes a given person the same person over time. So let's just take a case where we don't really have any worries about the individual, whether they're a person or not. So we're just talking about like a typical human being. But now this typical human being, um I might encounter ah let Let's suppose someone that I met 20 years ago and they looked a lot younger than and maybe we're really into, I don't know, really into tennis at that time or something like that. And now I run into someone 20 years later, they you know, they're a lot greater, they look a lot older.
00:22:14
Speaker
um And now they're really into, I don't know, skydiving and how to complete the tennis racket in 10 years. And I might want to know what makes the purse what makes the individual who's before me today the same person, but metaphysically the same person as the person who I used to hang out with 20 years ago.
00:22:34
Speaker
Now in this kind of case we probably they they probably remember all sorts of things that we did twenty years ago together they probably look somewhat the same even if they're greater and yeah their interests have changed but they might be able to tell a story about how.
00:22:51
Speaker
um They got more interested in danger seeking you know as life went on and so there might not be any real like deep worries but nonetheless note that what we're relying on here or we're relying on certain facts about their psychology like what they remember and what they like and we're also relying on certain facts about their body like what they look like.
00:23:11
Speaker
Okay, well now these kinds of things, what happens when those factors come apart? So the standard sort of case to just get it motivated is a sort of freaky Friday kind of case. If listeners are familiar with the kind of freaky Friday scenario, but if not, you can just imagine a case where we have what we might um intuitively describe as kind of mind swap or brain or consciousness swap or something like that. So in freaky Friday, I think depending on which version you saw in one version, they like smash into each other really hard and then like something happens I think in the less violent more recent version there's some kind of fortune cookie where they each wish like oh I wish I knew I wish mom knew what it was like to be me here and then mom is like I wish daughter knew what it was like to be me and then
00:23:57
Speaker
Fortune cookie was magic and all of a sudden we have a situation in which it appears that the mom's consciousness is in the daughter's body and the daughter's consciousness is in the mom's body. And now we want to know at this later moment when we have the mom's consciousness in the dark and the daughter's body, who is this, right? Like which person is it?
00:24:19
Speaker
And so if you just looked at the, so let's see, I'm talking about the mom's consciousness and the daughter's body. So if you just looked at that individual, you might think that it's the daughter because it's the daughter's body. But if you talk to that individual, you might think it's the mom because it's sounding a lot like the kinds of things that the mom would say. And so in cases where the physical characteristics and the psychological characteristics sort of get mixed up, right? There we have real issues about re-identification and that really presses the point of what makes us the same person over time. Awesome. Yeah. And I'm just thinking now, you know, the biometric is going to ah seemingly fail in the Freaky Friday case. Cause we want to say intuitively that once you get the consciousness of the mother into the daughter, then
00:25:13
Speaker
The daughter is really the mother and who was once the mother. Like that's who we're looking at. We're talking to now, right? um Whereas if you had a biometric technology identify, it's going to say, nope, no change in person has occurred. We still have the same fingerprint. So that looks like a case where the biometric technology is going to fail to identify who the person really is. Now, I guess, of course, that's that's going to be controversial. I guess maybe some people are going to say,
00:25:44
Speaker
You know, well, if it's the same brain or something that it's actually the same person across or something like that. But anyway, yeah, so that's that's a really helpful um introduction to the re-identification question. And then maybe we can go to the last question here, the characterization question. um This one seems to be more dealing with like self-identity or like who a person is in a more It's ah hard for me to articulate, but anyway, yeah, can you kind of introduce us to the to to the characterization question?
00:26:16
Speaker
Yeah, so um I think of the identity question, sorry, the identification question as sort of like what a person is. And then I think of the re-identification as what makes you the same person over time or what makes a person the same person over time, right? So the identification question we're focused on sort of the nature of persons, the re-identification question we're focused on the nation ah nature of persons over time. But then there's a further aspect to what we think of intuitively when we talk about like my personal identity. and so if If I'm talking about my personal identity, it's not just like what makes me a person or what makes me the same person over time, but there's a further element about what makes me the person who I am. like Which characteristics are important to shaping myself, to shaping who I am?
00:27:04
Speaker
And there are all different kinds of things, right? So it might be that it's important to me that I'm a philosopher. It might be that it's important to me that I'm a mother. um Or it might be that it's important to me that I'm an American or a Californian um after all these years in California. and Gosh, I guess I do consider myself a Californian. and It just came out.
