Self-identity is one of the main themes of philosophy throughout its history. In general, “self-identity” is a term that means thoughts or feelings with which you distinguish you from others, and we use the term in ordinary conversation without a solid concept of “self-identity”. However, arguing about self-identity philosophically, there arise many questions: whether there is any essence of yourself, whether you are the same person as you when you were a baby, whether memory or experience makes you, and what is “self-identity.” To solve these questions, many philosophers have been arguing the topic “self identity” for so long. In our history, the first important philosopher, who established the concept of self-identity concretely, is Descartes. …show more content…
He also states the evidence of self-identity is not one’s soul, but one’s consciousness and memories. As an illustration of his argument, as a person getting older, his self-identity may change, so his unchanging soul can not be the evidence of his self-identity. In “Personal Identity in Change of Substance” section of “On Personal Identity,” Locke states “For the same consciousness being preserved, whether in the same or different substances, the personal identity is preserved.” Therefore, in short, his view on “self” is that memories and consciousness compose self-identity, and it does not matter what a substance or a soul a possessor of the memories …show more content…
According to Hume, though we continuously perceive, the perception always changes slightly, so the slightly changing perception is different from the past one. Therefore, it is meaningless to try to find constant self-identity from the changing perception, or impression. For Hume, there is no connection between present impression and past impression, so unchangeable “self-identity” is a fiction. Instead, he said that we “feel” that the impressions seem to constitute self-identity. Moreover, while some say a spatiotemporal continuity and resemblance are a criterion of identity, Hume says those concepts don’t guarantee identity. In “On “There Is No Self”” by Hume, he states “We have a distinct idea of an object, that remains invariable and uninterrupted thro’ a supposed variation of time; and this idea we call that of identity or sameness….But supposing some very small or inconsiderable part to be added to the mass[he took “a mass” for an example], tho’ this absolutely destroys the identity of the whole[the mass],” In other words, if an idea of identity is a distinct idea of an object which remains the same, then the object has no longer the same identity if a tiny thing is added to the object. In human-identity case, he states “I never can catch myself at any time without a perception,” which implies that a perception or an impression is a
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.
Identity is the essential core of who we are as individuals, the conscious experience of the self-inside.
Although the concept of identity is recurrent in our daily lives, it has interpreted in various ways.
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, 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
Descartes believes that the self is essentially a “thinking thing” (82) – a thing that “doubts, understands, affirms, denies, is willing, is unwilling, and also imagines and has sensory perceptions.”
This change does not change a person’s identity. Hume’s “Bundle Theory” defines personal identity as perceptions.
If the book remained untouched in perpetuity, then the identity of the book would remain unchanged. But if pages were torn out of the book, Locke’s view would be that it is not the same book anymore – there ceases to be a perfect continued existence of material body (Emerson, 1997:1) Locke viewed the identity of living entities in a different light. Above, change in mass constituted a change in identity. But, in living entities a change in mass does not affect the identity of the object.
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
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.
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:
Locke believed that the identity of a person could be assigned to the consciousness. He thought that a person would remain the same as long as their consciousness continues to be the same over the course of their life: “Consciousness always accompanies thinking, and makes everyone to be what he calls ‘self’ and thereby distinguishes himself from all other thinking things; in this alone consists personal identity, i.e. the sameness of a rational being; and as far as this consciousness can be extended backwards to any past action or thought, so far reaches the identity of that person” (Essay II.xxvii.9). Locke believes that your body and your personality do not determine your identity. Instead, you can know that a person is the same person as long as their consciousness continues to be the same over the course of their life.
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 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 ...
In David Hume’s Personal Identity, published in the late 1730s, he rejects the idea of identity over time. He believes there are no persons that continue to exist. They are merely impressions.