Thinking further about the issue I discussed in this post yesterday - identities as a matter of fate and as a matter of choice - it has struck me that the qualifications I registered there to the choice view should have been stronger. I think it can be shown semi-formally that any choices a person may be able to make among the 'multitudes' of aspects of identity that are available to her or him are massively constrained. Or, to put the same thing differently, any freedom to choose in this domain is always outweighed by the choices that are unavailable.
Distinguish four types of features of identity, as follows:
(1) There are the features that straightforwardly are part of someone's identity and which they can rank, so to say - give a greater or a smaller part, in how they see themselves, how they live. Thus, just for example: male, moviegoer, of Rhodesian origin, UK citizen, father, husband, university graduate, Jewish, cricket lover, Marxist, retired academic, blogger, Manchester United supporter, jazz fan, etc. The person these descriptions fit knows from the inside something of what it is like to be that kind of person.
(2) Then there are for each of us identities, or aspects of identity, that we don't know from the inside, but have some idea about because they fall within the scope of our experience. They are part of our culture, we have friends or acquaintances who do know them from the inside, we have read about that sort of thing, and so forth. So, though I don't know what it's like to be a golfer, or a not very religious but churchgoing Christian, or to run a bookshop or a delicatessen, these are not worlds altogether closed off from me. I can have an idea of whether it would appeal to me to get involved in them.
(3) Next, for each of us there will be identities that are very remote, that we may know of but know very little about. I have no idea, for example, what it would be like to be a mystic, or to be the member of an Amazonian tribe of hunter-gatherers. Of course, I could take steps to try and find out, but from where I am now I couldn't sensibly choose either identity as part of my own.
(4) Finally, there are identities which we know nothing whatsoever about, ways of being human that we haven't come across, or even couldn't have come across. In the nature of things here, I can't give an example for my own case. But this one will perhaps do, to cover the general point: a Roman soldier of the first century BC could not have had an ambition to become the England wicketkeeper.
Choice about one's identity operates mainly in the sphere I've tried to delineate at (1) above, though there are new openings for most people as indicated in (2). But for every human individual there will be a vast terrain of possible identities - (3) and (4) - that are just an alien or an unknown planet. If it makes sense to talk of the issue in quantitative terms, there is much more fate than there is choice about individual identity.
For another discussion of these issues, see the post here at Obscene Desserts.