00:27:30
Speaker
and So there in any case, there are going to be all different kinds of characteristics. People um might take it as important to who they are, their political affiliation, or their ah ah how how they identify with respect to sexual orientation. They're gonna be all different kinds of characteristics that are going to be important to a person's understanding of who they are. And that's an important sense of identity that isn't really captured fully by either the identification question or the re-identification question. And, you know, it's it's kind of like the characteristics that we take to be central to ourselves
00:28:16
Speaker
um And as you said, how we self-identify. I have a quick follow-up question on that. I sometimes, I feel like I really understand the first two ah metaphysical problems. But this one, can you maybe give us um an example? I guess it would be fairer to give us maybe two examples of some views in this. That way you don't bias us in any direction. but Sure. um So one thing that we might ask is when we ask about like what makes us the the person who we are, um one kind of theory that you might think of is a sort of narrative theory. So the stories that we tell about ourselves are what make us who we are. And this, I think, is pretty intuitive in one sense for for many people because people think that
00:29:08
Speaker
but they that they they're living a story, you know, and we're told to live our best story and all the rest. um Some problems arise with this. So if I um build certain elements into my story that aren't really true of me,
00:29:23
Speaker
uh what does that say about my um how I characterize my identity or what if I omit certain elements from my story so I write out all the bad characteristics that I have so we might worry about um whether a narrative identity should be just the descriptive story the descriptive narrative or whether it should be sort of more aspirational, different sorts of questions there. But now interestingly, and I come at this from someone who
00:29:57
Speaker
from the perspective of someone who does tend to think narrative narratively about these kinds of ah things. Some people just do not tell narratives about themselves. That is, they have a very non narrative understanding of their own identity. And they are not writing stories. um And in fact, they might not even think of themselves as um how can I put this they they they they might not think of themselves as like this long-standing self that continues through time so it's more like someone who just thinks of oh well there was the high school Amy and there was the college Amy and there was the grad school Amy and there's no deep story that leaves these together so when we think about the characterization question I think um
00:30:49
Speaker
One sort of divide and dividing line is whether you consider your sort of selfhood to be understood narratively or non-narratively.
00:31:01
Speaker
Is that rooted in some sort of ah like a neurodiversity or something? or or is that Oh, that's a good question. you know i i um I have to confess, I i don't know what the neural underpinnings of that are. We'll have to look at Strawson's brain. Isn't it Strawson? He claims that he yeah he doesn't have a narrative understanding of himself or something. and Yeah, so um one of the but one of the people who has pushed the non-narrative conception most strongly is a philosopher named Galen Strawson. And so, yeah, I guess we we'd want to look at his brain and see. There must there must be some there must be some elements of neurodiversity underpinning this. And and also, you know various I'm sure there are various connections to other kinds of views.
00:31:47
Speaker
um But in thinking about the characterization question, what I mean, one key theory is a sort of narrative self-constitution view. And so the dividing line sort of often falls there.
00:32:00
Speaker
and Great. Okay, good. So yeah, let's, let's turn back to the biometrics a little bit more. Yeah. So kind of one first complaint you have with ah biometrics research is that they will talk about the biometric identifiers. So the biometric identifiers are things like,
00:32:19
Speaker
palm print, face, iris, retina, the research will talk about these identifiers as inherent to an individual. And so from your perspective, this is kind of problematic to say that these identifiers are inherent to an individual. So yeah, can you kind of just ah unpack that for us?
00:32:35
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. um So ah it depends here, I guess, on what we mean by individual um in part.
Are Biometrics About Recognition or Identification?
00:32:42
Speaker
And so if we want to say insofar as the claim is something like biometric identifiers are inherent to the person, that is going to be a problematic claim. So I mean, we can go back to the Freaky Friday case, right? Like when the mom's consciousness is in the daughter's body, and the mom's fingerprints were left behind in the mom's body, right? And so and the mom's facial repping facial ideas left behind in the mom's body. So if we really want to say that this daughter's body is now the mom, um then the biometric identifiers are not inherent to an individual. um Take another science fiction e case um where
00:33:23
Speaker
Many people think that we may one day ah be able to upload our consciousness to robot bodies right or to machines. And if we can do that, then we will again have left behind our fingerprints and our palm prints and our irises and all of the rest.
