Personal Identity by Derek Parfit

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

Working in conjunction with memory is consciousness, consciousness is the definition of the self; it is the mind’s capacity to point beyond itself, differentiating between itself and an object creating awareness of “I” throughout bodily and memory changes. Consciousness is the heart of free will and intent, it is responsible for the ability of a person to choose. With that said, it is my belief that defining personal identity relies on both bodily and mental continuity.

In this paper, I will argue that the Memory Theory of Personal Identity is the closest to the truth. I will do so by showing that the opposing theories – Body and Soul Theories – have evident flaws and that the

Identity is defined as “the fact of being who or what a person or thing is” (Oxford University Press). Personal identity deals with questions that arise about ourselves by virtue of our being people. Some of these questions are familiar that happen to all of us every once in a while: What am I? When did I begin? What will happen to me when I die? There are many different categories that define us as people (Olson). Our Race, Class, and Culture define who we are so much that it affects how we should live our life.

     Identity is one of the main questions throughout all of our readings, because it is hard for people to accept who they are in society. Accepting their identity as a minority with little if any freedoms

In philosophy, the issue of personal identity concerns the conditions under which a person at one time is the same person at another time. An analysis of personal identity

The world has become modern and global. Identification of the self is a complicated, though, an important problem of every individual. Self- identity is based on inner values and reflections on culture, politics and social interactions. The main point is that people label themselves to any particular group in the society (Worchel etc., 1998). According to Ferguson: “Identity commonly refers to which it makes, or is thought to make

There are many factors that shape us into who we are, and who we will become. Some of these factors we can control, while others we cannot. While we are born into many traits of our identities, much of our other behavior is learned. My identity, for example, is “based not only on responses to the question ‘Who am I?’ but also on responses to the question ‘Who am I in relation to others?’” (Allen, 2011, p. 11). My identity and the question of who I am, are both influenced by many aspects of my life, including my hometown, my family, my friends, and my beliefs and moral values.

In order to defend the Bundle Theory of personal identity Parfit begins to describe it and differentiates it from Ego Theory. Parfit states that there are two theories about what persons are or what a person’s personal identity really is. According to Ego Theory, each person has an

The purpose of the study was to systematically compare self-generated episodic counterfactuals to self-generated episodic memories and episodic future projections (“episodic” here refers to the memory and projection of events, or “episodes,” as opposed to “semantic” memory, which is a knowledge of learned facts). Participants in the study were asked to write a memory of an important event in their lives, an important imagined event “that could have happened, but did not happen” in their lives, and “an important imagined future event that might happen” in their lives. After recording these real and imagined events, the participants were asked a series of questions regarding their phenomenological characteristics and content, and the degree to which

Bernard Williams, initially illustrates psychological continuity in his paper The Self and the Future with the example that if one was to undergo a brain transplant, “your memories and other mental features, the resulting person would be convinced that he or she was you”. Williams describes how persons A and B are changing bodies, then “A chooses that the B-body-person should get the pleasant treatment and the A-body-person the unpleasant treatment”. Through Williams’ phrasing this notion seems like the intuitive choice to pick, given that if we are switching bodies, then (if I am A), I assume that I am now inhabiting the B-body-person. Using this premise, it seems clear that I am only what stems from my memories, thus I am identified by my psychological continuity; on the surface, this seems difficult to contest. However, Williams, goes on to illustrate how in the premise of this argument there is an assumption. Williams defines the thought experiment again, but depersonalises person B, and instead claims that “changes in his character are produced, and at the same time certain illusory “memory" beliefs are induced in him;”this is essentially the same process as what happen in the first instance, however, Williams refrains from referring to what happens to the second person. Consequently, person A does not wish for the A-body-person to be tortured, even though given the conclusion form the first example this body now contains a different person. Given person A’s emotive response, it would perhaps appear that, despite the lack of psychological continuity, the A-body-person may in fact still be person A; therefore, psychological continuity may not be an appropriate way to claim someone is the same person. Nevertheless, can we genuinely claim that this emotive response can create a genuine criticism for this psychological continuity, therefore

The most important feature that helps us treat survival as a matter of degree is the fact at admits for a sense

Personal identity theory is a theory that questions our existence philosophically: it asks who we are and how do we know? In the essay “Will Tommy Vladek Survive?” John Perry described a controversial topic on identity by analyzing an essay called The Meeting by Frederik Pohl and C.M. Konibluth. In the essay there were two boys -Tommy Vladek a destructive boy, who was mentally challenged but healthy-bodied and Sam a normal boy, who had an accident that damaged his body but left his brain healthy. Tommy’s family was facing difficulties because of the special care needed for him. A Dr. Nicholson gave Tommy’s parents the choice of a new brain that will make “upgrade” Tommy and they had

There are various kinds of identity (individualized or shared) that people are expected to possess. (Hollinger, 2004) namely; personal identity which is known as a

This particular theory views identity as conditional and self motivated as well as being related to one’s culture. Although other theories on identity consider the personal and social identity to be separate, SCT considers the personal and social identity to be