Concerns About Identity
The issue of authenticity mostly arises in relation to memory editing.
9 It is in this context that the President’s Council on Bioethics raises it, with the Lady Macbeth case, as well as in other passages like the following:
By “rewriting” memories pharmacologically we might succeed in easing real suffering at the risk of falsifying our perception of the world and undermining our true identity [
35, p.227].
A difficulty with such passages, as DeGrazia [
7, p.232] has pointed out, is that they do not make it clear which sense of identity, numerical or narrative, is being used. If the former, the claim that Lady Macbeth would no longer be the same person once she had made herself forget her role in the murder of Duncan becomes implausible: surely she would not thereby cease to exist and be replaced by a distinct individual. We don’t usually suppose that we cease to exist after we have forgotten some particular fact, no matter how important. Let us then assume that it is in fact narrative identity that the authors have in mind in the passages quoted before. The argument would then be that by erasing her memory of the murder, Lady Macbeth would re-shape her narrative identity, and this would be wrong because inauthentic. Yet it is unclear that even a fundamental change in a person’s narrative identity constitutes a problem in itself. Clearly, changing oneself, even radically, isn’t intrinsically wrong. On the contrary, it can sometimes be virtuous, as in the case of an individual steeped in moral corruption who manages to significantly reform himself.
Truthfulness
The last passage quoted above suggests a more plausible objection. Perhaps what is wrong with people like Carl or the amnesiac Lady Macbeth is that they change themselves in a way that distorts their perception of the world and prevents them from “living truthfully” [
35, p.233]; this is what makes them inauthentic. Such a line of argument will be welcomed by existentialists. DeGrazia, for instance, would concur that these two agents act inauthentically, as their self-creation projects involve deceiving themselves. Erasing her memory of the crime leads Lady Macbeth to falsely believe that she has had no part in the murder of Duncan. Similarly, Carl ends up falsely believing that hasn’t committed any crimes, and also—say—that he had a childhood without problems.
10 The existentialist explanation is persuasive in these two cases.
By contrast, it is not clear that the Frankfurtian account can justify describing these two agents as making inauthentic choices (and living inauthentic lives afterwards), as long as we assume that they wholeheartedly endorse their desire to deceive themselves for their own good. I don’t want to claim that the Frankfurtian account is just plain mistaken here. It does seem plausible to say that the choices made by Carl and Lady Macbeth are indeed authentic in one sense—namely, these choices are truly their own: they haven’t been pressured or manipulated into making them, and are not in two minds about them. As Erik Parens has suggested [
27], authenticity is a notion with a plurality of legitimate understandings. What I do want to claim is that the Frankfurtian account does not tell us the whole truth about the matter. There is an important sense in which the choices made by these agents, and their lives afterwards, are indeed inauthentic. To capture this, we need to appeal to the existentialist account.
Nevertheless, the demands of authenticity need not always override any competing considerations. E.g. if his traumatic memories of abuse were causing him a lot of suffering that neither psychotherapy nor propranolol could be expected to sufficiently alleviate, erasing the memories might be morally permissible for Carl. More generally, it might be appropriate to use memory editing to relieve unnecessary suffering, even if this led some people to live less truthfully than before. In such cases, the fitting emotions and what the agents have most reason to feel would come apart. In the case of Lady Macbeth, however, we might say that her painful feelings of guilt do not exempt her from the duty to live truthfully. She is no innocent victim, and her guilt feelings are a fitting response to the crime she has helped commit. The only ethically acceptable way out of her suffering would be for her to repent, and maybe turn herself in and face the punishment that would follow. As for Carl, he at least has a reason (if not a duty, depending on how exactly we construe his case) not to erase the memories of his past crimes. There is something seriously disturbing about a murderer who lives his life believing that he has never done much harm to anyone. Also, it is plausible to think that Carl owes it to his victim to remember that he has shot him dead.
