When you open your mind to the impossible, sometimes you find the truth.
—Walter Bishop
J. J. Abrams’s other hit sci-fi series, Fringe, presents the viewer with a central philosophical puzzle: in the Fringe universe “there’s more than one of everything.” That includes people. In the mythology of the show, duplicate characters from two alternate universes square off in a showdown. In each universe there are copies of the main characters; they look, speak, and think much the same as their doubles. How would a friend or loved one know whether you had been replaced by a physically identical doppelganger? What is it that makes you, you? That is, what makes you the same person today that you were yesterday? Or, for that matter, what makes you the same person who experienced losing your first tooth as a child? Certainly, something makes you you over time. So what is it? Are we each identical to some body, or some mind, or some brain, or some conjunction of all of these things? Or are we something else entirely? Philosophers have asked these questions for generations. The philosophical study of such questions is called the theory of personal identity. It is these questions that form the basis of this chapter.1
Upon first inspection, it appears that different events in the Fringe universe suggest different answers to this question of what we are. For instance, FBI special agent Olivia Dunham is for a time able to communicate with her deceased FBI partner and lover, John Scott, whose memories and personality become temporarily stored in Olivia’s consciousness (season 1, “Pilot” and “The Dreamscape”). This appears to imply either that John is not a person or that in the Fringe universe(s) other, numerically distinct persons can somehow live within our bodies (which in turn suggests that they could survive the loss of their bodies). In contrast, other events suggest that persons are, at least in part, identical with bodies. For instance, the show depicts “shape-shifters,” seemingly evil foot soldiers from an alternate universe that are capable of becoming other people, like FBI agent Charlie Parker, complete with their host’s memories and mannerisms, by somehow assimilating their physiology. Moreover, other events suggest that persons are essentially either heads or brains. In one episode the foot soldiers are charged with stealing cryogenically preserved heads while in search of the head of their leader, Thomas Newton. Once they find his head, they successfully reanimate Newton, who is presumably a person, by grafting his head onto what we later learn is a partially robotic humanoid body (season 2, “Momentum Deferred”; season 3, “Do Shapeshifters Dream of Electric Sheep?”). These and many other events suggest that determining what persons are in the Fringe universe(s) will be quite challenging or maybe even that there is not a unified theory of persons underlying the show’s mythology.
Even so, encouraged by the fact that the Fringe Division team often attempts the unimaginable and succeeds, we will forge on. It is surely imaginable that we could answer the question of what persons are in the Fringe universe(s). Moreover, it appears that Fringe presents us with many physically and psychologically traumatic events that reveal a way to determine an answer to the question of what we, persons, are. By analyzing the things that people in Fringe can endure, we can attempt to determine what persons are by process of elimination. For example, if we determined that persons can survive losing a limb, like Nina Sharp for instance, this would imply that having the particular limbs we each have is unessential to being the persons that we are. That is, we can each imagine maintaining self-consciousness prior to, during, and after the loss of a limb. By considering which of our parts we could survive losing in this manner, we should be able to discover which of our parts are vital to our continued existence as persons. By analyzing the traumatic events that people survive in the show, we can also attempt to determine which, if any, theory of persons appears to be true in the Fringe universe(s). For every particular event under consideration, we should each ask ourself, “Could I survive that if I were in a Fringe universe?” That is, according to what happens in the show, could you, for example, survive your bodily death and communicate with Olivia, like John Scott? Alternatively, could you survive having your head severed, cryogenically frozen, and grafted onto a borrowed human body, like Newton?
As we have said, each of the distinct events of Fringe may at first seem suggestive of a different answer to the question of what we are. Still, given that there is an overall trend of connecting the events of Fringe to provide the viewer with an ever more coherent explanation for what occurs, we assume that there is a coherent theory of persons underlying the Fringe mythology. Thus, by considering the answers to the question of what we could survive, identifying the account of persons the answer suggests, and then considering whether that account can explain all other known events of the show, we set out to determine what account of persons must be assumed true to allow for the happenings of Fringe. Although whether that theory is true of our universe will depend on the degree to which the actual universe resembles the universe(s) of Fringe, our examination should also shed some light on which theory of the nature of persons is most plausible in general.
Fringe is often characterized, even by its own creators, as the story of a mad scientist. Accordingly, the show strives to capture cutting-edge scientific thought while pushing it forward into the realm of fiction. Because the show maintains a certain calculated level of scientific plausibility, we should start our search for the theory of persons that underlies the Fringe mythology by considering those that are scientifically plausible. Many contemporary philosophers working on theories of personal identity strive for such scientific plausibility in their theorizing. These thinkers are often inclined to look for naturalistic explanations of phenomena and to shun what they see as supernatural explanation. An explanation is naturalistic in the relevant sense if it involves only those entities, properties, and relations that scientists could verify in the laboratory.
