You are not your body? What? But...

Plural systems' members, particularly in gateway systems, are not their bodies. That isn't to say that their bodies don't exist, that their bodies shouldn't be looked after or that those bodies' brains do not contain the conscious persons, but that it is not necessary for said persons to be identified with the body or its parents, heritage, background, ethnicity and social status.

It is rather similar to the situation of transgendered people and transhumanists who do not identify with their birth bodies and wish to change them: they recognize that their conscious agency is more important to the formation of personal identity than  physical shells. There are differences, of course (transgendered people and transhumanists tend not to have separate, subjective histories from the body, unless they are also plural or have their own subjective space), but the point still stands that it is not entirely correct to determine someone's philosophical identity by the body alone.

Richard

Do systems have to have people of the body's background? I'm a bit confused.

Not all have. Many members of non-gateway systems may have chosen their appearance, or identify strongly with particular experiences. Soulbonds and members of gateway systems are even less likely to look like the body or identify with its history.

To use a the personal example of our own system, no fronting Fenner, at this time, claims the body's parents, nationality, phenotypic traits, ethnicity, heritage or background. We are a gateway system, which means that we have our own subjective group-space in which we live, with our own lives, apperances, stories and backgrounds. As individuals, we don't identify with the body's history and parents. The body's parents aren't the individuals' parents, and its history is not the individuals' history.

That being said, that only refers to the fronters, and there are people in our group-space of various backgrounds and ethnicities.

Richard and Kerry

Why don't you look like the body?

We just don't. Sorry, no philosophical answer there. We don't have to. We may not have any problems with the body, but it doesn't look like anyone in it.

Hess

But if you go on about having different backgrounds, you're deluded!

Our situation does not meet the criteria for a 'delusion' because we do not apply our own histories to the body's history. In order for it to be a delusion, it would be just that. The reality of our group-space is subjective and cannot be disproved; therefore, it cannot be labelled a delusion.

Richard

Can I read more about this?

Yes; here are some related links.

For a more philosophical discussion of the 'corporeal definition of reality' within an essay about the commonly accepted medical definition of plurality, read Richard's Dissociation and Assumptions, and pay particular definition to the section that talks about the body's not necessarily defining its inhabitant, or inhabitants. There's also Kerry's Race Issue article.

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