Now what about the carefree Lady Macbeth, who doesn’t remove the memory of her crime but merely blunts its emotional impact with the help of propranolol? It is less clear that the existentialist account can justify describing her choice, and her life afterwards, as inauthentic. (The Frankfurtian account will clearly not support that verdict, for the same reasons given before.) Suppose her choice met DeGrazia’s conditions for autonomy. Would it still be somehow dishonest? There is no reason to think that it must involve deceiving either herself or others about some non-moral fact.
11 This suggests that for DeGrazia, there are no grounds for thinking that the carefree Lady Macbeth made an inauthentic choice, and that this choice leads her to live an inauthentic life, if her choice to use propranolol meets the honesty and autonomy conditions. I believe this is mistaken. Once again, I agree that she makes a decision that is authentic in one sense (insofar as it meets the Frankfurtian criterion for authenticity), but I would maintain that there is another, important sense in which her decision is inauthentic, and that this deserves an explanation.
Maybe, however, existentialists could still retain the verdict of inauthenticity by arguing that the carefree Lady Macbeth is guilty of self-deception of a specifically
moral kind. I am not aware that any author has presented such an argument, and it would not be available to Sartreans, given that it seems to involve a commitment to the existence of objective moral truths. But we can see how the argument might go. The traditional philosophical understanding of self-deception implies that the self-deceiver starts with the true belief that ~
p, and then intentionally gets himself to believe that
p; or the other way round (see e.g. Deweese-Boyd [
8] and Mele [
24], p.92). In the case of the carefree Lady Macbeth, the existentialist would have to assume that things work as follows: first, Lady Macbeth truly believes that she has done something terribly wrong, as evidenced by her feelings of guilt. Secondly, by editing her memory, she brings herself to falsely believe that what she did was not so terribly wrong, as evidenced by her newfound peace of mind. From then on, her life is inauthentic as it relies on self-deception about a significant moral fact.
A Problem for Rival Accounts: Elisabeth’s Case
Such a move would have the disadvantage of relying on controversial metaethical assumptions that the existentialist would need to further defend. Suppose, however, that it could successfully explain why the carefree Lady Macbeth’s life is inauthentic. It would nevertheless not work in the case of Elisabeth. Indeed, there is no plausible sense in which Liz is deceiving herself. Following the same line as before, one could argue that Liz starts with the true belief that those who victimized her do not deserve to be forgiven unconditionally, and that by editing her memory, she deliberately leads herself to acquire the false belief that they deserve to be, making this another case of moral self-deception. But this would contradict my assumption that there is a plurality of reasonable responses in such a case, and that both of these beliefs about the appropriateness of unconditionally forgiving are equally reasonable. If my assumption is correct, this appeal to moral self-deception cannot explain Liz’s case.
It thus seems that the existentialist and Frankfurtian accounts must deny that Liz’s choice and the life it leads to are inauthentic in any way. Indeed we are assuming that Liz’s decision to edit her memory is both honest and autonomous, and that she wholeheartedly endorses her desire to increase her general level of well-being. By contrast, I believe there is an important sense in which her choice is inauthentic. I will now try to explain why.
A Solution
I submit that by editing her memory, Liz fails to remain true to herself in circumstances when doing so would have been praiseworthy: she abandons an important part of her narrative identity, namely her natural disposition to withhold forgiveness of mistreatments that she had experienced as very serious. Her decision is inauthentic, not because it leads to an inappropriate response to mistreatments of that sort (we are assuming that Sonya’s response is not inappropriate), but because she thereby makes herself react differently from the way she would otherwise react, and which we are assuming would also be reasonable.
Some clarifications are needed here. First, the relevant counterfactual in this case is not e.g. how Liz would react if she fitted her model of the ideal human being, for the reasons given before: it is Liz’s actual traits and dispositions that define her true self before she edits her memory, not those she wishes she had. Secondly, even though we cannot say that it is inappropriate to unconditionally forgive people who have mistreated you in this manner, it is correct to say that unconditional forgiveness is not what Liz’s individual nature or subjectivity makes it appropriate for her to do. I want to say that her natural affective response gives her a reason to withhold forgiveness, and also, given the value of authenticity, a related reason not to edit her memory. I don’t necessarily wish to claim that this is also what Liz has most reason to do. Given that a possible gain in well-being is at stake for her, we may debate whether the demands of authenticity are decisive in her case, or whether they are outweighed by reasons of self-interest.
