CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

The philosophical problem of personal identity what makes a person to be thatperson and not another one has been identified with the persistence question: the search for the necessary and sufficient conditions for a past or future being to be certain present being. In English-language philosophy, the debates about identity over time, treated by analytical metaphysics mostly, generated two main and mutually exclusive conceptions: the biological view and the psychological view. According to the former, personal identity relies on biological continuity: to be the same person is to be the same body or biological organism. According to the latter, it is a psychological relation continuity of memories or other mental features what makes a person to persist as that person. In this framework, plenty of references to thought experiments as brains transplants or mental states transference can be found, but they exhibit no connection to practical problems and scientific outcomes that could have consequences regarding the problem of identity. On the other hand, the question of personal identity has acquired a particular relevance in some concrete situations, as adoption or in vitro fertilization. These cases are mostly studied in their social, political and legal dimensions, but with little participation of philosophy. Although it is usually admitted that science has much to say regarding those problems, traditional philosophy of science has not paid attention to them. The general purpose of our work is to involve the philosophy of science in these practical problems of personal identity, because we think it can shed some light on the metaphysical debate. Wealso intend to include some scientific outcomes in the debate, since it is usually considered that contemporary scientific knowledge supports a genetic approach regarding personal identity. This approach is widely used in some social practices with legal an forensic purposes, but again with little philosophical reflection.In order to involve the philosophy of science and some scientific outcomes in the metaphysical debate, we will focus on the Argentinean case of the approximately 500 children who were appropriated during the most recent dictatorship (1976-1983): they were kidnapped from their biological parents who later become detained-disappeared persons and were brought up without knowing their origin by substitute families, usually related to the appropriators. Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo (Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo) is a human rights civil organization founded in 1977 by the grandmothers of the disappeared children. The objective of the organization was ?and still is? to find the robbed children ? today adults? and that they could recover their origin families. In 1977, in the very scenario of the dictatorship, the organization has denounced the existence of a systematic plan of appropriation of children; in 2012 the argentine justice considered proved the existence of such a plan. It can be said that the purpose of the systematic plan was double: on the one hand, some robbed children were appropriated by members of the military, achieving the objective of illegal adoption. On the other hand, the objective was also to separate thedetained-disappeared persons from their sons and daughters, producing an irreparable harm, with the ulterior motive of depriving the children of their identities. Abuelas insists on this: the systematic plan had the purpose of nullifying children?s identities.So far, 121 sons and daughters of disappeared persons were found thanks toAbuelas? search. Its work led to the creation of the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team (1986) a scientific organization devoted to develop forensic anthropology techniques to locate and identify the corpses of the detained-disappeared persons, and the National Commission for the Right to Identity (1993), which coordinates the National Genetic Data Bank containing the genetic maps of the families that have disappeared children. Also as the result of Abuelas? activity, the ?grandparenthood index? has been developed as ascientific index that measures the probability of a biological link between children and grandparents in absence of the parents. In the legal field, this activity led to the inclusion of the Articles 7, 8 and 11 informally called ?Argentine articles? in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, directed to establish the ?right to identity?. This emphasis on identity led to some cultural initiatives, such as ?Rock for identity? and ?Theater for identity?.Whenever appropriation is discussed in academic investigations and in nonacademic writings (such as political speeches, public documents and newspapers), identity is the fundamental notion. Identity is considered mutable from the appropriators perspective: the identity of a baby or child can be removed or nullified. The main objective of an act of appropriation can be said to be to ?change the sign? of an identity: if there wasany trace of the parents within the appropriated children, it had to be erased and replaced; a ?new identity? must be imposed to them. From the Abuelas´ perspective, identity associated with family, origin, blood and truth seems to be something that can berecovered. In this rhetoric, genetics plays a central role: biology has the last word about identity. The genetic code of a biological organism works in this case as a principle of persistence over time, it seems to account perfectly for identity, and can be considered as an enlightening version of the biological criterion of personal identity within the metaphysicaldiscussion.Finally, the political strategy of Abuelas had laudable effects in the pursuit of justice and the promotion of social consciousness. However, the notion of identity involved has been criticized for being a reductionist conception: the essence of identity is given by genetics and it is a task of science to discover such an essence. This scientist conception of identity may have undesirable consequences if transferred to a different context. It is our purpose to pose the following question: Can philosophy of science offer conceptual resources to design a scientific supported but non-reductionist concept of identity, capable of retaining the political success already achieved by the activity of Abuelas?

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