00:33:43
Speaker
So I guess if we're thinking about biometric identifiers as being inherent to a physical body, that seems plausible. But then there's a question about whether who we are is just our physical body. And insofar as we think we might be something different from or something more than just our physical body and that we may able to, um,
00:34:09
Speaker
uh, survive like I, Amy kind might be able to survive beyond or outside of my physical body. Then, um, uh, the biometric identifier would come apart from, from me. Right. And I guess even if we were identical with our physical body, you know, it's worth pointing out that hypothetically someone's iris could change and I don't know how that would work, but it could change and they would still have the same body. Presumably it's kind of like, you know, if you have a car and you replace the wheels, still the same car. Um, so anyway, I'm just thinking how even these, not only does it seem plausible that they're not inherent to the individual as a person, but it also seems plausible that maybe they're not even inherent to the physical body.
00:34:58
Speaker
Yeah, it's a good point. I mean, people can lose their ah their eyes, um you know, due to some, I mean, there could that that someone could um have to have their eye removed, maybe due to some kind of disease in the eye, and then they're not going to have eyes. So not just that they don't have sight, but that they might actually not have an eye, and then they're not going to be able to be identified by their iris. um If you are in um some kind of fire. You might burn, you know, and burn your hands. You might, I would assume, no longer have fingerprints. And so, yeah, it can, the biometric identifiers can come apart from not just
00:35:46
Speaker
the person, but maybe even, yeah, from from the body. So we started by saying that there is a kind of accuracy to the biometric identifiers that there isn't in the password and in you know the sort of passport kind of scenarios. But i we're now seeing that biometric identifiers can come apart from both the person and also from the physical body. Now, to some extent, though,
00:36:14
Speaker
the The issue for me is not so is not so much like, are these more accurate? Like are we better off with respect to accuracy when we use the biometric identifier, but rather is it tracking metaphysical personhood? Like is it tracking what it is trying to track? Right. Right. Yeah. So this isn't a, it's not as though like the implications of your, your research here is that, you know, we should doubt the effectiveness or the utility of biometric technology. Um, although, I mean, I guess it, you know, stuff like we were just, we were saying, you know, it is important to keep in mind, like the, although those scenarios might be marginal, like, um, or abnormal where someone, yeah, you know, loses their eyes or something like that.
00:37:03
Speaker
Uh, it's still possible and they're still the same person in that scenario. So it's just, it is, I guess, important to keep that in mind, even on a practical level, because you could imagine scenarios where it's like, maybe yeah, someone gets in a horrible car accident and it's like all their biometric identifiers have been altered and they can't manage to get.
00:37:20
Speaker
Um, I don't know. They can't, they can't buy anything at the Amazon store because know whatever. Anyway, so, um, good, good. I mean, I guess another question, another issue you raise is, you know, mean it's it's kind of falling off what you just said, but you kind of question whether is the goal of biometrics really person recognition, you know? Um, ah yeah. So can you kind of develop that idea for us? Yeah, yeah I think, um,
00:37:49
Speaker
the i mean The biometrics researchers typically talk as if they're focused on telling us you know which person that we have.
00:38:00
Speaker
um and so yes and So if they're thinking of biometric identity as just being personal identity, I guess I think that's just misleading. um And I think it would be better um to sort of separate the notions. um you know And I don't want to ah you know jump the gun too much, but there there is a difference between between using techniques that will help us to tell whether or not we have the same person and actually giving us a theory of whether we of of what the same person is. So like if Biometrics is telling us, you know sam this this individual is Sam because, ah sorry, in virtue of having this fingerprint,
00:38:55
Speaker
right sort of like well that's not what makes Sam who he is um but if they're telling us look the most reliable way of telling us whether or not Sam is before us is to check his fingerprint well that might be in most cases true um and so i think to some extent there's a looseness in the way that biometrics researchers often talk about what they're doing that could be sort of threatening to our um understanding of what they're doing, threatening, ah because it looks as if they're giving us certain metaphysical theories where I don't think that they are or that they should be seen as doing. Now, what would you say to someone who was thinking about them giving metaphysical theories? What if someone said, you know, the fact that um
00:39:46
Speaker
The fact that they are so successful, the fact that we're it's so um that that identifying a person by their bodily features is so much more reliable than other things.
00:39:59
Speaker
That fact suggests that really we are our body. that you know um Because it's it's it's the most reliable way. so it's like yeah So basically what if someone said the success of the biometric technology is kind of an indication that on the metaphysical level what we should really say is that we are um our bodies.
