Personal identity is the concept of what makes a unique person, what ‘self’ means, and what connects you to other versions of yourself. It is generally accepted that personal identity exists and that everyone is a unique and distinct being. The more interesting and complicated philosophical problem has to do with personal identity over time, which considers two beings over time: being X, at time T1, and being Y, at time T2. The most important aspect being the specific conditions which do or do not make X and Y the same person. Persisting things can change their intrinsic properties without abandoning their identities as those persisting things. This is not hard to accept since it would be absurd to believe that every time something changed, …show more content…
If personal identity over time exists, this means that a criterion of identity also exists. A criterion of identity specifies the conditions for the survival of persons over time. This deals with problems such as life after death, life support, reincarnation, and generally who we are as people. Consequently, these problems have important implications that could change the way people interact and the way the world works. If personal identity over time does not exist or if your identity changes when you are drunk for example: how can we hold people responsible for their actions. A person being prosecuted would not be the same person that committed the …show more content…
Locke defines consciousness as the act of thinking and perceiving with reason and reflection so that you can consider yourself in different times and spaces and he defines a person as a rational thinking being. Accordingly, Locke extrapolates that personal identity consists in the continuity of one’s consciousness. He writes “As far back as this consciousness can be extended backwards, to any past action of thought, so far reaches the identity of that person”. Therefore, the criterion of identity is experience
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
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.
The psychological continuity claims that personal identity is a necessary condition for personal identity persistence. According to the psychological continuity, “A person X at t is identical with Y at t* if and only if Y is psychologically continuous with X.” According to John Locke” identity of persons, is identity of consciousness” What this means is that you can change your body entirely but still be the same person because it only consider the mind. The mind is what stays the same hence psychological continuity is a necessary condition for personal identity. Though, Locke’s argument might seem convincing it’s has a lot of fallacies. A strong objector to that argument was Reid. Reid suggested through his “brave soldier” example that Locke’s argument isn’t the basis for personal identity. First, let me point out that psychological continuity has a chain of person stages connected by episodic memory. Also, psychological continuity claims that as long as you remember now being the same person in the past, then your body right now is identical to the same person you were before. In other words, if you lose your memories, then you aren’t the same person as
People go through many obstacles when they face their social identity. Some can overcome their differences, but others may not have they change to even face them due to the treatment that they get from society. Social identity is the one of many controversial and complex problems that many individuals deal with. Because, sometimes it used to be misunderstood making reference to racism and/or others complex matters. “On Being a Cripple” and “How It Feels to Be Colored” are two essays in which both characters suffer from some kind of discrimination. Indeed, in “How It Feels to Be Colored Me” by Zora Neale Hurston and “On Being a Cripple” by Nancy Mairs, each author shows different attitude, endures challenges, and change toward social identity.
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.
Before beginning the explanation of how an identity is formed, one must understand what an identity is. So, what is identity? To answer this, one might think of what gives him individuality; what makes him unique; what makes up his personality. Identity is who one is. Identity is a factor that tells what one wants out of life and how he is set to get it. It tells what kind of a person one is by the attitude and persona he has. And it depends upon the mixture of all parts of one’s life including personal choices and cultural and societal influences, but personal choices affect the identity of one more than the others.
The problem of personal identity is difficult to solve, especially since there is ambiguity in the terms. Identity may mean the same person or how one sees oneself. Anyhow, philosophers wish to assess this issue and find a suitable explanation, one motivation being responsibility. Humans will hold others responsible for acts such as murder, theft, and fraud. However, the person who will face the consequences must be the one who truly committed the wrongful act. A second motivation is interest in the future. An individual may become concerned or excited for an event that will occur in the future. Surely, these emotions entail that they will be the same person once that event occurs. The last motivation for resolving personal identity is immortality; basically, what will connect a person to whatever lives on after their physical death. Something can be identical in two ways: quantitatively or qualitatively. To be quantitatively identical is to be numerically identical, and to be qualitatively identical is to share exact qualities. There are two criterions on which personal identity is based, but the most important is the metaphysical criterion, which attempts to explain “being” or existence, without the necessity of physical evidence ...
The quest to find one’s identity and have a sense of individuality is rampant in Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go. The humanistic urge to have purpose is embodied in the characters of Kathy, Tommy and Ruth very differently. They each know that their life’s purpose is to donate until “completion,” yet on the way there they explore themselves and find out there is more to each of them than their vital organs, even if that is how society has labeled them.
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).
Personal identity is more than memory continuum. I agree with Locke that you need memory continuum to be the same person and are necessary in order to exist, but it’s not everything that defines personal identity. However, I don’t think a person is not the same person if they don’t remember certain events. I agree with Hume’s that memory reveals personal identity. Personal identity is composed of bundles of
It is interesting to wonder about what aspects creates someone’s identity. Identity is something that distinguishes someone’s character and what makes a person unique and different. The topic of identity is a very controversial topic and has many viewpoints and opinions. As more and more people have shared their opinions and joined the conversation about identity, people can start figuring out what their own opinion of identity is. It is important to realize that there is a mass aspects of identity that can change a viewpoint when looking at each different one. Some questions that will hopefully be answered -- “Are people born with an identity?”, “What makes us who we really are?”, “Is our sense of identity true?” -- to rectify for you what identity truly is.
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:
The concept of personal identity is a central philosophical component to a debate to which many theorists have contributed their theories to. One of the most prominent theories on personal identities was by John Locke, one of the influential theorist in the 17th century.
Webster's dictionary describes identity as sameness of essential character, individuality, or the fact of being the same person as one claims to be. So your identity can include your name, your age, your job title, or simply characteristics of your body. These things are facts, facts you don't care to share with the world. Just as the word suggests your identity is something by which you can be identified. These are things that describe a person in terms a stranger would understand. This area of identity is proof of who you are. However, your identity is also composed of what you are. They mark your role in society. Who you are and what you do make up your identity. This is essential in the human life span because people are always searching to find where they truly belong in the world.