Lost Marginalia

With all the formulae and diagrams in last night’s “Lost,” the mind might associate “The Constant” with the mathematical/scientific principle. What hit me over the head  was the Scottish philosopher David Hume’s problematizing of self and identity. Following on the heels of John Locke, who situated understanding in perceptions, Hume asks how we can ever assert that there is a constant that we can equate with self. We can only catch ourselves in the act of perceiving. In the section “Of Personal Identity” in his “A Treatise of Human Nature” (1738), Hume writes, “But there is no impression constant and invariable. Pain and pleasure, grief and joy, passions and sensations succeed each other, and never all exist at the same time. It cannot therefore be from any of these impressions, or from any other, that the idea of self is derived; and consequently there is no such idea.”

Continuing on, Hume draws upon the metaphor of a ship that over the years has been repaired so that no part of the ship is the original. [Here he draws upon the ship of Theseus, or Theseus’ paradox, cited by Plutarch.] When the change of part to whole happens gradually, we perceive resemblance and continuity – a constant:

“But whatever precaution we may use in introducing the changes gradually, and making them proportionable to the whole, it is certain, that where the changes are at last observed to become considerable, we make a scruple of ascribing identity to such different objects. There is, however, another artifice, by which we may induce the imagination to advance a step farther; and that is, by producing a reference of the parts to each other, and a combination to some common end or purpose. A ship, of which a considerable part has been changed by frequent reparations, is still considered as the same; nor does the difference of the materials hinder us from ascribing an identity to it. The common end, in which the parts conspire, is the same under all their variations, and affords an easy transition of the imagination from one situation of the body to another.”

Desmond David Hume arrived on the island on an ill-fated boat, and last evening another boat (freighter) factored in his saga. In the reference to time travel, Minkowski makes sure to say that it is consciousness (as opposed to the actual transportation of the physical body). I can’t help but think that the allusion to “Hume’s boat” is deliberate and situates the latest developments within an even more complex narrative (as opposed to a simple sci-fi tale).