The two positions of personal identity over-time consider whether we are ‘tracking persons’ or ‘human beings’. Through analysing Locke’s account of personal identity and his definition of a ‘person’, the first side of this argument will be explained. However in opposition to Locke’s theory, the second position that considers us as ‘human beings’ will also be assessed, as advocated by animalists such as Olson. In response to this examples of cases such as amnesia will also be taken into consideration and how Parfait’s psychological continuity theory resolves prior objections to Locke’s argument made by Butler and Reid. The conclusion reached will show support towards this new Lockean theory of personal identity due to psychological continuity theory and the inability of animalism to fully justify its claims from a personal identity not just an identity perspective.
The question of personal identity over time asks: "What makes a person one and the same person over time?” .This can also be written as what makes X the same person at T1 (one moment in time) to Y at T2 (a later moment in time). John Locke, attempted to answer this question, by first of all defining what he meant by a “person”;
“[A] person is a self-conscious rational being (i.e. a being with a mind and with the ability to reason, deliberate and choose) who can properly be held responsible for his/her/its choices.”
This definition of a person is essential in determining personal identity, from Locke’s perspective because being the same “man” means having the same body through time. According to Locke, it is consciousness that “alone makes self”. Therefore personal identity consists in the person not the human being. To Locke, this question of personal identity was im...
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...However this is why psychological continuity theory, is essential in creating a coherent personal identity theory that does not consider amnesia victims as non-existent. It is in this continuance chain of memories links that allows personal identity, as a meaningful concept in itself, to live on.
Works Cited
Gallois, Andre – “Identity Over Time” – http://plato.stanford.edu/archieves/spr2011/entries/identity-time/
Korfmacher, Carsten – “Personal Identity” -
http://www.iep.utm.edu/person-i/#H1
Locke, John – Of Identity and Diversity
Maslin, Keith – Personal Identity as Psychological Continuity
Nozick, Robert – Personal Identity Through Time
Olson, Eric T. – The Human Animal: Personal Identity Without Psychology
Olson, Eric T. – “Personal Identity”
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/identity-personal/
Parfit, Derek – What We Believe Ourselves To Be
Personal identity, in the context of philosophy, does not attempt to address clichéd, qualitative questions of what makes us us. Instead, personal identity refers to numerical identity or sameness over time. For example, identical twins appear to be exactly alike, but their qualitative likeness in appearance does not make them the same person; each twin, instead, has one and only one identity – a numerical identity. As such, philosophers studying personal identity focus on questions of what has to persist for an individual to keep his or her numerical identity over time and of what the pronoun “I” refers to when an individual uses it. Over the years, theories of personal identity have been established to answer these very questions, but the
Parfit’s view on the nature of persisting persons raises interesting issues in terms of identity. Though there are identifiable objections to his views, I am in favor of the argument he develops. This paper will layout Parfit’s view on that nature of persisting person, show support as well as argue the objections to the theory. In Derek Parfit’s paper Personal Identity, Parfit provides a valid account of persisting persons through time through his clear account of psychological continuities. He calls people to accept the argument that people persist through time but people do not persist or survive by way of identity.
Although the concept of identity is recurrent in our daily lives, it has interpreted in various ways.
Personal identity examines what makes a person at one time identical with a person at another. Many philosophers believe we are always changing and therefore, we cannot have a persisting identity if we are different from one moment to the next. However, many philosophers believe there is some important feature that determines a person’s identity and keeps it persistent. For John Locke, this important feature is memory, and I agree. Memory is the most important feature in determining a person’s identity as memory is the necessary and sufficient condition of personal identity.
What the texts suggest about the relationship between how an individual sees themselves vs how the individual is seen by others, is through the concept of identity. An individual’s identity is shaped by many factors: life experiences, memories, personality, talents, relationships and many more.
Weirob believes that personal identity is consisting of combination of a person’s thoughts, memories, feelings, and experiences. According to her: “Survival means that tomorrow
Sameness of person consists not in sameness of soul nor the sameness of body, but in sameness of consciousness. According to the memory view, the personal identity is established by (genuine) memory-relations. Locke’s theory manifests the idea that rather than being tied to our physical bodies, our identity is bound to our consciousness. Locke, in one of his works states that consciousness is the perception of what passes in a man’s own mind. Essentially, meaning that consciousness equals memories. Unlike, the conventional theories; bodily and soul view, Locke’s views that memory relations constitute “a person is a sequence of person-stages linked by (genuine) memory.” As personal identity is not bound by a constant component of a person to be present over a whole lifetime, neither body nor a soul.