If, for example, you were to throw a baseball as far as you could, as many times as you wished, we know that each time it would eventually fall to Earth. One could explain this phenomenon in a nonnaturalistic way; for instance, by speculating that angels abhor the sight of baseballs flying through the air. Thus, every time you throw the baseball, an angry angel grabs it and pulls it to the ground. This explanation is nonnaturalistic because its plausibility requires the existence of angels, which science has yet to confirm. Alternatively, one could explain the baseballs falling in a more naturalistic way. The enormous mass of Earth causes a warping or bending of the spacetime surrounding it, and since the ball is in that surrounding space-time, it gets caught in the “groove” and pulled uniformly toward Earth. This latter explanation relies on entities (e.g., Earth, the ball, space-time), properties (e.g., having mass), and relations (e.g., warping) that scientists have confirmed for us. Thus, in the case of the baseball, a philosopher who wishes to establish his or her scientific and naturalistic bona fides will doubtless reject the first sort of explanation (involving angels) and prefer the second.
What, then, does a naturalistic theory of personal identity look like? At the very least it will be one that uses only those sorts of entities confirmed by science. It will not, for instance, follow Descartes in supposing that each person is his or her immaterial soul, because scientists cannot empirically verify the existence of immaterial things.2 One contemporary theory of persons that fits the bill for being scientifically plausible is the animal theory, or animalism (for short). Put simply, animalism is the view that a human person is identical to a particular human animal (a member of the species Homo sapiens).3 The intuitive argument in favor of this theory is quite strong. Whenever you look in the mirror, you see a human animal looking back at you. Whenever you are alone in a room, there will be a human animal in that room, right where you are. Whenever the animal body you associate yourself with is wounded, you, and nobody else, feel the pain from that wound. Furthermore, the view has scientific merit insofar as it entails the claim that persons are an entity familiar to science, namely a certain sort of mammalian organism.4
Despite its intuitive and scientific appeal, however, animalism has its drawbacks. These drawbacks stem from the core animalist claim that each person is identical with his or her animal body. By reducing personal identity to the identity of the human organism in this manner, the theory constrains the ways in which human persons can conceivably survive. To explain by point of contrast, consider the Cartesian theory that we are souls for a moment. As mentioned above, according to Descartes, each person is an immaterial being, a soul, separable from any physical body. Consequently, if the Cartesian view is true, the destruction of the physical body need not necessitate the destruction of the person associated with that body. Alternatively, if, as the animalist tells us, we are merely human organisms and are thus inseparable from our bodies, it follows that the destruction of the human organism that is you would entail the destruction of the person that is you.
Although animalism is scientifically plausible, this implication of the view suggests that it is not the theory underlying the Fringe mythology. Rather, many events of the show suggest that animalism is false in the universe(s) of Fringe. For one thing, as mentioned, John Scott survives the destruction of his physical body, cohabitating Olivia’s mind (or brain). She experiences his memories and feelings, recalls things only he knew, and even speaks to him during her LSD-fueled sessions in Walter’s sensory deprivation tank. If animalism were true in the Fringe universe(s), John would have died when the human organism he was identical with died. Moreover, what happens between Olivia and John does not stand as the only counterexample to animalism. Rather, the troubles go further for the theory as we are presented with other events that echo fictional brain-transplant puzzles of which many contemporary philosophers are quite fond.
The generic version of the relevant philosophical puzzle goes like this: imagine that medicine were to progress to the level where it is possible to remove a human brain from one head and place it the head of a donor with no loss of functionality whatsoever. Now imagine further that you have a twin and that you and your twin both suffer a horrific accident. As a result, your twin’s brain is destroyed but her body is undamaged, while your body is catastrophically injured but your brain is fully functional. The doctor, seeing a chance to save at least one of you, opts for a transplant. Your brain is placed in the head of your twin. Now, when your family walks into the ICU, whom do you suppose they are going to find awake in the hospital bed? Most of us have the strong intuition that they are going to find you. Accordingly, many philosophers conclude that you go with your psychology, and not your body. Assuming that your psychology goes where your brain goes, it follows that you are the person who wakes in the hospital bed after the operation.
In the Fringe universe(s), this intuition regarding brain transplants is echoed in the story of Thomas Newton, the leader from the Other Side. Much like in our transplant case, his soldiers frantically search to find his cryogenically frozen head, believing that when that head is placed on a donor body, the resulting person will be Newton. Of course, they are proven correct when Newton’s head is indeed grafted onto a donor body and the resulting person is indeed Newton (season 2, “Momentum Deferred”). This too suggests that animalism is not true in the Fringe universe(s), because animalists have a different answer to the transplant case. Since they believe that a human person is identical to a human animal, not a brain or a psychology, they conclude that in the transplant case you remain the now-brainless organism. The animalist denies that you go with your psychology. Rather, according to animalism, losing a brain is no different from losing an arm in terms of its effect on identity, if animalism is true.
