My First Thought When I Gained Consciousness

The concept of personal identity or personhood is a very complex area of philosophy that challenges our most basic understandings of mind and matter. Philosophers have generally settled into either the school of mind, or consciousness, and the school of body. As our ability to study the mind grows, through developments in psychology and neurology, consciousness-based theories have come to dominate the discussion of personal identity and body-based theories appear simplistic and even primitive. Thesis: Catriona Mackenzie, however, compels the field to make a renewed examination of the body by pointing out that the body is the very apparatus by which the self interacts with world, thereby shaping all of the experiences which constitute memory and consciousness.

From early on in life I knew that I was adopted. Unfortunately, that was about all I knew. I knew when and where I was born and the approximate age of my biological mom, but the rest was left to question. I often found myself wondering, "Who was she?" "Who was he?" "Was it love?" "Where are they now?" "Did they end up together?" "Are they even alive?" "Who would I be had I stayed with them?" "Where did my characteristics come from?" Questions like this ran through my head almost daily. It wasn’t until my eighteenth birthday that I got any answers; it was then that I learned some life changing information about my origins.

The death of the washwoman was a sad one, and mourn we did. My mother cried at night when I was in bed and in the morning she would continue her work like it was a normal day. But as time passed her memory nearly ceased to exist until a spark brought it back. I was heading outside over to the market in order to get some bread when I noticed our clothes hanging on the wire drying. It wasn’t anything abnormal but memories started rushing back. Suddenly pictures and voices came to me and so did the washwoman. I could remember her. The characters of hard work and love came into my mind as I thought of the times when she would come to our house on time and with perfectly washed clothes. My heart sank when I remembered she was dead. Her grave as across the road where almost every dead soul was buried. I hadn’t payed my respects to her in a while so I decided to head over to her grave. As I walked, I read the grave stones. Some showed the death of a six year old and others read thirties or forties. A lot of young children had died in the last four years. The Black Plague, or so they called it, had hit our small town hard. My family had missed it by a miracle from God but almost every family had encountered it. Nearly everyone who had caught it was hopeless. It was a terrible and most frightening disease. After some time walking, I finally came upon the washwoman’s grave. On it, it read,

Reincarnation, is the promise set forth from Brahma. We will continue to turn the “wheel of existence” until we achieve enlightenment.

Reincarnation is seen as the rebirth of a part of someone after their death. Whether someone takes a philosophical or religious approach, that part can be either their consciousness, their mind or even their soul (Britannica). Said rebirth can take multiple forms. People are sometimes perceived as being reborn as animals or as human beings, and sometimes that rebirth is merely spiritual or conceptual. Doctrines of reincarnation varies across many religious systems of belief but they often have key similarities such as a notion of merit and a learning process for the individual being reborn.

Like any average person, I’ve accomplished many things in my life from learning how to walk to learning algebra in the eighth grade. However one of my greatest accomplishments has always been learning a new language. When I was eight years old, my family and I moved to the United States from Mexico. Naturally, I was very excited and eager to experience something new but because of the major differences, the move to a new country with a different language proved to be more difficult than I originally thought.

Who am I? What am I? Why am I? These are all questions that humans have been asking themselves for thousands of years. Some of us ponder on the question throughout our lives, attempting to find the meaning of life and a reason for us to continue on. Others, however, ask the question in a fleeting moment and barely concern themselves with these age old questions. Many philosophers have analyzed the different aspects of “the self”, one’s identity, and ones consciousness to better understand and answer these questions. This in turn has created several different theories as to what our consciousness is, what “the self” is, and what do we mean by identity. Two such philosophers that have been extremely influential to this issue are Rene Descartes

The moment I knew I was no longer a child was a regular day. I was driving to work in a car that I had changed the oil in. It was with the knowledge that I had turned in a major essay for my linguistics course at a local college. My mind recently had been wondering when I could start filing my taxes. I live by the lists and I have a mental list of what makes a person an adult. I was surprised to find on that average November day that I fit quite neatly into most of the categories, I had transportation, employment, a sense of autonomy, ideological suredness, ability to speak and be heard, and mental faculties in line with a pragmatism that is necessary to function in the real world. The French song playing on the radio and the brightness of the cloudy sky somehow triggered this revelation.

I stood there, silent, and smiled sheepishly because really, things like this don't happen to me. Or around me. Yet, the next morning mother called her three sons to her bedroom and told us that my father's other wife, my stepmother, had died during childbirth in the midnight. Perhaps, because I had learnt to attribute the rift that cracked my family and caused my parents to separate to her, or because she used to be just another bleached face in the yellow two-storey house we used to live; I didn't know what to feel. But for not knowing what to feel, I felt guilt - and a chill on my

We live in a world where we live and we die, or do we? What if we came back to this Earth but in a different form? This is where the ideology of Reincarnation comes in. This has been a topic of controversy for decades and still is today. The idea that we come back to this Earth in a new form came from Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism, and Sikhism religions. Moreover, this dates back to many ancient cultures, such as the Greeks believing in the rebirth of Pythagoras, Socrates, and Plato. Even today there are many scientist who believe that reincarnation, more specifically, Dr. Ian Stevenson, a famous scientist who devoted 40 years of his life researching, finding past life remembrances, and resemblances and inclinations towards certain objects and

My mother claimed I needed to learn to read before second grade began, and trapped me in is a single activity. Instead of doing my favored activities I compliantly allowed the rough carpet to press indentations into my skin as I began to read. The book’s smooth cover clung to my fingertips as I looked for meaning in the indecipherable syllables. I sat with water threatening to spill from my eyes, lost in a sea of letters with waves of words battering me from all sides. However, I blinked and tentatively pressed my lips into the hum of a “m”. I searched the depths of my mind for the meaning of the next letter, letting the hum trail into eternity. Once again, I identified the letter with time and opened my mouth to the sound of an “a”. Instinctively, I looked to my mother for aid in my plight, as I desperately wracked my mind for the sound of the last letter. With her help, I

As, an adult I was able to look back on the issues that I had as a child, and

Before I begin I would like to say that at no point did I ever just turn into an adult, in fact at times I wonder if I am one. There was a particular instant in my life when I finally released the death-like grip on my childhood that was already old, shriveled and meager to begin with, and took those first- reluctant- strides into the blinding light of adulthood.

When it comes to personal identity and survival of the self, it is difficult to say what defines a person throughout time. The three arguments are for the body, soul, and brain. These theories argue that each respective component of a person, must remain the same throughout time in order for a person to be unchanged. The brain theory is more plausible than its counterparts. To prove this, first, I will describe the soul and body theories, which I oppose, and then present an argument based on the brain transplant theory. A criticism for this is Perry’s third night argument that states the body donor is the surviving factor. My rebuttal for his counterargument uses Cohen and Miller’s Conventionalist Argument to support my original statement.

Suffers much from working in bad condition. My darkness that I encounter was not being able to move. Because of my fear of responsibility my stumble block was not removed. I was able to move forward in getting married, little that I did not know I was entering into hell.