5. Animalism (body continuity) is a view that a person X at t is identical with Y at t* if and if X and Y have one and the same living body. It’s considered as one of the proposed solutions to personal identity with time. Psychological continuity is the view that a person at t is identical with Y at t* if and only if Y is psychological continuous with X.
Animalism bases its conclusion on personal identity that the bodies must have the same material body. It fails to address the mind of the bodies at both time t and t*. Also, though the body stays qualitatively identical (same properties); it’s not numerical identical (same substance). Nevertheless, psychological continuity focuses on the mind of the person but not its body. It suggest that
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it doesn’t matter which body a person exists in as long as he remembers of his past. The main inconsistence between both theories is that they fail to proof personal identity persistence over time or obey the Leibniz law version 1. Moreover, according to animalism, a person who has undergone split brain surgery is still the same person as before. ESSAY SECTION. Personal identity is the concept of how persistent and continuous you evolve with time. It should be known that identity and differentiability directly relate to identity. However, relating personal identity with time is less clear. According to Heraclitus, “there is nothing permanent except change.” Now comes the question of “under what conditions is a person existing at time t numerically identical with something exists at time t*.” For you to be identical at a later time t*, you need to be qualitatively and numerically identical as claimed by Leibniz law. Qualitative identical is based on the properties the person has before and after some time t*. In others, it’s a one to many relation. On the other hand, numerical identical is based on you having the same substance after some time t* (i.e. one-one relation). Philosophers proposed two solutions to the problem of identity which are bodily and psychological continuity. Bodily continuity: In an effort to answer the question of whether people are identical with time, philosophers came up with the bodily continuity view also known as animalism.
They claim that bodily continuity is a necessary condition for personal identity. Though bodily continuity attempts to explain that it’s a necessary condition for personal identity, it nonetheless has fallacies that make it not a sufficient condition for personal identity. Basically, the bodily continuity view says that “a person X at t is identical with Y at t* if and only if the X and Y have one and the same living body.” Briefly, what this means is that no matter what most have happened to you yesterday, you are still the same (identical) person today. For example, let say john shoplifted at a grocery store and was under video surveillance. At the same time, there were eye witnesses and John’s finger print on a random counter. After police investigation, they have all evidences that it’s John who did it since he was videotaped, exact fingerprint match and what eye witnesses saw. Wouldn’t this show that bodily continuity makes you the same person after time t? I believe it …show more content…
does. However, I think we can’t be the same persons after a certain time because we would never become new persons throughout our lives. Also, according to Heraclitus, “there is nothing permanent except change.” We can’t be the same persons as before since we constantly undergo changes. Hence, change is only what stays constant/permanent. Moreover, if bodily continuity was what makes us be the same as before, then life after death as claimed by some religions won’t make sense because after you die, there is no bodily continuity. Hence, this doesn’t make you remain the same as before. Lastly, teleportation 101 says that if at time t your body is destroyed and at time t* your body is replicated and you exist, then bodily continuity is false and vice versa. I think what this means is that though they are qualitatively identical, they aren’t numerically identical since your body won’t have the same substance. According to Leibniz version 1“if S1 and S2 are numerically identical, then S1 and S2 are qualitatively identical.” In conclusion, having the same body is not a necessary condition for personal identity. Numerical and qualitative must both apply. Another famous solution proposed by philosophers is the psychological continuity view.
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
before Though psychological continuity is right that we have continuity through our memories, it doesn’t mean you are identical to your old body. Identity should be transitive just like it was proposed by Leibniz law i.e. if A=B and B=C, then A=C. A strong counterexample to this is the teleportation 102 example. For example, let says that John plans on getting teleporting and ends up splitting into two persons let say john A and John B. Also, John A remembers been John and John B remembers been John. From this example, john A and John B both remember been John which makes them psychological continuous. However, they aren’t identical to each other because they have different properties which include properties in space. In other words, they aren’t numerically identical and don’t obey the Leibniz law. Hence, you can’t be identical to your replica since identity is a one-one relation.
Here is a brief summary of the argument of persisting persons. Parfit, with the help of the work of David Hume, believes that there is no enduring self. That is to say, that the person I am when I was born of the mother’s womb is not the person I am today, and the person I am today is not the same person ten years, ten days or perhaps ten minutes from now. Parfit argues for a perduring self. People are able to persist through time through overlapping psychological mental states. This is similar to Hume’s Bundle Theory, which argues that the self is made up of a bundle of overlapping experiences, conscious events, rather than a central person. When Parfit talks of persistence, what he means by persistence is these ongoing psychological states. For people seeking answers about the big life and death questions about identity, Parfit does not provide any answers here. In fact, he wants people to get over the idea of identity through time because it assumes that there is a right answer concerning identity. Essentially, it is a waste of time to worry if you are going to be the same person or not.