The opponents of animalism take our strongly held intuitions about brain transplants as very strong evidence against that theory. Equally, it seems that the writers of Fringe also have a different theory of personal identity in mind, given the success of Newton’s head transplant. Though we could each conceivably survive the loss of an arm and each remain the person that we are, like Nina Sharpe, intuitively we could not survive the loss of our psychology. That is, even if we could survive the loss of our brains by having our psychology stored on a hard drive or in a synthetic robot brain, it seems that we could not survive the loss of our psychology. In line with these intuitions, contemporary philosopher Derek Parfit, for instance, famously argues that personal identity is not what we care about when considering questions of survival in cases such as transplants.5
Parfit contends that what we are really concerned with is some other relation, psychological continuity or connectedness. Thus he suggests that persons are just a continuous psychology. If this is true, then it needs only to be the case that you have the same psychology in order to remain yourself when you awake in your twin’s body. Similarly, if this is true, then the revived Newton needs only to be psychologically continuous with the predecapitated and cryogenically frozen Newton to be the same person. Historically speaking, Parfit’s sort of theory derives from the philosopher John Locke’s (1632–1704) conception of our respective personal identities consisting in our own personal psychologies. As animalism appears inconsistent with the events of Fringe, the Lockean psychological theory looks to be a contender for the theory of persons that underlies the show’s mythology.
Among the many questions we face in trying to piece together what is going on in the Fringe universe(s), central is that of who Walter is. And this is not only a puzzle that we, the viewers, are trying to solve alone, but also one that Walter himself often struggles with. After a series of events that left his lab assistant dead, left Walter mentally unfit to stand trial for her death, and led to his subsequent seventeen-year institutionalization in St. Claire’s Mental Hospital, Walter isn’t even himself to himself. This is, as we learn, because he has forgotten things—even universe-altering things. Because he is missing memories, his psychology, or personal mental life, is incomplete. Though we have reason to doubt even that he has the same body as he once did, given the many extraordinary events of the show, by the second season we can be reasonably certain that he does have the same body even though we learn that he is missing some portions of his brain (season 2, “Grey Matters”).
In any case, in a very important sense the “old Walter” is no longer there. To our question, “could I survive that?” Walter’s situation suggests an account that answers this in the negative, due to the loss of memories. That is, if you were missing many or even all of your memories, if you were psychologically incomplete like Walter, it seems reasonable to believe that some or all of you would have perished. Thus Walter’s “loss of himself” is suggestive of the truth of what many refer to as the “memory criterion” of personal identity, which is more correctly characterized as the psychological theory of personal identity. Locke, the progenitor of the psychological theory, explains the view succinctly: “To find wherein personal identity consists, we must consider what ‘person’ stands for; which, I think, is a thinking intelligent being, that has reason and reflection, and can consider itself as itself, the same thinking thing, in different times and places.”6
According to Locke’s psychological theory, our personal identity consists of our self-consciousness. Moreover, it is via each of our personal memories, our being cognizant of our thinking at past moments, that we are aware that we are the same person now as we were at those times in the past. It is improper to call this account the “memory criterion,” as it is sometimes called, because it is not just having some particular set of memories that makes you yourself to yourself. Rather, it is, as Parfit reiterates in the contemporary literature, having a continuous awareness of being you to yourself both in the past and right now. Locke explains this central role of continuous consciousness with regard to personal identity and also makes clear that we can be the same person without having the same body, saying, “The same consciousness that makes a man be himself to himself, personal identity depends on that only, whether it be annexed only to one individual substance, or can be continued in a succession of several substances.”7
It is worth noting that Locke’s view of identity consisting of psychological sameness stems from his finding that the identity of things in general (regular everyday objects like tables and chairs) results from our noticing that there is never more than one thing in one particular place at a particular time. From this, he says, “we rightly conclude that whatever exists anywhere at any time, excludes all of the same kind, and is there itself alone.”8 This is a statement of simple logical identity, that a = a, 1 = 1, Olivia = Olivia. It is instructive to note this feature of Locke’s theory of identity because it is consistent with Fringe mythology, according to which “there’s more than one of everything.” Recall that even the duplicates of things and people in the Fringe universe(s) are distinct, even if not in time, in space (Walter ≠ Walternate). Even if two things or people appear identical, as with the familiar characters and their alters in Fringe, we can tell that they are distinct owing to their being located in different parts of space—or in seemingly spatially distinct universes.9 Locke finds that our ability to know the identity of any particular thing across time comes from comparing our present experience of that thing with memories of past encounters of it. Likewise, our ability to know our own personal identity comes from comparing our present experience of our self with memories of past encounters of it—that is, past encounters of our consciousness being “there alone itself.”
Accordingly, it appears that the psychological theory being true in the Fringe universe(s) explains why, for instance, Walter is “not himself” to himself. This is because he has lost memories and, for that reason, lacks psychological continuity. Walter cannot compare his present self-consciousness with many memories of past events in which he was also self-conscious. Rather, there are events that he himself was not present at because he himself has no concept of being there. Accordingly, Walter circa 1990 is a different person from Walter circa 2010 because those two Walters at different times are psychologically discontinuous. Furthermore, assuming the truth of psychological theory allows us to explain other events.