00:40:21
Speaker
Yeah, that's an interesting question. I guess I think it depends on um and what we mean by we are our bodies. Well, here, let me let me let me put a case out there and see what you think. Now, this is going to be, again, a little science fiction-y, but maybe a little less, though, than uploading to a computer. alllan So already, like we can give someone um you know kidney transplant, and we can give someone a brain, sorry, we can give someone a kidney transplant, we can give someone a heart transplant. There are all different kinds of transplants. Now, generally speaking, on i when someone gets a new kidney, right? like So if Sally gets Bob's kidney, I mean, that is, we put Bob's kidney into Sally's body, we think this is still Sally, right? It's Sally with a new kidney.
00:41:13
Speaker
But now what if, and you know the technology isn't there yet, but what if we were one one day able to do brain transplants? And so we were able to put Bob's brain into Sally's body.
00:41:25
Speaker
Well, I think there are a lot of people would have the intuition that this is not Sally with Bob's kidney, but now all of a sudden it's Bob with Sally's body. on I mean, a lot of people think that they would follow their brain in a way that they don't follow their kidney.
00:41:44
Speaker
And so that would suggest, like if if you have the intuition that if we put Bob's brain into Sally's body, we're we're left with Bob. And now this isn't this isn't just the Freaky Friday case where we think like there's some whooshy consciousness switch, right but we're actually moving the brain um in the way that we can move the kidney and move the heart. um uh in any case that would suggest i mean we are there there is something physical involved right it's the brain um the brain tissue this is all very physical stuff but nonetheless it's not the iris and the fingerprint and the other biometric identity uh identifiers so the brain transplant scenario um
00:42:30
Speaker
suggests, I think, that we're not just our physical bodies in the sense of our limbs and and so on. Right. Yeah. Yeah, that that makes that makes sense. I did have ah a follow-up question. we we had a researcher we We interviewed a researcher who was arguing that um we might have the sort of ah the focal the focus on on brains a little bit wrong. um He was he was arguing, I think, for a relational view. And then maybe you can tell me what what this, if this applies at all to biometrics. But he was saying that it's not really, um you know, the brain that we should focus on, but the brain in that particular body, in that particular environment ah that that constitutes whatever the self is. It's much more dynamic. So, I mean, I think on this way of looking at things, I followed up one of his articles and I think he would say that
00:43:27
Speaker
You know, a mom or or whatever, Sally and Brian, or whatever and Sally with her brain is one person, Bob with his brain is another person, and then Sally with Bob's brain would be a third person. sort of Is that is that a a view at all? that um That you've considered or are just going to lob it over to you with my messy question. great It's a great question. And you know, and some of these issues I was like so ah sweeping under the rug a little earlier.
00:43:57
Speaker
and But so let me go back to something that got swept under the rug earlier and then I'll tackle your question a little head on. It'll also give me time to think. So go back to the Freaky Friday case, um you know, where we have mom and daughter's, mom's consciousness and daughter's body and daughter's consciousness and mom's body. And remember that one of the possible biometric evaluators, biometric identifiers is gait.
00:44:21
Speaker
um And you know when the mom's consciousness is in the daughter's body, does that body now strut like the daughter or strut like the mom? um And so is the gait pattern gonna follow the body or follow the consciousness? And so that might be a biometric identifier.
00:44:40
Speaker
that um that the mom, so to speak, brings over with her you know when her consciousness goes into the daughter's body. So anyway, that's just one thing that but would be interesting you know interesting to think about. I don't think we can test it out because ah you know we we're not We don't have those fortune cookies, but um that that's one thing that we might want to think about. So now with the Bob's brain and Sally's body kind of case, um have we i mean so one one view that you might have is, well, poor Bob, poor Sally, they no longer exist. Now we have the hybrid Bob Sally, um which is just a new person altogether.
00:45:23
Speaker
You know, I mean, I guess we'll have to, we'll we sort of, you know, the science might, we might not be that far away from it. And I don't mean to suggest that um the the the individual who gets Bob's brain and Sally's body would be exactly in all respects, you know, have have all the same personality traits as Bob before. But in general, um I guess I'm not inclined to think that I guess I'm not inclined to think that we have a ah third person there. I guess I'm just inclined to think that we have some changes as a result of the brain transplant, just the way we would have some changes as a result of a car accident um or a case in which um i you've you've done a lot of um
00:46:16
Speaker
a lot of strength training, you know, and and now you're a lot stronger than you used to be. I mean, there are going to be changes to the way that you operate in the world as a result of changes to your physicality. So I don't deny that it matters what environment we're in, like who we are, it it it matters, there is some relationality there. But I guess I'm not i' not inclined to think um that we no longer have bob because we have the brain and sally's body uh yeah i i don't know it's um i'm thinking about other kinds of cases um and there might be some cases in which you could push the intuitions even so more strongly but um hey it's a fun thing to think about and maybe maybe in some of our lives lifetimes we'll we'll see the technology advance and um
00:47:14
Speaker
and be grappling with these metaphysical questions straight on. so but At least it is very clear though that in that case, the biometrics would absolutely not i mean let's assuming that it is a third person, ah the biometrics would absolutely fail. right They would not be able to recognize this hitherto non-existent person. so Right. if if we have if we We're going to have but So if it's Bob's brain and Sally's body, we're going to have Sally's fingerprints. We're going to have Sally's, um, uh, IRS and, and, um, and so on. So if we either have Bob or we have this new person, Bob, so you know, Bob, Sally hybrid, the biometric identity identifiers will fail. So absolutely good. And let me, that, you know, thinking about Bob here. Um, so we have Bob's brain and Sally's body.
