In a physicalist universe, where the human mind and experience is composed of only matter, identity and personal identity must be grounded in a material understanding. While it may not be necessary for discussing the topic of personal identity to some extent, it is imperative for successful dialectics, or achieving a truly established and meaningful conclusion. Throughout this essay, I will follow this process by reaching a conclusion on identity, insofar as it concerns physical matter, then explore the implications it has on personal identity. Although my argument concerning material identity can result in a nihilist form of personal identity, I aim to enable, rather than dismember, individuals through a fuller understanding of the self. To …show more content…
Since humans change across their lifetime in the same way the Ship of Theseus might, the identity they have is clearly a form of ideantity. This, of course, produces a subjective twist to their personal identity. Another individual and the self can and will both create unique ideantities for what they see as an individual. It is quiet a relativistic and nihilistic notion to say the individual has no true identity besides what others decide for them, or they decide for themselves. But, on the contrary, I find myself rather attached to the idea, as it can be rather empowering. According to the fundamental nature of ideantity, an individual has the free power and choice to be whatever they desire themselves to be. In a more practical example: if a man murders his wife and is sent to court, we would declare and ideantify him as a murderer. However, when reaching his hearing, he pleads “not guilty” because, according to him after reading my above argument, he is “not the same man who murdered, therefore the current self is not a murderer”. This is a fundamental, but understandable, abuse and misunderstanding of the argument. The man being tried has not yet rejected the self ideantity of being a murderer. For him to be declared innocent, he must destroy and reject, in himself, all things tying his ideantity to being a murderer. Therefore, unlike the current prison system, it seems apt to promote reforming individuals who have committed crimes. After ten years of investing in therapy, counseling, and general reform procedures, if the judge is certain beyond doubt that the man has cut murdering from his ideantity, there is no reason to keep him incarcerated. This example also highlights the possibility of deceit and self-deceit. A man can claim to reject
Billions of people populate the earth, and each person is trying to be themselves. Every person has unique qualities that help define who they are. When qualities such as personalities, beliefs, and experiences come together an identity is formed. Without identities a person is not much of anything. The short story “The Vanishing American” by Charles Beaumont uses the element of invisibility to show how valuable an identity is to a person.
Hume, David. "Of Personal Identity." Twenty Questions: An Introduction to Philosophy. Ed. G. Lee Bowie, Meredith W. Michaels and Robert C. Solomon. 4th ed. Harcourt College Publishers, 2000. 348-352
Identity is like a lock. The only way to find out what is on the other side is to find the keys. There are many ways identity can be created, and many people try to describe identity such as the following authors: Guy de Maupassant’s, “The Necklace”, Sherman Alexie’s, “Superman and Me”, ABC News’, “More Facebook Friends, Less Real Ones” , and “Mirror Stage”, by CommonLit Staff. There are two keys that are absolutely necessary to unlocking identity: one’s surroundings and one’s outer appearance.
In this paper I offer an explication of John Perry’s dialogue on the problem of personal identity, and my evaluation of the strongest account of personal identity between the body, mind, and soul. In this paper I will argue that the strongest account of personal identity is that a person can be identified by their soul. By having the sameness of soul you will then be able to solve the problem of personal identity. Your soul is the foundation of whom you are and by definition, personal identity means “The persistent and continuous unity of the individual person normally attested by continuity of memory with present consciousness.” And without your soul memory could not exist.
Although the concept of identity is recurrent in our daily lives, it has interpreted in various ways.
Identity is a group of characteristics, data or information that belongs exactly to one person or a group of people and that make it possible to establish differences between them. The consciousness that people have about themselves is part of their identity as well as what makes them unique. According to psychologists, identity is a consistent definition of one’s self as a unique individual, in terms of role, attitudes, beliefs and aspirations. Identity tries to define who people are, what they are, where they go or what they want to be or to do. Identity could depend on self-knowledge, self-esteem, or the ability of individuals to achieve their goals. Through self-analysis people can define who they are and who the people around them are. The most interesting point about identity is that some people know what they want and who they are, while it takes forever for others to figure out the factors mentioned before. Many of the individuals analyzed in this essay are confused about the different possible roles or positions they can adopt, and that’s exactly the reason they look for some professional help.
The question of personal identity is very intuitive, yet very difficult to define. Essentially, what makes you, you? John Locke was one philosopher who attempted to answer this question. He proposed a psychological theory to define personal identity. His theory does have some merit, but it is not a correct definition of personal identity, since there are some counter-examples that cannot be accounted for. My argument will prove that Locke’s theory of personal identity is false.
From the perspective of humanism, identity is something fixed, unchangeable and stable. With the development of deconstruction, new ideas about identity begin to prevail. Deconstructionists regard human identity “as a fluid, fragmented, dynamic collectivity of possible ‘selves’” (Tyson 335). Eddie’s identity is always fragmented, and each of the children represents a fragment of his identity. From the perspective of
This paper aims to endorse physicalism over dualism by means of Smart’s concept of identity theory. Smart’s article Sensations and the Brain provides a strong argument for identity theory and accounts for many of it primary objections. Here I plan to first discuss the main arguments for physicalism over dualism, then more specific arguments for identity theory, and finish with further criticisms of identity theory. Physicalism is the theory that the universe contains nothing other than the physical. Therefore, the universe can be fully explained in physical terms.
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
Many can remember a point in their life when they were a small child, carefree and happy with dirt on their knees and a smile on their face, but how can one know that he is the same person now as he was then? This is a question concerning personal identity; which addresses why someone at one point in life is identical with someone later in life. When it comes to personal identity and it’s persistence through time, many theories exist to explain what makes a person a person. One view is John Locke’s theory of personal identity. He stated that identity was not dependent on any material substance, such as one’s body, instead Locke maintained that personal identity is tied to consciousness and perceptions.
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 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 ...
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.