For one thing, we can explain how John Scott survives in Olivia’s mind after his bodily death. Remember that before John’s brain dies completely Walter synchronizes Olivia’s brain waves with John’s. Subsequently, she communicates with him by entering their collective subconscious, connected to him via electrodes while in a sensory deprivation tank in a drug-induced sleep state. After this procedure, and after John’s body is completely dead, we come to learn that he lives on in her. They are two persons in one body—not unlike genuine cases of multiple personality disorder in the real world. Thus it appears that John continues to communicate with Olivia because, following the procedure by which they shared consciousness, she retains his psychology.
For a time this procedure even results in Olivia mistaking John’s memories for her own, which further suggests that she is at least partially John to herself (season 1, “Safe”).10 Eventually Olivia is able to distinguish her own memories from John’s, and by recognizing that she is experiencing John’s memories she reconstructs John’s personal timeline of the events leading to his death. This, remember, is how she discovers that he had secretly become involved with a bioterrorist group in an attempt to end their attacks. After learning this, in her last encounters with him, again in an induced sleep state in Walter’s sensory deprivation tank, she seems to find peace in knowing that John had genuinely loved her and hadn’t betrayed her (season 1, “The Transformation”). There is no indication that Olivia experiences John’s memories after this. Thus we can reasonably entertain the hypothesis that because she is more psychologically complete, having found some closure, she no longer needs John’s memories to make sense of her own memories regarding John. Whether or not this is what we are supposed to take away from these events, there are many other events in the show that are also explainable in terms of the psychological theory.
Midway into the second season we know that Peter Bishop is not Walter’s biological son, but the son of alternate-universe doppelganger Walternate. Before this is confirmed, our initial clues to Peter’s true identity come in the form of either his lacking certain childhood memories or his possessing different memories of his childhood than Walter seems to have. For instance, he doesn’t remember being sick and doesn’t remember collecting coins as child to take his mind off of his illness, let alone remember his favorite coin (season 1, “There’s More Than One of Everything”). This is consistent with the psychological theory, given that Peter and his (now dead) alter are distinct people, precisely because they are psychologically discontinuous people. Thus the fact that we find out Peter’s true identity by learning about the memories that he is missing further confirms that some sort of psychological theory is entailed in the Fringe mythology.
Furthermore, it seems that we can tell all of the alternates apart from their counterparts, whom we know from this world, only by noticing that they each have different memories and, hence, distinct psychologies. Prior to season 3 this is implied in a conversation in the finale of season 2 between Peter and Olivia’s alternate, let’s call her “Fauxlivia,” as Walter dubs her (season 3, “Reciprocity”).11 After Fauxlivia delivers Peter to his “real family” home, where he stays while on the Other Side, recall that this conversation ensues (season 2, “Over There, Part 2”):
FAUXLIVIA: What’s she like?
PETER: Who?
FAUXLIVIA: Me.
PETER: She’s a lot like you. Darker in the eyes maybe. . . . She’s always trying to make up for something. . . . “Right” some imaginary wrong. Haunted, I guess. Maybe she’s nothing like you at all.
In this scene, Peter seems to start by considering how Olivia and Fauxlivia are physically similar but quickly realizes that they are indeed different people, distinguishable by their respective psychologies. Peter can tell them apart because Olivia is somehow “haunted” and Fauxlivia, it seems to him, is not—a distinction Peter later blissfully overlooks when he begins dating Fauxlivia and unknowingly impregnates her in season 3.12 Accordingly, later in the same episode Olivia and Fauxlivia come face to face. As Olivia holds her alter at gunpoint while trying to gain her confidence and help, we learn that they are in fact not only spatially but also psychologically discontinuous. They each reveal their having different personal memories and, hence, being different people, owing to their home worlds being dramatically dissimilar. Whereas Olivia is close with her sister, Rachel, and niece, Ella, Fauxlivia’s sister died in childbirth. So, too, we learn that Fauxlivia’s mother is still alive, though we know that Olivia’s mother has passed. These, among other things, have amounted to Olivia and Fauxlivia being different people, each with her own unique psychology.
Later, in season 3, Olivia’s and Fauxlivia’s distinctive memories play the central role in allowing, and in some cases disallowing, the viewer to tell them apart. Even when Olivia and Fauxlivia are made to look exactly like each other, undergoing complete physical transformations to remain undetected in each other’s respective universe, they remain distinguishable via their unique psychologies. They each look like the other, to the point that Olivia dons Fauxlivia’s distinctive neck tattoo and Fauxlivia removes that same tattoo. Still, even though they are so physically indistinguishable that even Peter mistakes Fauxlivia for Olivia and has a romantic relationship with her, believing she is Olivia, for the duration of the third season, we can distinguish Olivia and Fauxlivia from each other via their unique psychologies.
After she is injected with “B-lymphocytes” and has the majority of her memories replaced with Fauxlivia’s, Olivia does live Fauxlivia’s life and believes it is her own for a period of time (season 3, “Olivia” and “The Plateau”). Thus, in accordance with the psychological theory, it seems she becomes Fauxlivia, even to herself, by (almost) fully assimilating Fauxlivia’s psychology. However, it is also because Olivia retains her unique memories of Peter and Ella that she is able to recognize herself as Olivia, reclaim her real personal identity, and eventually escape Fauxlivia’s universe and return to her own.13 Similar suggestion of the assumption of the psychological theory is found in the season 3 episode “6B.”
