Metaphysics and Pop Culture: Identity Continuity in Sci-Fi TV

Fans of either Battlestar Galactica or Dollhouse should be familiar with the concept of life extension via body switching. Forgetting about the scientific probability of these types of technology, let’s look at what problems these pose to identity.
Why you should care: identity is an important question in metaphysics and perhaps one of the oldest. This question was posed by the pre-Socratics (philosophers before Socrates came on the scene 6th century B.C.), perhaps you’ve heard the old adage: you can’t step in the same river twice; Parmenides said that over 2500 years ago. So, apparently identity and, more importantly, self-identity has been important to us for a long time.
In fact, many and I mean many aspects of our social system rely the concept of identity including our entire criminal justice system and religious ideology, just to name a few. What is at the core of our collective belief on identity is that identity perseveres over time: that objects remain identical to themselves even as time passes. This is a concept that we all take for granted and have likely never questioned nor thought much about at all, thanks to Battlestar and Dollhouse, we have a nice platform on which to investigate.
A quick synopsis for those who haven’t seen Battlestar: there is a race of humanoid robots called Cylons, who, upon death have their consciousness downloaded into a new body waiting for them. These bodies are physically identical to their former one. Cylons claim to have overcome death by this method. As for Dollhouse: there is an organization that has developed the technology to store and transmit the contents of a person’s brain and can then upload that brain into a someone else’s body. A person can have their brain “backed up” on a hard drive and then uploaded into a new body upon their death.
We’ll talk about Dollhouse first, because it is the more clear-cut case of non-continuous identity. Let’s say that I have a back up of my brain created and then immediately afterward I die from a sudden aneurysm. The Dollhouse technicians upload my backed up brain into a host and viola, I am risen. This “new” me contains all of my memories, personality traits, and cognitive abilities. You can go up to the “new” me and ask, “Well, did it work?” and I would say, “Yes, I am alive again!” All seems well, doesn’t it? I may be “in” a new body, but it’s still me, right?
Actually no, the me that died is certainly me, but the me that woke up in the new body is someone or something that woke up for me, not me, myself. To illustrate my point, suppose I had my brain backed up, but then the technician immediately put the back up into a new host, while I was still alive. So there is me, as I am, and a person with my brain who thinks they are also me, if we had an argument about who the real me is, who do you think would win? Obviously this person who just happens to have a copy of my brain in their head is not actually me, whether they think so and whether I am alive or dead.
The same problems occur in Battlestar Galactica, the only difference is that the new host body is identical to the old one and that the transference only occurs upon death, but, like with Dollhouse, the same counter-examples could easily be modified to show similar disparities in continuous identity.
The payoff to this is: my identity is MORE than a: having my brain and b: holding the belief that I am me!
So what is to be done now? It seems that having your own brain and believing that you’re identical to yourself are not sufficient criteria for being identical to yourself. (For another really interesting case study in identity go to wikipedia and type in: Ship of Theseus.) To make this even more complicated consider the fact that I got a haircut this morning. Yesterday, my hair was long, but today my hair is short, though I still consider myself to be identical to myself. How could I, though, I am clearly different today than I was yesterday. What if it wasn’t a haircut, what if I had and arm cleaved off in an accident or a part of my brain removed? Our bodies are constantly changing, in fact if you’re anywhere near my age, then there is not a cell in your body left over from when you were born, so if even on the cellular level there is no remnant from when you were conceived, how can you possibly hold on to the notion that you are and have always been identical to yourself?
There is no one singular core (I’ve looked) of us that never changes over time that we can point at and say, “Aha, so long as I have that I am assured of my identity.” Every part of us is in a continual state of change. So the whole concept of identity is a fraud, right?
When we execute someone for murder twenty years after the crime, are we punishing the right person? After twenty years, mitosis would have replaced every cell that was present when that person committed the crime, in essence the murderer is long gone forever and we are executing an innocent man. Just like with Dollhouse the death row inmate believes he is identical to himself from twenty years ago, but that belief doesn’t justify the truth of the statement and he has a brain that was the same brain of the murderer from twenty years ago, but that doesn’t justify identity either. What’s even worse is assuming he didn’t commit the murder twenty years ago, but one minute ago. Surely the murderer from one minute ago is identical to himself one minute later, right? But we live in a constant flux of time; physics teaches us that a lot can go on in a minute.
If I took a holistic snapshot of myself at an exact moment of time and then again one second later there would huge differences. Old cells would have died and new ones formed, the electrochemical state of my brain would have changed, the level of radiation passing through my body from space would have changed, the concentration of oxygen in my blood would be different, etc, etc, etc. Basically every single moment is completely and irreplicateably different from another moment:
WE ARE NEVER EVEN IDENTICAL WITH OURSELVES FROM MOMENT TO MOMENT!
Unless we acknowledge that we are more than just physical entities (and no I’m not about to start talking about souls). We are temporal entities too: we are not three-dimensional creatures; rather, we are four-dimensional creatures.
Take, for instance, my elbow, which is a part of my physical body. It is not me, but it is part of a physical continuum that is me. I couldn’t point to my elbow and say that is my, but I could say that it is part of me. That’s how it is for time too. The entirety of my physical body at any particular point of time is a part of the larger me, not me as a whole. The me as a whole stretches back to the point at which I came into being and ends at when I go out of being. The entirety of me is very large in time and the me you can see at any given moment is, like my elbow, merely part of a larger continuum. Identity therefore only exists as a continuum in time, which allows for physical change because our being in time does not ever change. I am identical with myself at now, birth, and death, because each state is part of the same continuum.
This explanation for identity allows for properties of objects to change but remain auto-identical and accounts for the problems with Battlestar and Dollhouse, in both of those TV shows there was a break in both that temporal and physical continuity.
The more robust understanding we have for our own identity, the more enriched and capable we are of being present in our own life. With this concept of identity in mind, you can rest assured that when you are punished for past actions, you are being punished justifiably.

Best regards,
Andrew