Becoming and Identity

Becoming and Identity

What is the relationship between the acorn and the tree it becomes? They look very different and one is much bigger than the other. An acorn isn’t a tree and a tree isn’t an acorn. Yet some maintain an identity between them: acorn and tree are literally one and the same (numerically). The same what? The same plant or botanical entity; the same thing. But that is not plausible; rather, the acorn becomes a tree–it turns into a tree. The acorn is no more; it no longer exists. If you point at the tree and say, “Look, the acorn is still here”, you speak falsely. A seed develops into the plant it will become; it doesn’t continue to exist alongside the plant. The oak tree is not a two-ton acorn. The predicates “acorn” and “tree” have disjoint extensions. That is the intuitively correct description of the situation. It isn’t that the acorn is summarily destroyed by turning into a tree, as if executed or dispersed to the winds. There is all the difference in the world between squashing an acorn flat and letting it grow into something else. You don’t kill the acorn by allowing it to develop into a tree; on the contrary, you allow it to fulfil its destiny. It undergoes a process of transformation; it isn’t violently deprived of life. It no longer exists after the transformation, but not because it was murdered. Transformation isn’t annihilation, akin to incineration. You don’t feel sorry for the acorn and wish it could have lived longer. There is no tragedy in growing into a fine oak tree.

The point generalizes—not only to all plants but to all organisms. Seeds and eggs are not identical to the plants and animals they will become: a rose isn’t the seed of a rose and an elephant isn’t a fertilized elephant egg. We don’t say, “What a beautiful seed!” about a rose, or “What a splendid elephant ovum!” about a full-grown elephant. No, the seeds and eggs turn into plants and animals; they cease to exist as the process of maturation proceeds. Nature permits (encourages) replacement by mature organisms; the seed performs its appointed task and then gracefully exits the scene. It doesn’t persist in the form of the eventual organism. But nothing kills it—no predator gobbles it up; it willingly transforms itself into something else. There is biological continuity without biological identity. It doesn’t bemoan its passing, and nor do we. It wasn’t stepped on or consigned to the flames. But how far does this principle extend? What about metamorphosis? Many have felt justified in claiming that identity is the operative principle: the caterpillar is identical to the butterfly. It persists in the form of a butterfly; in no whit is its existence imperiled. The butterfly is a caterpillar, a type of flying worm. It doesn’t look or behave like a worm, but it is one. This stretches credulity: the caterpillar is a worm, but the butterfly is not—as a bird is not an egg (and never was). This is not conversational implicature but logical ontology. But admitting it doesn’t mean that the caterpillar was somehow crushed or evaporated; rather, it was transformed into something else. It didn’t meet a sticky end; it generated a new biological being—and a magnificent one at that. There was construction not destruction. The caterpillar created the butterfly, gave it life, by allowing itself to be transformed. This is not a bad thing. So, I say, metamorphosis is transformation not annihilation: the caterpillar became the butterfly; the two are in the becoming relation not the identity relation. That’s how God (Nature) arranged things, and he (it) wasn’t troubled by the lack of continuing identity.

Now we come to more difficult cases. What about the fetus, and even the baby? Does the fetus still exist in the shape of a grown man? Can we say of a strapping handsome man, “What a good-looking fetus!”? It isn’t just conversational implicature that deters us from such exclamations; it simply isn’t true that the fetus still exists throughout the life of a human being. Rather, it turns into a man or woman; it becomes one of these. The fertilized egg isn’t already a man or woman, but it will become one. When? Hard to say: could be while still in the womb, could be when adolescence is broached. The very term “human being” is fraught with uncertainty and is usually reserved for later-term organisms of a certain sort. The early fetus is not a person, as this term is commonly understood, but the fetus has the power to turn into a person (as the acorn turns into a tree). Is it clearly wrong to say that the fetus stops existing when it turns into a later stage of development? Isn’t it replaced by something else, like the caterpillar and the butterfly? What do we lose by adopting this was of talking? It can still be wrong to kill the fetus, since it will produce a baby and later an adult, but the fetus doesn’t persist through these transformations; it isn’t identical to any future human being (numerically).[1]Then, what about the baby—does it also come to a timely end as maturation does its necessary work? Doesn’t the baby turn into an adolescent and then an adult, without continuing to exist the while? Isn’t the becoming relation what we want not the identity-through-time relation? Granted, you can continue to exist when changing jobs or locations, but can you really continue to exist in a radically new form—bigger, hairier, stronger, more intelligent? Think of a massive body-builder: he is nothing like the baby that became him. That baby was transformed beyond recognition. What if children changed color, shape, and even internal anatomy when they reached adulthood (like a butterfly)—wouldn’t we then balk at the identity talk? Eggs, larvae, flying insects: different entities held together only by the becoming relation; no identity required.

Time to get really tough: tables, statues, and personal fission cases. A piece of wood may become a table through the actions of a carpenter: are the two things identical? Evidently not, since the wood was not a table till made into one, and the table may revert to piece of wood status if suitably chipped away at. But does the piece of wood persist when it has become a table? Evidently, again, it does: it exists in the form of a table. The relation is composition, unlike in the acorn case (the tree is not made of an acorn). So, not all becoming involves identity loss. The piece of wood coexists with the table, but the acorn doesn’t coexist with the tree, or the fetus coexist with the adult person (he or she is not made of a fetus). It is the same with a statue: the piece of stone exists as well as the statue; it doesn’t perish or disappear. So, we have existence-preserving becoming as well as existence-losing becoming. Can there be intermediate cases—what if some physical part of the acorn carries on existing in the tree? But the harder case is that of fission of the self: what if a person (self) divides into two? It has become customary to say that the person survives in two different individuals: but is this description compulsory? The acorn doesn’t survive in the shape of a tree, so why should the original person survive in the case of fission? Why not say the original person becomes two people but doesn’t himself survive? The standard argument is that fission is not regarded as equivalent to death, as if it were not different from outright incineration. But this is not a convincing argument, because the same is true of acorns and trees (etc.): the acorn doesn’t survive, but this is not like being burned or stamped on. Becoming is not a bad way to go—happens all the time. If I slowly and naturally transform into two new people, I don’t regard this as equivalent to being burned to ashes. A human-like species that reproduced this way would not be regarded as a killing-ground—any more than fetuses transforming into adults is regarded as mass murder. Thus, fission doesn’t have to be taken as survival of the original person; it can be taken as a case of (existence-loss) becoming. The becoming relation is not the survival relation, or some weak and peculiar relation of continuity; it’s actually quite intimate and preservative, being dictated by the structure of the original entity (DNA etc.). Our theoretical options are broader than has been supposed. The choice is not between survival (possibly without identity) and death; we also have the relation of transformation. I think the relation of transformation (without continued existence) is actually a lot more widespread than has been recognized, and under-explored. Selves, say, tend to transform over time without any strict numerical identity through time. I am a transformation of a certain individual sixty years ago without being that individual (person, self). I have many acorns in my past.[2]

[1] The anti-abortionist might reasonably assert that abortion causes a double death: it kills the fetus and the adult it would have become, these being distinct entities. On the identity theory, there is only a single death.

[2] Unfortunately, death itself cannot be regarded as mere transformation, as if the living person is the acorn and the corpse the tree. For the corpse is not itself a living thing that might be happily traded for another living thing. Becoming a corpse is not a step up. The dead body is not some sort of flowering to which the individual has been aspiring. The transition from living being to corpse is not like the transition from fetus to adult.