This book presents the relationship between human and animal behaviors and the behavior that is now created by our modern day society. The mind has two main parts. There is the conscious mind and the unconscious mind. The unconscious mind is the better half, yet it is potentially threatening; therefore, the conscious mind is aware at all times. The unconscious mind influences your behavior in many ways. Pi experiences both of these minds. Pi is consciously planning his survival and how he was going to spend his food, so he didn’t run out. His conscious mind contributed to Pi surviving at sea. Consequently, when Pi`s father fed a goat to a tiger to prove a point, he was unaware that this event changed his personality brutally. He became more
The 'mind-body' problem has troubled philosophers for centuries. This is because no human being has been able to sufficiently explain how the mind actually works and how this mind relates to the body - most importantly to the brain. If this were not true then there would not be such heated debates on the subject. No one objects to the notion that the Earth revolves around the sun because it is empirical fact. However, there is no current explanation on the mind that can be accepted as fact. In 'What is it like to be a bat?', Thomas Nagel does not attempt to solve this 'problem'. Instead, he attempts to reject the reductionist views with his argument on subjectivity. He examines the difficulties of the mind-body problem by investigating the conscious experience of an organism, which is usually ignored by the reductionists. Unfortunately, his arguments contain some flaws but they do shed some light as to why the physicalist view may never be able to solve the mind-body problem.
The first main argument for physicalism, and in this case identity theory, is the argument of neural dependence. This argument states that if mental states were distinct from physical states then they would not be affected when the brain is damaged or manipulated. Since scientific research and observation have shown that they are, then it is logical to conclude that mental states are not distinct from physical states.
Parfit uses a famous case of division (or fission), as imagined by Wiggins (1967), to illustrate his claim that identity is not what matters in survival. When A’s brain is split into two parts, each housed within two separate, brainless bodies (B and C) it seems that we have three options. We either believe that:
The only logical conclusion to derive from this observation is that what we consider to be ourselves is not our bodies. As a result, an individual’s personal identity cannot be rooted in just his or her body, unlike what body theorists would like to
Direct connections include intention, memory, and continuity of desire and belief. The connection of “psychological continuity” and “psychological connectedness” provides a foundation for the psychological account of an individual’s identity (Parfit 207). The psychological connection can be explained in a simple way. Let us create two individuals called Y1 and Y2 from one individual called X. Individual X is psychologically connected to individual Y1 and Y2, where there connection is called
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
In today’s society, the mind is a set of cognitive elements which enable an individual’s consciousness, perception, thinking, judgement, and memory. In addition, without our minds and/or conscious experiences, a person would not be able to understand what makes them who they are. Similarly, in Thomas Nagel’s essay “What Is It Like to Be a Bat,” Nagel claims that even though there is something it is like to be an organism, humans are not capable of fully knowing what it is like to be a bat. In addition, Nagel supports his claims through the importance of an organism’s conscious experiences, memories, and knowledge, which allow an individual to identify themselves. Therefore, in this paper I will discuss Nagel’s argument, which I believe to be true, based on the idea that human beings do not have the ability to understand and/or know what it is like to be another organism without having the same conscious experiences as one another.
These premises, both of which are true, support the conclusion of this argument. The first premise states that bodily continuity is required for the function of mental continuity; this is of course true as all mental activity is generated within the brain whose livelihood relies on adequate operation of the body. Additionally, in the second premise it is noted that mental continuity is necessary in defining personal identity. Mental continuity as it relates to personal identity is a combination of memory and consciousness. Memo...
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.
Thus it enables a state of being that is in the moment (it is present). The aesthetical (in terms of material aspects) of the body are also something that is a definite variable. When the body undergoes ‘embodiment’ it is the process of the locus, culture, traditions, biological traits of the body (sex, race) that plays a role in the construction of this experience (which happens on a daily basis) and at the same time simultaneously confines it (2009:3). ‘Embodiment’ is forever shifting and growing; as one’s experiences are continuously happening and thus making it a highly subjective experience as well (2009: 4). This process then allows the body to become something that is more than just a biological construct; it allows the body to become something that is able to express itself unto other beings in both words (the patterns developed when one is speaking and the language styles that one has been influenced to use) and non-verbal communication (the shape and form the body takes when moving in space or even sitting or standing still in a space drawn from experienced emotions and the person’s historical, social and political background). Therefore it is suggested that ‘embodiment’ is something that is a network of interlinked signs showing past experiences and continuously reshaping and forming to show new signs based on new experience (Thapan 2009:
Functionalism is a materialist stance in the philosophy of mind that argues that mental states are purely functional, and thus categorized by their input and output associations and causes, rather than by the physical makeup that constitutes its parts. In this manner, functionalism argues that as long as something operates as a conscious entity, then it is conscious. Block describes functionalism, discusses its inherent dilemmas, and then discusses a more scientifically-driven counter solution called psychofunctionalism and its failings as well. Although Block’s assertions are cogent and well-presented, the psychofunctionalist is able to provide counterarguments to support his viewpoint against Block’s criticisms. I shall argue that though both concepts are not without issue, functionalism appears to satisfy a more acceptable description that philosophers can admit over psychofunctionalism’s chauvinistic disposition that attempts to limit consciousness only to the human race.
While the great philosophical distinction between mind and body in western thought can be traced to the Greeks, it is to the influential work of René Descartes, French mathematician, philosopher, and physiologist, that we owe the first systematic account of the mind/body relationship. As the 19th century progressed, the problem of the relationship of mind to brain became ever more pressing.
But, “human persons have an ‘inner’ dimension that is just as important as the ‘outer’ embodiment” (Cortez, 71). The “inner” element cannot be wholly explained by the “outer” embodiment, but it does give rise to inimitable facets of the human life, such as human dignity and personal identity. The mind-body problem entails two theories, dualism and physicalism. Dualism contends that distinct mental and physical realms exist, and they both must be taken into account. Its counterpart (weak) physicalism views the human as being completely bodily and physical, encompassing no non-physical, or spiritual, substances.