Am I Me Or Am I Someone Else?

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Recommended: Derek Parfit’s (1942-2017) view on personal identity

Who am I? What makes me who I am? My friends would probably say that it’s my genuine nature and compassion that make me who I am. They might also say that I find ways to create my identity without even trying and that I make my own path with my morals as a guide. I’d probably say it’s my dashing good looks, wit, and charm. My experiences, my parents, and my surroundings, have all contributed to establishing my identity. In Derek Parfit’s writings Reasons and Persons and “Personal Identity,” he discusses his ideas on what would matter most, personal identity or survival, and he claims that it is survival, rather than personal identity that matters. Where Parfit expresses this view, this is where I disagree. I believe that where survival is there must be personal identity. Both should go hand in hand and there is more to personal identity than psychological/bodily continuity. I believe to an extent that Parfit is right in claiming that survival is what matters, overall it is better to be surviving than physically dead but if your personal identity is gone, doesn’t that make you dead as a person and a new person is in your place?

In an article, Derek Parfit argues is that:

“The real reason seems to me now this. Does personal identity just consist in bodily and psychological continuity, or is it a further fact, independent of the facts about these continuities? Our reactions to the ‘problem cases’ show, I believe, that we believe the latter. And we seem inclined to believe that this further fact is peculiarly deep and is all-or-nothing---we believe that in any describable case, it must hold completely or not at all. My main claim is the denial of this further fact” (Robinson).

In Reasons and Persons, Parfit makes the claim that pe...

... middle of paper ...

...ontinuous with me is what is important. For me to survive, in the way that matters to Parfit, means that it is enough for someone to inherit enough of my psychological attributes. If two or more people inherit my attributes, that is almost as good as ordinary survival. Although, I would argue that this idea of being the same person is what matters in survival/continued existence. When one is divided, they cease to be. Even though they have remnants of the past them, that doesn’t make it them.

Works Cited

Fumerton, Richard, and Diane Jeske. Introducing Philosophy Through Film: Key Texts, Discussion, and Film Selections [Paperback]. Print.

Parfit, Derek. Personal Identity. The Philosophical Review, Vol. 80, No. 1 (Jan.,197) pp. 3-27.

Robinson, John. Personal Identity and Survival. The Journal of Philosophy , Vol. 85, No. 6 (Jun., 1988), pp. 319-328

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