00:48:06
Speaker
Uh, this kind of leads into the idea of like, what, you know, go back to the characterization question you talked about. Okay. You know, what really, you know, are the crucial factors that make a person, the distinctive person that they are, that kind of constitutes their sense of self. Uh, what are those factors? And you kind of point out that, look, it's really not very plausible that it's fingerprints, iris, maybe it's,
00:48:35
Speaker
I don't know. I guess gate is maybe closer because at least you start getting characterological features. Like someone can have in a less sort of, I don't know, an arrogant gate maybe. i don But anyway, so i think anyway, point being that like, um, yeah, can you talk a little bit about this idea that like, look, look, these, these, these biometric identifiers, they're not, it's not very plausible that they, um, are crucial to the characterization question.
00:49:01
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, i I think you hit the nail
Biometric Features and Self-Identity
00:49:04
Speaker
on the head there. I don't think many of us feel um like if we were telling a story about who we are, so take a narrative approach, right? I don't think we weave our fingerprints into that story. um Now do we weave something about our face? Yes, probably. um That is something about the way we look probably is part of our story. But I also think that we would consider ourselves to be still who we are, even if we suffered from some kind of um i some some kind of accident or something that what that involved facial disfigurement. and
00:49:47
Speaker
and i mean i don't think i'm so i I can say confidently that I am not super connected to my fingerprints. right like They are not part of what makes me who I am. I don't think they make me a person. I don't think they make me the person that I am. um I don't feel that way about my iris.
00:50:08
Speaker
um you know i don't i To be honest, I don't really think I feel that way even about my gage, although there we are at least getting into something that's closer you know as as you were hinting at.
00:50:21
Speaker
and There's, you know, there's the famous in the sort of Freaky Friday scenario, like the a famous historical example is of ah prince in the the prince and the and the pauper, right? And so the prince the prince's consciousness goes into the pauper's body and the pauper's consciousness goes into the prince's body. And so you know waking up in the princely bed and being like, whoa, why am I in this luxurious place? right Or waking up in the pauper's rags and being like, where are my servants? um And you can raise questions like, well, could the prince um smile his arrogant smile in the pauper's body? right Or could the prince maintain his haughty overtones in the pauper's body? And so that's not just gait, but it's things about like
00:51:08
Speaker
your facial features right and your characteristic smirk or your characteristic arrogant look or your characteristic eyebry how eyebrow all of those kinds of things you know might not transfer when you're in a different body but sorry I think I'm going going down a certain path um but the But the basic point I think is that for most of us, for most of the biometric features, I don't think they play a role in shaping the way we think of ourselves. I don't think they would be the characteristics that we would include on a list if we were talking about the features that matter to our self-identity.
00:51:56
Speaker
I was telling Sam earlier that um my gait actually alienates me. I've seen video of me walking and I walked like that and I'm disgusted. um um you know same Same thing with fingerprints. If you could give me a million dollars, if I identify, I would not get a million dollars because I don't recognize my own fingerprints. so Clearly, these don't matter for that. so What do biometrics do most align with out of the three problems that you ah gave us earlier?
00:52:27
Speaker
That's a good question. I guess I would, I would say something like this. I think in our current world, um absent the kinds of sci fi scenarios and transplants that, um you know, we've been talking about, we do tend to um stay in the same body for the course of our lives. I mean, rough you know roughly the same body. And that's not to say that none of us ever have accidents or facial disfigurement or other kinds of things, but our so in in ordinary life, our our psychology and our our physical bodies seem to travel together. And so I think the biometric identifiers are a good pointer to how we might
00:53:19
Speaker
um tell that we have the same person over time. But I don't think that they constitute re-identification. I don't think they are what make us the same person over time. And I don't think that we should talk about biometric identity as being personal identity over time, that even if it turns out to be a pretty good tracker.
