Memory And Past Affecting Personal Identity

129 Words1 Page

I think that memories and past shouldn’t factor our identity. This has to do with two issues about personal identity; the role of the memory and the testimony if the past. Our identity can be cause by a bad memory and past but that should not affect our identity. If a person is a mean person in the past, but they are trying to change that should not affect their identity. Memories and past should not change individual identity. In the story of the Bourne he suffer from amnesia as he was trying to get his memory back he was getting flashbacks of his past. His flashbacks were not good he was a bad person that killed people. By him being a bad person it didn’t affected his identity.

Show More
Related

  • Merton's Identity

    763 Words  | 2 Pages

    Identity is formed through the mindset of oneself. Many would bring in deductive reasoning to argue that identity is indeed based on one’s family history/ background, however relating to Cold Blood, identity is rather formed through associations that lead to belligerent actions. Perry Smith, one of the antagonists in Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, relates the life of crime he has taken upon himself to his aggressive and tortured childhood of “. crying. Scared because of the thought of my father going to hurt me, also because he was beating my mother” (Capote 274).

    Read More

  • Sociological Accounts on Individuals Acquiring Their Identities

    606 Words  | 2 Pages

    they do not want to do. They will not always bear the impose roles on

    Read More

  • Identity in Maya Angelou's Graduation

    1173 Words  | 3 Pages

    The inquiry of identity is both a philosophical and a psychological question. Identity is not only comprised of the characteristics that make individuals unique, but also includes external perceptions that classify groups of people together. It gives individuals a unique sense of self, and also lends itself to the application of labels and stereotypes. I believe identity is an integral part of human existence. It creates societies and distinguishes culture. It gives individuals a sense of community and self-worth. I have an identity that no one else can own. It is a reflection of my past and the foundation for my future. Every decision I make becomes a part of my identity. But like all humans, I tend to change my mind frequently.

    Read More

  • Psychological Continuity Theory: The Persistence Of A Personal Identity

    1013 Words  | 3 Pages

    To answer the question of whether a person can persist through time, it is important to consider what is meant by a ‘person’. This consideration seems trivial at first, and if one were to take the physicalist route, it would be – a person persists through time by existing as the same human animal. However, it is in fact a lot harder to pinpoint what the ‘self’ actually consists of if we were to take the psychological route and consider the voice inside our heads, the voice that thinks and experiences and suffers. What is this mysterious immaterial phenomenon that we hold to be our personal identity? And what makes it the same entity as the one yesterday? Although these questions don’t have an explicit answer yet, in this essay I will attempt to give an insight on how they could be answered, offering a psychological

    Read More

  • Personal Identity at a High School Reunion

    1506 Words  | 4 Pages

    Personal identity does not reside in the activities a person participates in throughout life. As argued, personal identity relies on the elements of the body criterion. Using the body criterion, the peers at the high school reunion are able to identify James as the same person after ten years even without the name tag he wears.

    Read More

  • John Perry A Dialogue On Personal Identity

    1153 Words  | 3 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • The Memory Theory: The Problem Of Personal Identity

    1018 Words  | 3 Pages

    Philosophers have been pondering over the problem of personal identity for centuries and today we still have not completely figured it out. The body and soul theories clearly failed to answer that, so philosopher John Locke attempted to answer the question with his new theory, the memory theory. The memory theory states that an identical persons are equal to one another if they share at least one memory experience. This means that a present person that his past self are only identical person’s if they can both recall one memory. For example, Johnny at age 30 and Johnny at age 12 both remember their big birthday party when they were seven, so they are considered to be the same person. As stated in the claim, it only applies to memory experiences,

    Read More

  • Personal Identity And Personality

    1019 Words  | 3 Pages

    In “A Dialogue on Personal Identity and Immortality” John Perry conveys conversations between a philosopher and her two friends a few nights before she dies. We then come to how the dying philosopher is trying to have everyone convince her that she will survive even after her body dies. In this John Perry claims that there are three ways of deliberating personal identity: bodily identity, psychological continuity and immaterial soul. The essay then describes the different types of identity and how they can use them to prove to the perishing philosopher that she can still remain alive. I will argue that the only way we can distinguish personal identity is through psychological continuity and how we can determine a person based on their memories and experiences. From this we can go into discussion about some terms that will be used throughout this paper.

    Read More

  • Personal Identity: Who Are You?

    1397 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • The Memory Theory Of John Locke And Locke's Personal Identity

    1057 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Memory and Personal Identity

    750 Words  | 2 Pages

    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 ...

    Read More

  • My Personal Identity

    956 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • My Personal Identity: A Reflection Essay On Individual Identity

    1090 Words  | 3 Pages

    Everyone is prejudice in some way or another. From a young age individuals observe, or are taught discrimination against others. Whether it is because of religion, sexuality, race, gender, personality, or just someone’s way of life, everyone is biased. In many ways, who we are today, is influenced by our race, ethnicity, and culture, and overall our individual identities. Every experience, positive or negative, has an impact on how we react to something in the future. Decisions others make, can impact the way we interact with others, our personal beliefs, and all together our life experiences. Along our path of life, we meet people with different goals and circumstances they’ve encountered which make them who they are and why they do certain things a certain way. But our experiences

    Read More

  • Past experiences shape identity

    1955 Words  | 4 Pages

    Many believe that whatever situations have happened in the past should be left in the past. To others, the past holds a special place in their hearts because it has helped in shaping the person they have become today. One should always appreciate his or her ancestors and the struggles they have gone through throughout history such as slavery in order to bring us to where we are today. Though negativity can affect past experiences one should not dwell on it, but learn to move forward and look for the positive aspects of life. Without the past there wouldn’t be any great myths, any personal memories, and nothing for our future generations to learn from. Past experiences also helps people to learn from their mistakes in the past so they will know not to repeat them. One should also remember the good memories that the past has brought forth and should learn to appreciate them and the people who helped us to gain them. (Maya Angelou, author of the excerpt “Mary”, Zora Neal Hurston, author of the essay “How it feels to be colored me”, Gwendolyn Brooks, author of the poems “Sadie and Maud” along with “We Real Cool”, and Annie Proloux, author of the essay “The half Skinned Steer”, proves that through past experiences, whether negative or positive, the memories or struggles that people have encountered influences the way that people live their lives in the future and helps in shaping the individuals identity.)

    Read More

  • Identity And Humanistic Identity

    860 Words  | 2 Pages

    Identities are like fingerprints, everyone has their own individual and unique characteristics. Where a person may leave their fingerprints in history is up to them. Identity is a person’s own sense of self, and who they are. Everyday a person carries around his/her identity and it effects how they act, the way they think, and how they interact with other people. Therefore, identity isn’t something that is tangible, you can’t carry it in your hands, but instead it is internal, what is inside of you, and your thoughts. Identity is essentially something that is central, but can be represented in other physical forms. Such as through art work or through diction. How a person may choose to reveal their identity will affect how the society around

    Read More

More about Memory And Past Affecting Personal Identity

Open Document