In that episode widow Alice Merchant has been in contact with a man she believes is the ghost of her recently deceased husband, Derek Merchant. We learn that Alice is actually in contact with Derek’s alter from the other universe and that the haunting physical anomalies experienced by the residents of the Rosencrantz Building, where Alice lives, are the result of a “crack” between the universes that Alice and Dereknate’s contact has begun to open. What is of interest in this case for the purposes at hand is how Alice is able to recognize that Dereknate is not her deceased Derek. As Dereknate appears as an apparition in front of Alice, Olivia, and Peter, the following conversation ensues:
DEREKNATE: Alice, I miss you so much. And the girls miss you.
ALICE: We never had children.
DEREKNATE: Of course we did.
ALICE: No. I’m not your wife. Your wife is gone. And so is my Derek.
How does Alice know that the man she is speaking with, who is identical to her Derek in nearly every way, is not in fact Derek? Because Derek would have different memories and a different psychology! He wouldn’t know anything of their girls, because they didn’t have any.
Each of these occurrences is consistent with the psychological theory and thus suggests that the psychological theory is true in the Fringe universe(s). However, as you may have already noticed, there are events in Fringe that we cannot explain in terms of the psychological theory. More precisely, there are events that we cannot explain without some modification of the psychological theory. Perhaps most conspicuous is all of the strange brain surgeries that occur, like the removal of pieces of Walter’s brain by Newton and Bell, which changes Walter’s psychology. Initially this appears to be inconsistent with the pure psychological theory, which allowed for occurrences like John’s psychology persisting in Olivia’s brain. This is because it implies that our personal psychology is somehow tied to our particular brain. That is, Walter’s psychology is altered by physical alterations to his, and nobody else’s, brain. However, a variation of the psychological theory seems to make room for the many events of Fringe involving brains and brain parts being transplanted.
The events of the Fringe universe(s) present us with counterexamples to both the animal theory and the psychological theory. In doing so they also suggest a hybrid theory of personal identity that some philosophers have embraced to capture the benefits of both of those theories while avoiding their weaknesses. According to such a hybrid theory, we are identical to neither purely psychological nor purely biological entities, but rather some conjunction of both (or a conjunction of parts of both). One such hybrid view that many contemporary philosophers have found compelling is what we will call the brain theory.
According to proponents of the brain theory, we are identical with psychologically functioning brains.14 Psychological functioning is central to the brain theory. It is important to note that persons are not supposed to be identical with just any brain, according to the brain theory. For instance, an individual in a persistent vegetative coma lacks personal identity if the brain theory is true. This is because such individuals have a brain, but it is not a psychologically functioning brain. Thus individuals with vegetatively functioning brains are (presumably) not aware of themselves, as their brains have lost the capacity for psychology. In such cases, the person who was there previously, when his or her brain was functioning normally, has ceased to exist, if the brain theory is true.
The brain theory appears to be a more complete theory of the persons of Fringe than both of the previously considered theories, because it seems to provide tenable explanations for persons surviving as they do in Fringe that the other theories cannot. First, assuming that the brain theory is true allows us to explain the way in which John Scott survives the death of his body and brain. He lives on because his psychology is transferred to another functioning brain, Olivia’s, which, at least temporarily, supports his continued existence. What happens there is—speaking roughly, and in view of the fact that we do not know the specifics of the physical procedure involved—like downloading an MP3 file (John) from an old, “dying” player (John’s brain) onto another player (Olivia’s brain). Thus, speaking analogically, his psychology can “play” in Olivia’s brain because Walter synchronized their brainwaves prior to John’s death, thus endowing Olivia’s brain with this capability. Similarly, though the transfer process is more mysterious, William Bell returns to life as a function of Olivia’s brain after his bodily death (season 3, “Lysergic Acid Diethylamide”). The brain theory is also consistent with Walter’s attempt to transfer Bell’s consciousness from Olivia into a host computer—a synthetic brain.
Furthermore, the brain theory appears to overcome the difficulties the brain transplant case presented for animalism. As we strongly intuit that we each go with our personal psychology in such hypothetical scenarios, it is consistent that we each go where our psychologically functioning brain goes. Since you are, according the brain theory, a psychologically functioning brain, it follows that you will go with your brain if your brain is transplanted into some other body. Thus the brain theory also implies explanations for both the actions of Newton’s soldiers in their frantic search for his frozen head and, equally, Newton’s apparent psychological continuity after having his head thawed and grafted onto a new body. Furthermore, assuming that the brain theory is true in the Fringe universe(s) suggests that the alteration in Walter’s personality results from his loss of brain tissue. Walter even suggests that he believes that some variation of the brain theory is true when referring to the effects of these procedures on his brain. For instance, he says to William Bell, “I’ve lost . . . seventeen years in a mental institution, William. Seventeen years! And, even now, I’m still incomplete. I forget things. Uh, names. Places. Connections that I used to be able to make so easily. They just . . . they just dangle, just outside of my reach. I know what you did to me. I know that you cut out pieces of my brain!” (season 2, “Over There, Part 2”).