00:53:45
Speaker
and And so we need to separate, I mean, the way I would put it is we need to separate the epistemological questions about how we tell that someone is the same person over time versus or how we usually tell that someone's the same person over time versus what makes someone the same person over time. And so I think that biometric identifiers are um are not at the heart of who we are, but they might nonetheless be important for um helping us to tell who we're dealing with. So kind of following on that, what what would you say to
00:54:27
Speaker
this kind of like objection, something like, Oh, you know, you're being too tough on these biometric researchers. You know, when they say that these identifiers are inherent to an individual, they just mean that, you know, normally in non sci-fi cases, uh, no one's ever going to change their iris. No one's ever going to change their, um, their, um,
00:54:54
Speaker
Like their their their gate maybe no one's ever going to change their palm print and so In that sense, they're inherent. They're inherent in the sense that normally They always are together and it's only in very abnormal Circumstances would they ever break apart? Yeah, anyway, what do you think of that kind of response? well I mean, it's it kind of gets to the question of like what we're doing as philosophers, right? And i guess I guess I'm sort of interested in questions about truth. And i and so I like to be careful that our theories are um not leading us astray.
00:55:44
Speaker
um So on the one hand, it's like, look, if it's just a very loose way of talking and we all know that it's a very loose way of talking, it's fine. I mean, when we're outside of the philosophy classroom or we're outside of a philosophy podcast, are loose ways of talking okay?
00:56:01
Speaker
maybe. But I think the worry is that sometimes, and I wish I had a good example of him, but I think sometimes loose ways of talking sort of seduce us into loose ways of thinking and into making mistaken conceptual claims. And so like, I don't think we all need to talk like philosophers all the time in our everyday life. But I do think that we have to be careful not to start thinking, I guess I do think that with the advent of face ID technology, for example, right, we do start, we do start to
00:56:43
Speaker
be thinking of like who's who in it in a different kind of way. And we don't want it to sort of mess up our conceptions our conceptions of ourselves.
00:56:54
Speaker
on ah yeah you know We're now going to cycle back into the issues that I set aside, because I'm interested in questions about metaphysical nature of persons, but I think there are all kinds of like interesting and horrible um ethical questions about deep faith technology and other kinds of things that really matter to identity.
00:57:19
Speaker
and I guess, so maybe here's the example that I was looking for a moment ago. um If we're seduced into sort of loose ways of thinking about identity because of the way we're thinking about biometric identity, then I'd be worried that that might have some ramifications for how we're going to conceptualize issues surrounding deepfakes.
00:57:42
Speaker
um And so um we can't have it all ways on all sides, right? Like if we're going to be really loose about identity, and then we're going to have trouble getting at the harm of deep faith technology. And so that's, I guess, one practical implication of why loose talking and thus loose thinking might lead us astray and in other areas.
00:58:07
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And also it seems to me that you're making, you know it's like you're making the point that if there's a sense in which what these researchers are saying is true, it's only in the loose sense. So it's like your your article is kind of clarifying for us that to the extent that this what they're saying is true, it's only in that loose sense ah rather than in a really straightforward sense of, yeah, this is just person recognition you know and ah in a very direct sense. Awesome. Well, thanks so much for joining us today, Amy. And I mean, before we sign off,
00:58:41
Speaker
I'm curious, anything you're currently writing about or about to publish that you'd like to let listeners know about? i Well, I guess there have been a couple of things. I've been doing some work on um imagination and creativity, and so sometime in the next year, I'll have an edited handbook come out on imagine um imagination and creativity.
00:59:02
Speaker
and that might be interesting to some folks but another thing that I'm hoping to think about some coming up and I don't have anything um definitive in the works on this but just something that I've been thinking a fair bit about is something that was raised right at this start. Sam, I think you said something about this, but in the in this age of increasing technology, they're real worried about how that increasing technology is going to affect the human capacity for imagination. And so I'd really like to try and um tackle that head on and think about
00:59:45
Speaker
um, ways that we can best leverage the technology to build our skill of imagination rather than letting it atrophy. So that's, um, that's a possible project for the future. Well, we, we support that project. We're looking forward to it. I hope, uh, yeah. So thanks again, Amy. It's, it's been a really real pleasure talking to you. Thanks. Great conversation. Appreciate it. Yep. Take care.
01:00:22
Speaker
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