Mentally Divergent

Locke discusses the common human occasion of our minds thinking about the being of objects and bodies in the present state of space and time. No doubt many of us have wondered at some point or another if an object that appears in front of us also exists in some distant galaxy. We are quick to accept (and love) this idea of the earth floating in some galaxy, surrounded by an endless universe. This idea is so popular in our minds because it gives our imaginations very few limits. Knowing that we are just one civilization existing in an indefinite space gives reason to believe that anything could be happening in some distant galaxy light years away. It gives people ideas, such as having an identical twin of oneself in some other dimension or what have you. 

Locke states that, according to the principium Individuationis, it is impossible for a single object (or any particle of matter) to exist beside itself. That is, an object is subject to its own individuality and therefore exists, and “cannot exist in different times or indifferent places” (Fumerton and Jeske, 193). Locke says that the fact that we have notions and names of identity and diversity for objects bounds them to a certain sort of law explaining that there can not be duplicates of objects. The objects would have to be “one and the same.” Without these defined limits, Locke says that we would not be able to distinguish any objects or substances “or anything else from one another” (192). 

In 12 Monkeys, a film documenting the life of a convict time traveler in the late twentieth century, James Cole travels back to the past (which the audience identifies as the present, making where he came from the future). We of course know that time travel is a hypothetical rendition of alternate dimensions, featuring complex science fiction theories of particulate matter and light. However, Locke would say that time traveling is impossible for a different reason. That is, due to the principles upon which objects and bodies exist, that there can only be one of something in time and place, traveling back in time to see oneself younger would be impossible. As Locke says, “A colt grown up to a horse, sometimes fat, sometimes lean, is all the while the same horse” (193).

Therefore, according to Locke, while one can see a picture of himself in a photograph (which is itself its own object also), he can not see another body of himself existing because his identity and “bodyness” can only exist in one place and one time. His body has been determined to a particular time and place.

But Descartes asks “How can we know if anything is true? (Which is an entirely separate question from “How can anything be true?”) For if he really means that “there is really nothing easier to know than my mind,” and his mind is trusted by himself, than anything that he deems true in his trusted mind would make it true to him. For Descartes, thinking is truth because thinking justifies existence. However, according to his descriptions of the immortal and the soul, Hume states that “the immaterial substance can lose its memory or consciousness” (230). Would this mind, affected by memory loss or damage, be any more unreliable for discovering truth? It would of course still be the same mind, as Locke would put it, but would it be capable of distinguishing the truth as it had formerly done?

In 12 Monkeys the interesting phrase “mentally divergent” is used to describe a state of mind. What does this mean? The audience comes to grasp a sort of understanding by the end of the film. A man in the beginning uses the phrase to describe a sort of psychosis or a state of mind in which he is. It is interesting to hear such a phrase because the film does a nice job of tying this idea in with time travel. Cole travels back in time to warn the human race, but his cries are only met with disbelief, restraining trips to a mental institution, and violent interactions with law enforcement. He even begins to question his own sanity. The psychiatrist with whom Cole flees mentions that she has seen him before, but at first still thinks him insane. Later in the film we witness a sort of role reversal, wherein she must keep him going after Cole breaks down and begins saying that he is actually mentally ill. Has she only seen him in a dream, or has this “mentally divergent” syndrome allowed her to come across him in another time?