It is consistent with the brain theory that alterations in the physical makeup of the brain will necessitate an alteration of its functioning and, ipso facto, an alteration of the person concerned. Moreover, the brain theory seems to fit with many of our intuitions about personal identity, both within the context of the Fringe universe(s) and also within the context our own world. However, this is not to imply that theory is not without its share of counterintuitive implications. For one thing, according to the brain theory none of us was ever a fetus, or even a very young child. Rather, if the brain theory is true we each came into existence much later, when our brains began to function psychologically. For another thing, if the theory is true none of us has ever seen ourself in the mirror or held a loved one in our arms. This is because according to this theory we are functions of brains, and brains and brain functions do not have faces or arms.
To proponents of the brain theory, however, these are not serious impediments, because the theory’s advantages seem to far outstrip these worries. Equally, regarding the Fringe universe(s)—where there are human/creature hybrids, shape-shifters, doppelgangers, persons with superhuman powers, seemingly eternal children, and so on—these consequences of the view are tolerable. This is because assuming that the brain theory underlies the Fringe mythology appears to allow us to explain each of the various means by which people survive in the show.
Many of the major events of Fringe suggest an endorsement of the brain theory. It seems that in the Fringe universe(s) persons are their continuous psychologies, a result of the physical functions of their brains or brain parts. We seem to be able to explain all of the happenings of the show by assuming that the brain theory is true. We can explain how John Scott goes on after the death of his body and even his brain. This is because John’s psychology continues as a function of Olivia’s brain, made possible by her “brainwaves” being synced with his prior to his brain’s cessation of functioning. Likewise, we can explain how Newton has a different body, and for some duration no body at all, but retains a continuous psychology. He just goes where his brain goes, his continuous psychology owing to his retaining the same functional brain. Sure, the functioning of his brain is suspended while his head is cryogenically frozen, but it is a plausible assumption that this is just a pause in brain function and not a cessation. This assumption is, we imagine, why people are cryogenically frozen in the first place. We can even retain our explanation of why Peter’s missing memories suggest that he is not Walter’s biological son. This is, of course, because Peter and his alter have different psychologies, because they have physically distinct brains. Moreover, we can retain our explanation for Walter’s being different than he was prior to the events of 1991 that left him psychologically incomplete. It accords with the events of Fringe, and reality, that alterations to people’s brains result in personality differences.
Indeed, not only may we find the truth by opening our minds to the impossible, but we may also have found what is true in the seemingly impossible Fringe universe(s) by identifying what is actually possible. There are many actual cases of brain traumas causing dramatic alterations in people’s personalities, and also cases in which brain surgeries have alleviated symptoms of mental illness.15 Thus it is intuitively plausible that the patients of the Fringe universe(s) Hennington Mental Health Institute are miraculously cured of their rapid-onset mental problems when Walter’s secretly implanted stolen brain portions are disconnected from their brains by Newton. It is equally plausible that Walter’s quirky personality is the result of known operations on his brain, given that the brain theory is presumed to be true.
We are shown instances of Walter circa 1991’s and Walter circa 2010’s very distinct personalities, as the old Walter, Walter circa 1991, returns briefly when Newton reconnects all of the stolen brain parts back together with the rest of Walter’s brain to retrieve information about opening “the door” to the alternate world (season 2, “Grey Matters”). In that moment Walter appears to act completely differently to us—he has a different, less humble personality and a more continuous psychology. It may be that observing Walternate gives us a glimpse at what Walter was like with his brain intact: noticeably less quirky and compassionate.16 We might even speculate that the purposeful damage to Walter’s brain was engineered, by himself as we learn, to make him less cold and diabolical so that he would be able to better combat Walternate and save the universe(s). In any case, whether or not we can infer anything about the old Walter from observing Walternate, every indication is that Walter circa 1991 is a different person from Walter circa 2010 because those two Walters have physically distinct brain configurations. The former literally has more gray matter than the latter, whom we have come to know and love. Because of their physically distinct brain compositions, Walter circa 1991 and Walter circa 2010 are both psychologically discontinuous and distinct.
All of this fits with the brain theory of personal identity. Given that we can explain all of the events of Fringe by assuming that the brain theory is true, it appears that the brain theory underlies the Fringe mythology. However, this may not be the end of the story—and, let’s be honest, it would not be all that surprising if J. J. Abrams left us with an open-ended suggestion as to what persons are in the Fringe universe(s).
