Philosophy Of Personal Identity

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.

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.

With any philosophical theory, there are many different sides to each topic. The first argument that will be discussed about personal identity is the psychological approach. People who stand by the psychological approach concerning personal identity believe that a person’s memories and their personality traits make up who they are. According to this approach, throughout your life you will continue to be the same person because your memories and personality will never

Lately my mornings are spent getting up between 5:30am and 6am. I get myself ready, I never look fantastic just passable, and I go to work. Part of my morning routine is getting my dog, Donovan, ready for the early part of his day as well. We go to the yard for his bathroom routine, we go inside where I feed him his diet dog food and inject him with insulin, we go upstairs where I place a new diaper wrap around his mid-section (dogs with diabetes leak, who knew?), and he goes back to bed to sleep beside my husband. After we say our goodbyes I head to work, or school, or whatever adventure life has for me that particular day. Rinse, wash, repeat. I had no idea when I was in my teenage years that my life at 32 years old would be a tattooed, married, full time working, full time schooling, boring, Puerto Rican, animal lover. Well, the animal loving part I knew since I was maybe 2.

To understand Locke’s concept of personal identity it is necessary to understand what he means by identity and what he means specifically by personal identity. Locke states there are three substances that we have ideas of and that have identities. He defines idea in Essay concerning Human Understanding as “whatsoever is the object of the understanding when a man thinks” (Essay, chapter 1, section 8). That is to say that an idea, to Locke, is the basic unit of human thought. Identity is based off of comparison of these ideas in different times and places.

What exactly makes a person the same person over time? Is it his consciousness, his body, his soul? What specifically does being the same person consist of daily? What features or traits define one`s own personal identity? According to John Locke, personal identity is having the sameness of consciousness over time. Personal identity is established on consciousness and not on the soul or the body. What makes a person the same person over time is having self awareness that he is who he is, and having memories of experiences of what he did. I am in support of Thomas Reid`s view on personal identity: “A man may be and at the same time not be the person that performed a particular action” (Reid 147). I think Reid`s theory is correct because one cannot be consciously aware of every action he has done.

My aim in this essay is to analyze in this order the ideas of personal identity, human nature, and reality. The following essays and films will be analyzed: "Divided Minds and the Nature of Persons", "The Selfish Cooperator", "Does the Real World Exist", Transfer, I Am and The Signal. In Derek Parfit 's "Divided Minds and the Nature of Persons", we learn that personal identity is ever changing, whereas in Richard Dawkin 's essay "The Selfish Cooperator" we are taught that human nature is circumstantial, and finally John Searle argues in "Does the Real World Exist" that reality exists and can be independent of us.

One of the central issues of psychology is identity and the way individuals shape their identities for themselves. People live in different regions all around the globe and are consequently exposed to a distinct type of culture, religion, education, family values and media. These influences instill certain rigid values in people from birth, which configures their self-concept and the way they perceive other individuals in the society they interact with.

When talking about identity there hasn’t always been the same idea surrounding it. Identity seems like a simple topic at first; anyone you talk to could tell you the same thing, “I am me.” When you ask them what makes them their own person it turns into a dilemma with most people thinking that their body and soul is them while in the other camp its people thinking that their own consciousness is all you need to stay you. With that in mind there are two theories and the body and soul theories. John Locke was the person who dissected the consciousness of mind idea.

Depending on which philosopher you believe personal identity can take many different forms. They can range anywhere from spiritual, physical, mental and others. The main problem is there is no true way to decipher which of the methods are correct. For me personally I would say that personal identity is decided mentally and how you act. Looking at thinkers like Descartes that believe that identity is made by our immaterial souls that allow us to live after our bodies die.

Throughout my life, I have been greatly influenced by many different sources such as my friends, family, and school. These social groups have shaped who I am today through the values and beliefs they have introduced to me. As Tatum says in The complexity of Identity: Who am I? “The concept of identity is a complex one, shaped by individual characteristics, family dynamics, historical factors, and social and political contexts.” (Tatum, 2000) From day one, my family has been there to teach me to be full of love, kindness, and acceptance. The way I was raised prepared me to be able to create and develop long lasting relationships with people such as my peers or my teachers. I grew up in the town of Anacortes, Washington, which is

Your personal identity is who you are as a person. You demonstrate parts of your personal identity through what you wear, or how you act towards other people. Some things that are important aspects of your personal identity are your birth order, family dynamics, and just your personality in general. You also demonstrate part of your personality through what you want in the future.

Personal identity is the idea and ideas that you develop about yourself through your whole life and eventually become the way you identify yourself in that life. This includes factors that you have no control over, such as environmental circumstances and your ethnicity, as well as the choices you make in life. These choices can be in what you believe and how you spend your time. We demonstrate portions of our personal identity outwardly through how we interact with other people and even what we wear. Nevertheless, their are many ways of forming this sense of identity and often times these various methods can be controversial in their effectiveness be it from a numerical or strict sense.

Everybody has an identity, it makes them individual and unique, and it defines who you are as a person. This project about my identity showed me what makes me unique. I would have never known how much my friends mean to me or how my identities connect with each other. I have three identities that make me who I am, cultural, personal, and social. A specific quality that covers my cultural identity is being Czechoslovakian. Both sides of my family have at least a part of Czech in them. My great-grandparents are from Czech Republic and my grandpa was the first generation in America, he was born in Ohio. This is very important because I have always identified as Czech and it is a big part of me, as I am so interested in ancestry. For my personal identity, the biggest part is my personality, being loud and outgoing, has always been important to me. The reason being, it is how people view me. A lot of people know me as the loud person or the person who talks a lot. That is meaningful to me considering I like people to view me in a certain way The last identity, social, is one of the most important to me because it involves my friends, and through this project, I learned how vital they really are to my social identity. I realized that I have a good amount of friends in this project. It is nice to have people as a support system and to relate with. These qualities show that I value being loud and outgoing. It also says that I value my family and they are a big part of life. The last one, social, ties in with the first one because it shows I am outgoing and friendly.

I’ve lived my life according to the saying “why fit in when you were born to stand out;” therefore, I’ve made a point to differentiate myself from my peers and my family. In my community, I belonged to the 3.65% of people who identify as part of the Other category in my home town. As a white girl in a Hispanic town, I was an outlier from the rich Hispanic Culture. This defined my life from a young age and directed me to learn to thrive while standing out. At home, I was raised in a household where at the end of the day we would congregate around the TV to watch the latest football game. Although I adore spending time with my family, I would rather read than breathe; my family does not relate to that. These circumstances, albeit sometimes daunting due to their secluding side effects, have allowed me to embrace being unique and to capitalize on my individuality to achieve my goals, in a world where I may have otherwise gone unnoticed.