Harry Potter and Philosophy: If Aristotle Ran Hogwarts

by David Baggett

  The fact that time-traveling Harry saves his “other self” from the Dementors is certainly strange but it does not violate any known laws of logic or physics. This is an example of what we call “a closed causal loop.” In this case the events in the loop are: (A) Harry was saved from the Dementors because he traveled back in time and saved himself and (B) Harry was able to travel back in time because he saved himself. Why was Harry saved? Because he traveled back in time. Why did Harry travel back in time? Because he was saved. This causal loop goes round and round because event (A) caused event (B) and event (B) caused event (A). Normally, causal relations between events form a straight chain and not a loop. Causal loops are standard fare for time-travel stories because they are mind-bending and both logically and physically possible.

  What We’ve Learned About Harry Potter’s World

  We have learned that the world of Harry Potter is our present world and that magical means are used to travel around this world by creating or manipulating the magical equivalent of wormholes. The best explanation we can come up with for Floo powder communication: it’s magic! Apparating and the Floo Travel Network might be physically and logically possible, but it is unclear how to explain Floo powder communication except by purely magical means.113 Time travel is logically and physically possible in our world and thus in the world of Harry Potter. However, time travel is only possible in a block universe (the tenseless theory of time) in which no events can be changed, erased, or rewritten. Time travel as presented in Prisoner of Azkaban is, if charitably interpreted, consistent with the block world that makes time travel possible. However, the frequent warnings throughout the book about the dangers of changing the past, present, or future might lead even the attentive reader to conclude otherwise.

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  Why Voldemort Won’t Just Die Already: What Wizards Can Teach Us about Personal Identity

  JASON T. EBERL

  When Lord Voldemort recounts what happened to him the night he killed Lily and James Potter, but failed to kill their son Harry, he describes himself as having been painfully “ripped” from his body and thereafter existing as “less than spirit, less than the meanest ghost” (GF, p. 653). Despite the loss of his body, Voldemort survives his first encounter with Harry Potter and continues to exist in one of two ways: either as an immaterial spirit, or by possessing the body of an animal or another person.

  Voldemort is not the only wizard who is capable of existing apart from the typical bodily fashion. Some wizards survive their body’s death as ghosts or poltergeists; for example, Hogwarts Professor Binns, who “had simply got up to teach one day and left his body behind him in an armchair in front of the staff room fire” (CS, p. 148), or Nearly Headless Nick. In addition to disembodiment, wizards can—with the help of certain spells, potions, and magical devices—move their bodies nearly instantaneously between distant places (teletransportation) or change their appearance into animals or other persons (transfiguration).

  Many of us Muggles who read J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books also believe that we may survive the death of our bodies, or experience periods of disembodied existence in some form or fashion while alive. Some of us believe that we may survive death in a different type of body, perhaps the body of an animal, or without a body at all. This possibility raises several questions concerning what philosophers refer to as personal identity: What is it that I am referring to when I say “I”? What makes the “I” that’s typing this sentence the same “I” that was reading Sorcerer’s Stone with my daughter last night? Could I have had a different body than I now have? Could I change from this body to some other? Do I even need a body in order to exist?

  As persons themselves, philosophers have been quite interested in proposing answers to these and other related questions for centuries. The views of some philosophers would not allow for the type of disembodied survival that Voldemort and Professor Binns experience. Other philosophers’ views do, however, and it is these upon which we’ll focus to discover the wizards’ survival secret.

  Disembodied Survival and the Nature of Persons

  Although they are wizards, Voldemort and Professor Binns are also persons like you and me. The natural first question when considering wizards’ disembodied survival is, “What is a person?”, followed by the natural second question, “What makes the same person exist at different times and places?” Answering these questions allows us to approach the final question of concern here, “How can a person exist without a body?”

  According to John Locke, in his An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, a person 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.”114 What makes persons unique among other types of things in the world, such as rocks, chairs, and cats, is that persons can think in a self-reflective manner. Persons are able philosophically and scientifically to understand the world around them. Persons are also aware of their own conscious self and can reflect on their thoughts, feelings, and desires.

  Locke further states that what accounts for a person persisting as the same person throughout time and change is that he has the same consciousness:

  For since consciousness always accompanies thinking, and ’tis that, that makes every one to be, what he calls self; and thereby distinguishes himself from all other thinking things, in this alone consists personal Identity, i.e. the sameness of a rational Being: And as far as this consciousness can be extended backwards to any past Action or Thought, so far reaches the Identity of that Person; it is the same self now it was then; and ’tis by the same self with this present one that now reflects on it, that that Action was done.115

  I am conscious of my presently typing these words on my laptop at home. At the same time, if I stop to think about it, I can be conscious of my past action of having watched the movie version of Chamber of Secrets. How do I know that I am the same person who is both typing now and who watched the film two weeks ago? Because I am consciously aware of my performance of both actions.