There is at least one series of events that we, your humble authors, cannot formulate a feasible explanation for in terms of the brain theory. The occurrences in the season 2 episode “Unearthed” undermine our commitment to the brain theory. In this episode the teenage coma patient Lisa Donovan is taken off of life support, declared dead, and moments later, while a medical team begins to remove her organs for donation, springs to life and begins reciting a numerical code in a strange voice. We learn that she is reciting alphanumeric code that is Chief Petty Officer First Class Andrew Rusk’s personal identification number conjoined with launch codes for intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Later we learn that Lisa and Rusk both died at 5:21 a.m. and that Rusk’s “energy” and memories entered Lisa’s body, bringing both of them back to life in Lisa’s body. We are never given specific details, but Rusk is implied to have gained this ability to inhabit others as a result of being in a submarine accident in which he was exposed to high levels of radiation for sixteen hours in conjunction with his later being treated with an unknown experimental radiation inhibitor. In any case, Rusk is somehow in Lisa’s body, much like John is in Olivia’s. However, unlike John, Rusk quickly takes over the girl’s mind and body and uses her body to exact revenge on his wife.
Rusk was murdered in what his murderer, Jake Selleg, claims is retribution for Rusk’s spousal abuse. Selleg claims that Rusk violently beat his wife, Teresa Rusk, whom Selleg had befriended, and for that deserved to die. Furthermore, when Selleg murdered Rusk, he told Rusk that it was Teresa who was “sending him to hell.” Thus, believing that his own wife ordered Selleg to kill him, Rusk uses Lisa’s body to tie Teresa up and attempt to burn her alive. Though we might think that this is all explainable in terms of Rusk being a function of the brain(s) he inhabits, as in the case of Olivia and John, something different is going on with Rusk.
Olivia and John are united through a mechanical process that is controlled by Walter to a large extent, as their functional brains are physically connected and their functions synchronized. In contrast, Rusk is far away from both Lisa’s body and the freshly dead car accident victim he inhabits after being exorcised from Lisa’s body at the end of the episode. Given all that we know, it seems that the only thing that connects Rusk to his hosts is their incidental deaths overlapping with the time that he becomes disembodied. Moreover, there is no evident scientific explanation for Rusk’s body jumping. Rather, in the episode there is talk of personal “energy” and “souls.” In fact, the only explanation for Lisa’s personality remaining in her body at all after being dead for several minutes comes via Peter reciting a passage from The Tibetan Book of the Dead. That passage reads, in Peter’s translation, “Innermost subtle consciousness is ever present. It never leaves the body, even in death.” This is, of course, far from a clear explanation of what has happened and just leaves us more confused.
Taking the events of “Unearthed” seriously, we might consider that we were wrong about the brain theory underlying the Fringe mythology. Maybe the events surrounding Rusk, among other things, really suggest that some other theory is being endorsed. It is true that there are explicit depictions of people altering physical reality with their minds, which initially seem to defy naturalistic explanations. For instance, we see haunting documentary footage of three-year-old Olivia causing some sort of disturbingly intense light after Walter, whom we can hear off camera, fails to calm her down (season 1, “Bad Dreams). We later learn that, because she was upset, she set the room ablaze with her mind, leaving a charred room with a pristine corner where Olivia sat during the incident (season 2, “Jacksonville”). We also know of two other Cortexiphan trial subjects, twin sisters Susan Pratt and Nancy Lewis, who have similar pyrokinetic abilities: the former dies by self-immolation and the latter burns corrupt agent Sanford Harris to death before he can kill her and Olivia (season 1, “The Road Not Taken”).
Likewise, there is the mysterious method by which Walter and the remaining Cortexiphan survivors get to the alternate universe to retrieve Peter at the end of the second season: they simply stand in a circle in a theater, collectively concentrating, and are then somehow transported to the other world (season 2, “Over There, Part 1”). We learn that this travel between worlds is possible because Olivia is exercising her ability to “open a door” between universes; in the first instance the door is held open by the energies of the other Cortexiphan trial survivors, and it is later held open by the energy created by William Bell’s self-induced molecular disintegration (season 2, “Over There, Part 2”). This might suggest that the travel between worlds has some explanation that is consistent with current physics. However, we have no apparent explanation for the fact that Olivia can travel between universes with the power of her mind alone, as when she return to her universe for the second time. This is not explained in terms of physical mechanisms; she just takes Cortexiphan, gets in a sensory deprivation tank, and somehow ends up in the counterpart tank in Walter’s lab (season 3, “Entrada”).17
Nonetheless, this may all be consistent with the brain theory, given that our minds are functions of our brains. In the show, all of these events are explained as true potentials of the human brain, aided by Cortexiphan treatments. Nina Sharp explains this, saying, “Doctor Bell theorized that the human mind, at birth, is infinitely capable . . . and that every force it encounters, social, physical, intellectual, . . . is the beginning of the process he referred to as ‘limitation’—a diminishing of that potential.” Furthermore, she says that Cortexiphan “was meant to ‘limit’ that ‘limitation’—to prevent the natural shrinking of that brain power” (season 1, “Ability”). This is why Walter and Bell tested Cortexiphan on young children like three-year-old Olivia, because their brain’s potential had not yet been fully limited. Notwithstanding, we remain without an explanation for Rusk’s means of inhabiting others. At this point, pending further information, all that we can do is speculate.
