The Legend of Zelda and Philosophy_ I Link Therefore I Am - Luke Cuddy [42]
This account also faces problems when applied to personal identity in the Zelda games. For example, in Ocarina of Time, Link transforms back and forth from his ten-year-old self to his adult self. In this case, the response from the advocate of psychological continuity is hard to pin down. Link’s adult self does not have psychological continuity with his younger self early in the game because the things he has done as his younger self in some sense hasn’t happened yet. In fact, it may be that things he does as his older self actually have some sort of causal effect on the psychological state of his earlier self.
Imagine that at a certain point somewhere early in the game, adult Link has no idea how to operate a boomerang. Later in the game, however, his younger self learns how to use a boomerang. If the psychological account is correct, Link’s older self should have already known how to use a boomerang because he learned it when he was younger. The oddities of space and time, at least in Ocarina of Time, make it difficult to apply the psychological continuity account of personal identity.
There are also accounts that are hybrids of these two views. Some philosophers argue that psychological states are caused by physical states and so there must be some sort of continuity in both in order for identity to persist. This doesn’t seem helpful in our analysis because the examples we have seen from the game demonstrate that Link’s identity cannot be accounted for by either the psychological continuity model or the physical continuity model. It seems unlikely that a combination of these views would be any less problematic.
Other accounts reject the idea that identity persists at all. A group of philosophers known as ‘mereological essentialists’ argue that because a person at a later time cannot have all the same properties as a person at an earlier time, it’s not coherent to claim one identity. So it’s not true that they’re really the same person.
Other views hold that what accounts for personal identity is indeterminate. If we applied either of these views, we would not be able to attribute a consistent identity to the characters in the Zelda games. This doesn’t seem to be what is going on in the Zelda universe. It seems that when Link goes back in time or is able to control the body of another creature, we are still supposed to think of him as the same person. This may be a built in human assumption. Humans created the game, so there are built in intuitions about our metaphysics that can’t help but to show themselves in the Zelda universe. I don’t think such a view is necessary for understanding identity in the games. We can think of the Zelda games as having a distinct metaphysics that is unaffected by our own.
Solutions to the Problem: The youth whose destiny it is to lead Hyrule to the path of justice and truth …
As we’ve seen, the standard models of personal identity do not seem to apply in the Zelda universe. As a result, there are three kinds of conclusions available to us.
First, we can reject the idea that any clear concept of personal identity is possible. We may be tempted to do this in our own metaphysical world; however, this is not the conclusion which seems motivated by evidence from the games.
The second conclusion would be to look at each game separately and construct a model of identity for each. For example, problems for the psychological continuity account that are present in Ocarina of Time could be accounted for by appealing to a physical continuity model in that particular game. The physical model would have to be one which would allow for the body changing back and forth from old to young. Similarly, in Wind Waker, Phantom Hourglass, and Twilight Princess, we could appeal to the psychological continuity model to avoid problems with the physical continuity model in these cases.
There are problems with this kind of