  Defining a person in terms of consciousness, Locke leaves open the potential for a rather sticky dilemma: What would happen if a person lost his consciousness of some past action he had done? This is what happens to Gilderoy Lockhart when he attempts to erase Harry’s and Ron’s memories in Chamber of Secrets:

  “His memory’s gone,” said Ron. “The Memory Charm backfired. Hit him instead of us. Hasn’t got a clue who he is, or where he is, or who we are. I told him to come and wait here. He’s a danger to himself.” (CS, p. 324)

  Years later, when Harry and Ron visit Lockhart in Order of the Phoenix, he still has no memory of his life prior to the unfortunate spell. He even appears unable to form new long-term memories as the Healer who cares for him worries about him leaving his room and not remembering how to get back (OP, p. 510). With his memories so disjointed, Lockhart’s personal identity has been shattered. There are several different consciousnesses, each defined by its own unique set of memories, that exist successively in Lockhart’s body. By constantly forming new short-term memories and then promptly forgetting them, it seems as if a new person comes into existence inhabiting the same body every time Lockhart fails to form a long-term memory!

  Locke imagines a similar type of situation:

  Could we suppose two distinct incommunicable consciousnesses acting the same Body, the one constantly by Day, the other by Night … I ask in the first case, Whether the Day and the Night-man would not be two as distinct Persons, as Socrates and Plato.116

  It seems strange to imagine two persons, with two distinct consciousnesses, inhabiting the same body. Nonetheless, we find this phenomenon occurring in the magical world of Harry Potter, as with Voldemort’s parasitical existence in the body of Professor Quirrell:

  “See what I have become?” the face said. “Mere shadow and vapor … I have form only when I can share another’s body.” (SS, p. 293)

  Voldemort exists as a face on the back of Professor Q
uirrell’s head, and he and Quirrell are thus two persons—two distinct consciousnesses—in one body.

  What if two persons come to share one consciousness? Do they become one person? To see how this could happen, consider David Hume’s understanding of personal identity from his A Treatise of Human Nature. Hume, like Locke, understands personhood to be fundamentally a matter of consciousness or, to be more precise, perceptions:

  For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe any thing but the perception. When my perceptions are remov’d for any time, as by sound sleep; so long am I insensible of myself, and may truly be said not to exist.117

  It seems absurd for Hume to think that he ceases to exist every time he enters a dreamless sleep and comes back into existence when he begins to dream or wakes up. At the foundation of his philosophy, though, Hume is a skeptic and argues that we should withhold believing in any phenomenon we cannot rationally verify with a great degree of certainty. When Hume rationally reflects on whether there is a self named “David Hume,” he perceives no such entity. The “self” must be an ever-changing bundle of perceptions.

  Personal identity, according to Hume, is the connectedness of various perceptions linked together into one bundle, which I call my “self,” by memory:

  As memory alone acquaints us with the continuance and extent of this succession of perceptions, ’tis to be consider’d, upon that account chiefly, as the source of personal identity. Had we no memory, we never shou’d have any notion of causation, nor consequently of that chain of causes and effects, which constitute our self or person.118

  What about when a person enters into a dreamless sleep or a temporary coma? Hume responds that, once we have an idea of our own personal identity through time, we can “extend our identity beyond our memory” and “comprehend time, and circumstances, and actions, which we have entirely forgot, but suppose in general to have existed.”119 So, even though Harry has no memory of his first encounter with Voldemort and his parents’ deaths, having heard the story recounted to him on several occasions is enough for him to suppose the encounter took place and thus to consider himself as having existed and experienced that encounter. Of course, Hume would caution Harry to remain skeptical of the story that others had relayed to him since he has no perception of it that he can link by memory to his present perceptions.

  This brings us back to the question of whether two persons can share the same consciousness and so become the same person. Think, for example, of when Harry encounters Professor Dumbledore’s Pensieve:

  “What is it?” Harry asked shakily.

  “This? It is called a Pensieve,” said Dumbledore. “I sometimes find, and I am sure you know the feeling, that I simply have too many thoughts and memories crammed into my mind.”