Thus we might entertain the theory that there is a third world that the episode with Rusk stands as a cryptic introduction to.18 Although this is plausible, it is unlikely that even if there is a third world it would have a completely different basis for what persons are. Rather, there is evidence that whatever universe Rusk’s inhabitations are occurring in, it is one that is connected to the others in some way. In the episode, notice that the Observer is noticeable in the background as Olivia and Lisa’s mother speak outside of St. Brigid’s Church. And remember that he observes events that are significant to some overarching “pattern” of interconnected events.
With this “third world” theory behind us, we might speculate further that perhaps we are wrong to assume that psychologies or minds are functions of brains in the Fringe universe(s). Maybe we can survive even without brains. This would suggest that some other variation of the psychological theory of persons, but not the brain theory, is a core assumption of the Fringe mythology. We could then speculate even further that all of the business with brains and brain parts is, perhaps, owing to the plausible assumption that having functional brains is just one means of having a continuous psychology. However, then we are left wondering what it is that our psychology consists of. Energy? Souls? If so, how does that work? Where is this “energy” in our brains? As we have said, the answer to which theory of persons underlies the events of Fringe is open to speculation until we have more information. We must leave it at that for now and hope that Fringe Division will help us figure this out in episodes to come.
1. Good introductions to the philosophy of mind, philosophy of personal identity, and philosophy of identity include, Keith Maslin, An Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2007); Harold Noonan, Personal Identity (London: Routledge, 1989); John Perry, ed., Personal Identity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008); Michael Tooley, ed., Particulars, Actuality, and Identity over Time (London: Routledge, 1999).
2. Rene Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, in The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, ed. John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, and Dugald Murdoch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984).
3. Eric T. Olson, What Are We? A Study in Personal Ontology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 27; David Degrazia, Human Identity and Bioethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Peter Van Inwagen, Material Beings (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990).
4. We should note that this theory does not imply “speciesism” regarding persons. That is, it does not entail the claim that only human beings are persons. Rather, the theory permits that the various genetic mutants, hybrids, and (apparently) alien beings of Fringe might also have personal identities of their own.
5. Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984).
6. John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), 2.28.9.
7. Ibid., 2.28.10.
8. Ibid., 2.28.1.
9. It is possible that the two universes are in fact spatially coincident and that perhaps the inhabitants of each are somehow psychologically blind to the features of the counteruniverse.
10. Recall that Olivia has a similar experience with Nick Lane, whom she met as a child during Cortexiphan trials and with whom she shares consciousness for a short time (season 1, “Bad Dreams”).
11. Since we are entertaining various theories of personal identity, it is worth noting that our employment of the name “Fauxlivia” is not meant to signify that Olivia’s alternate is any less real or lacking a distinctive personal identity. Accordingly, we also do not intend the usage of “Fauxlivia” to indicate that the character is somehow more or less immoral than Olivia.
12. It is implied that Olivia is “haunted” by an event in which she shot her estranged stepfather after he beat her mother. At the end of season 3 it remains open whether Fauxlivia has done the same and whether she too receives yearly birthday cards from her stepfather—whereabouts unknown—like Olivia.
13. The manner in which Olivia is able to travel between worlds and retain her identity, sanity, and tie to her universe is reminiscent of the manner in which Desmond Hume time-travels, or “mind-travels,” in Lost (season 3, “Flashes Before Your Eyes”). Equally, Desmond’s need to have a “constant,” which for him is his lover Penny, in mind to retain his sanity and identity when traveling between times is echoed by Olivia’s holding her memories of Peter and Ella constant in order to reclaim her identity and get back home.
14. For example, see Mark Johnston, “Human Beings,” Journal of Philosophy 84 (1987): 59–83.
15. For the history of personality affective brain traumas and surgeries and examples of actual cases, see Jack D. Pressman, Last Resort: Psychosurgery and the Limits of Medicine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).
16. It is worth noting that Walternate is not portrayed as being evil, nor should we presume that Walter and his universe are good, while the other is evil. Recall that, unlike Walter, Walternate seems to have rigid moral boundaries that guide his decisions. For instance, in the season 3 episode “Immortality” we learn that he is adamantly opposed to testing on children. When Cortexiphan trials appear to have a more marked effect on younger test subjects, the mention of testing on children is quickly met with a stern objection from Walternate: “No children. That is not an option.” Later in the same episode he confides in his mistress, Reiko, “If you had asked me a week ago, I would have told you that I would sacrifice anything . . . to save our world. But in fact, there are lines I simply cannot cross.”
17. There are various indications that Olivia needs to be in a heightened emotional state in order to traverse universes. Accordingly, having heightened emotions is supposed to be what explains Alice and Dereknate Merchant’s coability to begin to traverse whatever barrier exists between the universes (season 3, “6B”).
18. Speculation of a third world is mentioned at “Unearthed,” Fringepedia.net, http://fringepedia.net/wiki/Unearthed.