As an economist, I naturally thought about property rights. There are no preordained lists of natural resources waiting to be claimed. Yes, early humans laid claim to a cave or captured territory rich with food, but it was human declaration backed by social power or brute force that enforced such claims.
Today our laws and institutions, together with land surveyors, pound stakes in the ground, and make my property mine. The car is ours because it is registered to us in a database secured by government authority. Cars have embedded identifiers in whole (a VIN) and in part (part numbers). The property right to the car, even when the parts are changed, is established by databases that house these numbers. A brick looks like a brick, feels like a brick, and is used in ways bricks are used. Ownership of the brick is established by trade and it becomes mine when I purchase it to build a wall on my property. Change out a brick and the wall remains mine. Change out all bricks and it is still my wall.
But the question about Ali stumped me. He sheds millions of cells every day and they become the "property" of mites, plants, and whatever in nature recycles them. Clearly, there is a deeper question here. Ali remains himself and he is more than a walking talking collection of cells to which he has property rights. Like the car, codes are embedded in the cells that can identify him (DNA, e.g.). But that answer isn't satisfying; it misses the deeper point of the question. Ali is who he is, not just because of his DNA, but because he has a history, feelings, a community of family and friends, and aspirations that are not entirely dependent upon the particular cells that constitute his body at any one time.
Branden rarely accepted as fact things that weren't logically anchored in his mind. He once challenged his junior high teacher who claimed that the number represented by .999 (ad infinitum) was equal to the number 1.0. The teacher later described asymptotic convergence as an infinitely long curve forever approaching, but never actually touching a horizontal line. Branden argued that you can't have it both ways.
His conversation about bricks, our car, and his friend Ali was typical of his unusual queries. I became determined to understand, to the best of my ability, the answer to his question "what makes anything itself"? Property rights and (biological or digital) data don't really lead to a satisfying answer to the question.
It was our daughter, Deidre, who (unknowingly) led me to the answer that satisfied me. Deidre constantly surprised me with her natural ability to see the essence of things. Conversations with her are filled with insights that hit one with the impact of a punch line to a joke. You don't see it coming, but when it is there, you recognize she has cut right to the heart of an issue.
This talent has its downsides. She has a hard time telling long jokes. I told her a joke attributed to Ronald Reagan. He had addressed a group of lawyers explaining that FDA researchers in Washington DC began substituting lawyers for rats in their experiments. Why? There are more of them, you don't get attached to them in the laboratory, and there are some things rats just won't do.
Deidre retold the joke: "So, there are these white rats with red eyes and, ... uh ... they won't do what they are supposed to do but lawyers will." The joke had evoked a vivid image of the red-eyed white rats and a lab full of lawyers doing whatever they were told to do. The punch line was an incidental detail appended to the essence of what Deidre experienced listening to the joke. And that steered me towards the answer I was seeking.
A brick is a brick not just because it looks like a brick and feels like a brick. A brick is what made up the house the big bad wolf couldn't blowdown. It is what angry protesters throw at things they hate. It has a unique history in one's mind and a physical place in one's yard. The essence of a brick is everything a brick has been in one's experience.
Each of us is familiar with bricks because we are biologically similar enough to be able to identify and name objects that have familiar characteristics. But when we encounter bricks, our brain accesses, consciously or unconsciously, uniquely personal memories of our experiences with bricks. The essence of bricks is made up of these experiences. The essence of something is not the "picture" our senses transmit to our brains but is a by-product of model-dependent realism; according to Steven Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow we cannot know what is really "out there", we can only "know" the model our brain assembles from its sensory input. Our mental model of a brick is the sum total of all the information we have acquired about bricks.
Ali is Ali, not only because the momentary collection of his cells look like Ali. He is Ali because of his history, his relationships with others, his personality that evolves over the years. The cells, both dead and alive, are just the vehicle that allowed older versions of Ali to become newer versions of Ali. Yes, information is retained in Ali's cells by virtue of his DNA and other biological elements, but that the essence of Ali. Ali's friends have a model of Ali embedded in their brains that is independent of his present form. The essence of Ali is uniquely personal to each person (or animal) that knows Ali.
I envy Deidre but I cannot aspire to match her ability to effortlessly see the essence beneath the form. It is a source of great creativity, humor, and, at times I am sure, her discomforts. It makes her a great writer, an excellent photographer, and a very creative problem solver. I love the insights that I get from her unique perspectives. Without her, I would (sadly) still be pondering Branden's question thinking about property rights, quantum physics, entanglement, and the nature of material things.
Thank you, Branden. You taught me to listen to children more deeply and thoughtfully. Thank you, Deidre. You taught me that the words and pictures we wrap around our experiences often cloak the essence of what's really there. My life has been greatly enriched by both of you.