  … “At these times,” said Dumbledore, indicating the stone basin, “I use the Pensieve. One simply siphons the excess thoughts from one’s mind, pours them into the basin, and examines them at one’s leisure. It becomes easier to spot patterns and links, you understand, when they are in this form.” (GF, p. 597)

  Harry experiences the Pensieve just prior to Dumbledore’s explanation when he is drawn into the stone basin and into one of Dumbledore’s stored memories. While inside the Pensieve, Harry does not simply watch Dumbledore’s memory, as if it were a movie, but is actually inside the memory itself, as if he had been present at that moment and witnessed the event himself as it happened. Though he is literally “inside” Dumbledore’s memory, Harry and Dumbledore do not share the same consciousness. In fact, Harry encounters two Dumbledores. One is the Dumbledore of the past who originally had the experience Harry is witnessing in the Pensieve, and with whom he is unable to interact. The other is the present-day Dumbledore who is inside the Pensieve as well in order to re-examine this memory experienced by his past self. Since Harry and Dumbledore (of either the past or the present) do not share the same consciousness in the Pensieve, they do not become the same person. Rather, Harry and “present-Dumbledore” are witnesses to the same event, which is available for them to witness because the original experience of “past-Dumbledore” has been stored in the Pensieve. However, all three persons—Harry, past-Dumbledore, and present-Dumbledore—maintain their own unique first-person perspective . Each perceives the event in the Pensieve with his own set of memories, background beliefs, and consciousness of his unique self. Harry doesn’t begin to believe he is Dumbledore or vice versa. Even present-Dumbledore is viewing the event not through the eyes of his past self, but rather with his own eyes, which now have more years of wisdom and experience behind them.

  Harry has another experience that is much more unnerving. In Goblet of Fire and Order of the Phoenix, he occasionally has the experience of seeing through Voldemort’s eyes. At first, the experience is an empathic sharing of Voldemort’s feelings (OP, p. 382). As time goes on, however, Harry begins to do more than feel what Voldemort feels. He actually shares Voldemort’s first-person perspective. Harry has a dream in which he thinks he’s a snake attacking Mr. Weasley (OP, pp. 462-63) and a recurring dream of breaking into the Department of Mysteries in the Ministry of Magic (OP, p. 635). After Harry’s dream of being a snake, Dumbledore concludes that Voldemort—who was possessing the snake at the time of the attack on Mr. Weasley—is influencing Harry’s conscious mind through Legilimency, the magical art of seeing into others’ minds. So Dumbledore instructs Snape to train Harry in Occlumency, which will block Voldemort from Harry’s mind. Harry’s experiences indicate that Legilimency, unlike the experience provided by the Pensieve, does not allow a wizard merely to experience what someone else experienced—like watching someone else’s home movies—but actually to enter his mind and share his first-person perspective. Snape explains this concept to Harry:

  “He can read minds?” said Harry quickly, his worst fears confirmed.

  … “Only Muggles talk of ‘mind reading.’ The mind is not a book, to be opened at will and examined at leisure. Thoughts are not etched on the inside of skulls, to be perused by any invader. The mind is a complex and many-layered thing, Potter … or at least, most minds are… .” He smirked. “It is true, however, that those who have mastered Legilimency are able, under certain conditions, to delve into the minds of their victims and to interpret their findings correctly… .” (OP 530-31)

  Do Harry and Voldemort become the same person in these experiences? At the time of each experience, they share the same consciousness and will have the same memory of the event, for example, of attacking Mr. Weasley as a snake. Thus, since for Locke and Hume consciousness and memory are the foundation of personal identity, the conclusion apparently follows that Harry and Voldemort are one and the same person when they share these experiences. Should we be troubled that our hero, Harry, and his arch-nemesis and the epitome of evil, Voldemort, may actually be the same person? No, for they do not become the same person merely by having a few memories in common. Though they share the same consciousness at one or two points in time, it does not follow that “Harry becomes Voldemort” or that “Voldemort becomes Harry,” for the two are not identical. According to Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, in his Discourse on Metaphysics, for any two things to be identical, they must share all and only the same properties.120 In other words, for Harry and Voldemort to be the same person, anything that can be said of one must be able to be said of the other. Voldemort, however, can recall the memory of having killed Lily and James Potter and of having attempted to kill Harry. If Harry were identical to Voldemort, then he would be able to recall the same memory of having killed his parents and having attempted to kill himself (talk about existential angst!), and Voldemort would be able to recall the memory of having lived in a dark cupboard at number four, Privet Drive. Therefore, since it is clear that Harry and Voldemort do not share all and only the same
properties, the two cannot be the same person despite their sharing the same consciousness on a few occasions.

  In order for Voldemort to exist completely disembodied or for Professor Binns and the other ethereal inhabitants of Hogwarts, such as Nearly Headless Nick, to exist as ghosts or poltergeists, persons must be able to maintain their self-identity without a body. The only feature shared by a wizard’s embodied and disembodied selves is his consciousness. What links the two selves are memories of the same events experienced from the same first-person perspective.

  Teletransportation and Personal Identity

  Aside from having the ability to exist without their bodies altogether, wizards can do various things with their bodies that are rather ordinary to them while quite strange and wondrous to us Muggles. A prime example that bears on the question of personal identity is teletransportation: the instantaneous, or near-instantaneous, movement of one’s body between two distant places. A wizard accomplishes teletransportation by using a magical device such as a Portkey or Floo powder, or by the process of Apparition.