Why the necessity to fully analyse the definition of identity? Locke believed that the identity of things was not always as readily discernable as what first meets the eye and as a consequence set about defining the identity of all things from physical objects, the identity of living entities and ultimately the identity of man and the identity of person.
Identity, an ambiguous idea, plays an important part in today’s world. To me identity can be defined as who a person is or what differentiates one person from another. Identity would be a person’s name, age, height, ethnicity, personality, and more. A quote by Anne Sexton states “It doesn't matter who my father was; it matters who I remember he was”(Anne Sexton). This quote helps me define identity because I believe it is saying that identity is what people are remembered by. When some people think of identity, words such as, uniqueness, distinctiveness, or individuality may come to mind. However, I disagree with this because when I think of identity I think of mimicry, self-consciousness, or opinions.
This essay has covered the concept of practical identities and their unique characteristic of contingency as well as the foundation of all value in our actions that all rational beings have- moral identity. Reflecting on these ideas, one can relate to the conception of practical identities or moral identity. However, the suggestion of their contingency or non-contingency and their importance in one’s life is questionable. One is led to wonder what the real source of value in one’s action is and the real weight of practical and moral identities in one’s
In his 1971 paper “Personal Identity”, Derek Parfit posits that it is possible and indeed desirable to free important questions from presuppositions about personal identity without losing all that matter. In working out how to do so, Parfit comes to the conclusion that “the question of identity has no importance” (Parfit, 1971, p. 4.2:3). In this essay, I will attempt to show that Parfit’s thesis is a valid one, with positive implications for human behaviour. The first section of the essay will examine the thesis in further detail, and the second will assess how Parfit’s claims fare in the face of criticism. Problems of personal identity generally involve questions about what makes one the person one is and what it takes for the same person to exist at separate times (Olson, 2010).
The personal identity continues to be same since a person is the same rational thing, same self, and thus the personal identity never changes (Strawson, 2014). Locke also suggests that personal identity has to change when the own self-changes and therefore even a little change in the personal identity has to change the self. He also provides an argument that a person cannot question what makes something today to remain the same thing it was a day ago or yesterday because one must specify the kind of thing it was. This is because something might be a piece of plastic but be a sharp utensil and thus suggest that the continuity of consciousness is required for something to remain the same yesterday and today. John Locke also suggests that two different things of a similar type cannot be at the same time at the same place. Therefore, the criteria of the personal identity theory of Locke depends on memory or consciousness remaining the same (Strawson, 2014). This is because provided a person has memory continuity and can remember being the same individual, feeling, thinking, and doing specific things, the individual can remain to be the same person irrespective of bodily
Again, through consciousness we can correlate our experiences and our actions. Each moment we experience becomes a memory. The particular way the our memories are distinguished from another persons account of the event is how our “self” intercepts it. One can also relate our “self” is the memories to our same “self” in the present. As Locke also examined in his writing Of Identity and Diversity, we can repeat the ideas of our past actions with the same consciousness that we do our present actions and our future actions. This demonstrated the ability of how our “self” can endure all of the many beautiful and excruciating happenings in
What is personal identity? This question has been asked and debated by philosophers for centuries. The problem of personal identity is determining what conditions and qualities are necessary and sufficient for a person to exist as the same being at one time as another. Some think personal identity is physical, taking a materialistic perspective believing that bodily continuity or physicality is what makes a person a person with the view that even mental things are caused by some kind of physical occurrence. Others take a more idealist approach with the belief that mental continuity is the sole factor in establishing personal identity holding that physical things are just reflections of the mind. One more perspective on personal identity and the one I will attempt to explain and defend in this paper is that personal identity requires both physical and psychological continuity; my argument is as follows:
A person’s identity is shaped by many different aspects. Family, culture, friends, personal interests and surrounding environments are all factors that tend to help shape a person’s identity. Some factors may have more of an influence than others and some may not have any influence at all. As a person grows up in a family, they are influenced by many aspects of their life. Family and culture may influence a person’s sense of responsibilities, ethics and morals, tastes in music, humor and sports, and many other aspects of life. Friends and surrounding environments may influence a person’s taste in clothing, music, speech, and social activities. Personal interests are what truly set individuals apart. An individual is not a puppet on the string of their puppet-master, nor a chess piece on their master’s game board, individuals choose their own paths in life. They accomplish, or strive to accomplish, goals that they have set for themselves throughout their lifetime. Individuals are different from any other individual in the world because they live their own life rather than following a crowd of puppets. A person’s identity is defined by what shaped it in the first place, why they chose to be who they are, and what makes them different from everybody else in the world. I feel that I have developed most of my identity from my own dreams, fantasies, friends, and idols.