something given, constant, and immutable; but that is a habit it may be time to
rethink.
Autognosis Isn’t What it used to be
To Socrates, ‘know thyself!’ meant self-reflection. That hasn’t changed;
however, the available knowledge about ourselves has changed a great deal. For
one thing, in addition to introspection we can know many things about ourselves
from sources outside ourselves. Two examples are DNA sequencing for
establishing paternity and more distant genealogical relationships, and as a
technique to learn about genetic predispositions to disease. Many would find this
kind of external knowledge about themselves highly relevant to their identity—
the unrecognized heir to a great estate, the racist with reviled blood in his veins.
If we think of individuals as open systems that evolve rather than fixed
organisms, we still have to determine in a non-arbitrary way how much and what
kind of change individuals can survive and stay the same. A gold filling? No
problem. A pacemaker? Hardly worth mentioning. An exchange of blood plus a
bone marrow transplant that changes the DNA? A new heart? A tailor-made
bionic body? Well, heart to heart, Socrates never had to worry about these
questions.
Externalities of this sort are becoming ever less external, giving rise to the
question whether my identity is something that ‘I’ am—a dyslexic agnostic
insomniac who worries all night about the existence of dog—or something that
‘I’ have: my wedding ring, the dragon tattoo on my bicep, my daily
antidepressant?
Anthropo-technology isn’t science fiction. It alerts us to the fact that not only
individual identity changes and survives change across time, but species identity,
too. Manipulable genome-maps, brainpower-enhancement drugs, all-regulating
information systems, etc. blur the nature–nurture distinction and that between
subject and object of technological intervention, forcing the old question ‘Who
am I?’ to be posed anew (Figure 2).