I would suggest, however, that we ought to seriously consider the former possibility. Indeed, I am not fully convinced that considerations of well-being will necessarily tip the balance of reasons in favour of memory editing. No one else need be harmed if Liz chooses to remain true to herself and, as a result, does not forgive her offenders. Let us assume that whether or not Liz has forgiven them is no concern of theirs, and that Liz has no interest in retaliation. We should also note that there seem to be ways for her to promote her well-being without interfering with her memories. For instance, rather than wishing she didn’t have such unpleasant memories, she could try and give them a new, more positive meaning, seeing herself as a “survivor” who managed to overcome great hardships, and enjoying the contrast between her happy present situation and her good future prospects on the one hand, and the painful times of her teenage years on the other. It is thus not clear that memory editing must make a significant difference when it comes to promoting Liz’s well-being.
Liz’s case points to a broader concern about technologies like MMTs: the concern that they might be used by people to change the reasonable affective responses they have to certain events, to replace them by other responses, for reasons that are less than compelling. For instance, the latter responses—even though they might be reasonable as well—might simply happen to be more in keeping with the social ethos, or they might unjustifiably be presented as the only ones compatible with a happy life. By editing their memory, highly sensitive people like Liz might bring themselves to respond to life’s events as if they were thick-skinned and easy-going. This can be presented as a worry about reducing human diversity, but it can also be understood as a threat to our authenticity. Using MMTs in such ways would prevent people from remaining true to themselves when doing so would be valuable. We might want to say to Liz: you are fully entitled to feeling the way you feel about what your bullies did to you, and your particular sensitivity is valuable and worthy of respect. And even though Sonya’s sensitivity might also be valuable in a different way, there is no good reason for you to want to be like her.
Let me make it clear that the concern I have put forward is not one about “artificial” vs. “natural” means of enhancing well-being, even though the debate about authenticity is sometimes framed in those terms. My remarks can equally be applied to ways of changing our emotional responses that do not involve the use of technology or pharmacology. Suppose for instance that Liz could blunt the vividness of her memories in exactly the same way by repeating positive mantras every day. If we assume that this method worked by directly (though gradually) blunting the emotional impact of her memories, without first appealing to her rational capacities and changing some of her beliefs, then all of my remarks about memory editing would still hold.
I would explain the inauthenticity of the carefree Lady Macbeth along the same lines as Liz’s. By blunting the vividness of her painful memory, Lady Macbeth deliberately interferes with her disposition to respond to the reason she has to feel guilty, a disposition that is an important part of her identity and that she should exercise. Had she declined to edit her memory for the right reasons (e.g. because she didn’t want to escape from what she recognized as justified feelings of guilt), she would have deserved some measure of praise. Her choice to use propranolol is therefore an inauthentic one on my account. And if we assume that its effects last for a sufficiently long period of time, her life as a whole will count as inauthentic, as she will then remain disconnected from the reasons she has to feel guilty, reasons to which she would have responded had she not blunted the emotional impact of her memories of the deed.
This might well be what the authors of
Beyond Therapy were getting at in their worries about “undermining our true identity”, but if so their phrasing is much too vague. They also write that “[a]ltering the formation of emotionally powerful memories risks...falsifying our perception and understanding of the world. It risks making shameful acts seem less shameful, or terrible acts less terrible, than they really are” [
35, p.228]. And indeed, part of what is wrong with the carefree Lady Macbeth is that she is unable to see her past crime in all its badness, and to respond by feeling guilt. The inauthenticity issue, however, is a slightly different one. Suppose Lady Macbeth was just a cold-blooded assassin, who felt no guilt whatsoever about the murder of Duncan. Clearly her perception of her own deed would be inappropriate and blameworthy, but I assume we wouldn’t call her inauthentic—we would just describe her as callous. What makes the epithet “inauthentic” applicable to the memory-editing Lady Macbeth is our assumption that she
would have experienced guilt had she not chosen to edit her memory, together with our belief that it is blameworthy to prevent yourself from experiencing guilt in such circumstances.
