The Identity That Persists: I. The Same Participant, Different Processes

We have been following a participant.

First, we encountered it within the figure, where its relation to Process gives it a particular participant role. Then we followed it across successive figures, where it became visible as an instantial participant: a participant that persists through the unfolding of an instance.

There is, however, a small complication.

The participant does not necessarily keep doing the same thing.

Indeed, once we look beyond our earlier concentration on saying and sensing, the same instantial participant may occur in quite different roles:

Medium in one figure,

Agent in another,

Beneficiary in another,

Range in another.

At first this might seem troublesome.

If the participant persists, shouldn't its role persist too?

No.

The distinction is between the participant and its participation.

A participant can remain identifiable while the way in which it participates changes.

Consider:

I received the message.

I sent a reply.

You asked me a question.

My answer clarified the issue.

The participant associated with I, me and my persists across the sequence. But its participation varies.

This gives us an important refinement of the notion of persistence:

Persistence is not invariance.

To persist does not mean to remain unchanged. It means that change can be understood as occurring through or to a participant that remains identifiable across that change.

This is why the distinction between the Nucleus and the instantial participant matters.

Within a figure, the Nucleus binds Process and Medium:

unfolding + persistence.

Across figures, the instantial participant provides continuity through changing participation.

The Process changes.

The participant's role changes.

The participant itself may change.

Yet we can still construe the succession as belonging to one participant.

And this is where our next question begins.

For if the participant can change without ceasing to be construed as the same participant, then perhaps identity is not fundamentally a matter of remaining unchanged.

Perhaps identity is a way of construing persistence through change.

That would give us a rather different starting point for thinking about identity.

We need not begin by asking:

What makes something identical to itself?

We can begin with the much simpler question:

What allows us to construe different participations as belonging to the same participant?

That question takes us directly from persistence towards identity.

And, once again, the machine has given us a particularly clear place to look.