Implications of the Different Accounts for Scenarios 1–4: A Comparison
Let us assume that with the exception of Solomon, all agents in scenarios 1 to 4 meet DeGrazia’s conditions for autonomy (see “
Three Different Accounts”), and that they wholeheartedly endorse their choices and the preferences that guided them. Now let us ask: do the agents in these four scenarios end up living inauthentic lives as a consequence of modifying their memory? In a schematic form, here is a recapitulation of the answers provided to the question by, respectively, the account of authenticity as wholeheartedness, the existentialist account, and my own “true self” account (the four scenarios yield five different cases):
| Authenticity as wholeheartedness | Existentialist account | My own account |
Amnesiac Lady Macbeth | No | Yes | Yes |
Carefree Lady Macbeth | No | ? | Yes |
Elisabeth | No | No | Yes |
Carl | No | Yes | Yes |
Solomon | Yes | Yes | Yes |
The very same answers will apply to the question whether the agents make an inauthentic choice when deciding to manipulate their memory—except in the case of Solomon, whose choice will presumably qualify as authentic on all three accounts. By hypothesis, he wholeheartedly identifies with the first-order preferences that guide it, such as his desire to become more effective at doing his job. His choice is both honest and autonomous—even though he lacks relevant information about the effects of the enhancers when he starts taking them, he keeps using them even after he has learned about those effects. Finally, by choosing to enhance his memory, he is being true to his commitment to self-improvement, which is worthy of praise. The subsequent inauthenticity of Solomon’s life is not a matter of his having made an inauthentic choice, but it solely results from the unexpected side effects of the memory enhancers.
Regarding the memory editing scenarios, my own account is the only one that can uphold the charge of inauthenticity in all four cases. Since I find quite plausible the intuition that these agents are in an important sense making inauthentic choices and living inauthentic lives, I think this shows that my account has a useful role to play in assessing those cases. Again, I see it as a complement rather than a substitute to rival accounts. The verdicts yielded by these accounts are not incorrect, as they do capture other, legitimate uses of the notion of authenticity than my account does. What is incorrect, however, is to claim that these rival accounts tell us everything that needs to be said about the authenticity of the agents in my examples.
Intrinsic vs. Instrumental Value of Authenticity
Finally, let me point out that my criticism of such possible uses of memory editing isn’t utilitarian in nature, even though it is important to note the benefits that authenticity can bring with regard to human well-being. Unconditionally forgiving her former tormentors after she has edited her memory might for instance extinguish the motivation Liz would otherwise have had to join a campaign against bullying or against other forms of victimization, to which she could have made a significant contribution. Also, if more victims of such acts were willing to unconditionally forgive their tormentors, one possible deterrent might be lost. This shows that authentic decisions can sometimes be of instrumental value, yet I don’t think we need to make such assumptions about the consequences of Elisabeth’s decision in order to criticize it as inauthentic. Also, in Carl’s case, utilitarians should presumably embrace memory editing without any hesitation, since for them memory is only valuable instrumentally. By contrast, I would argue that there is something intrinsically valuable about remembering at least roughly correctly such important past experiences, and living one’s life in accordance with the knowledge provided by such memories. True, this value will have to be weighed against the possible negative value of the foreseeable consequences of such a state, and the latter might sometimes outweigh the former. As I have said, it might be permissible for Carl to erase his traumatic memories of abuse if this were his only means of escaping a significant amount of unnecessary suffering. Nevertheless, the value of accurate memories and of a life based on them should be acknowledged, even if it isn’t always decisive. It would also justify setting an order of priority among the possible ways of dealing with problems such as Carl’s experience of childhood abuse. Carl would have a reason to try and do so via therapy and counseling, even if it proved more arduous, than via memory editing. Were he to act on that reason, he would deserve some degree of praise for his authentic choice. And his doctors should encourage him to do so, though in the end the choice should probably be left up to him.