The Concept Of A Personal Identity

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.

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

No matter how much a person desires to live according to their personal autonomy, he or she will never escape the influence of societal forces. Explicitly or subtlety, these forces shape our individuality. One intriguing manner that these societal forces manifests itself in is our name. As Ruth Graham writes, “It’s becoming increasingly clear today that names carry a wealth of information about the world around us, the family we arrived in, the moment we were born—and that they mark us as part of cultural currents bigger than we realize.” Names alone provide evidence that individuals are made by interactions with social institutions and groups. Ultimately, the inescapable nature of society’s influence demands individuals to ponder how much personal autonomy is actually autonomous and to what extent does the pursuit of personal autonomy lead to a life of emptiness and vanity.

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

Stereotypes have been around since the beginning and continue to hurt the lives of certain people in society. Due to stereotypes and prejudice made by certain people, the author, Evan Hunter, successfully demonstrated through the story “On the Sidewalk Bleeding” the consequences of stereotyping. The story focuses on a sixteen year old boy named Andy, and his last moments being alive after being stabbed by a rival gang known as the Guardians. Andy was stereotyped because of his purple jacket that identified him as a member of the Royals. While he is reflecting on his life, four people come by but do not take the time to help. The drunk man

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.

Personal identity is essential in the human experience. Identity is complex and can be broken down into two main groups: introspective identity, and bodily identity. Introspective identity is based off of the groups, mentalities, or beliefs that you align yourself with, and bodily identity is based off of the physical side of yourself. Whether physical or introspective, your identity impacts every action you take. Whether choices ranging from what colors you prefer to which college you want to attend are primarily based off of your introspective identity, which is a combination of both memory and consciousness, physical identity impacts how others perceive you. Consciousness is mainly the awareness of bodily identity as well as continuous introspective identify, while memory is awareness of introspective identity. These two different facets of identity are imperative in the distinction between bodily identity and introspective identity. In means of personal identity introspective identity (which is evident in memory), is essential, while bodily identity (based partially in consciousness) has less credit.

A personal identity is the concept that is developed about oneself that evolves throughout his or her life. This could include uncontrollable aspects such as skin color, religious beliefs, or race.

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.

In today’s society, one of the hardest social conventions for an individual to overcome has been the systemic stratification and classification of that individual’s “identity,” whether that be by the government, employers, or even one’s own family. A person’s race, religion, gender, sexuality, and economic status have become the defining characteristics of a person’s identity. In turn, this has fostered a society in which the courts actively look to ensure that the rights of certain classes are not either prohibited by others, or conversely, promoted over the rights of others. Recent social movements have been charged by the classes that our society has forced citizens in to, ultimately driving oppressed individuals toward seeking relief from

The only problem with this theory is people with dementia and Alzheimer's disease. My grandfather-in-law is in stage five of this disease. Somedays he can remember my name, and other days he has no idea who I am. I have

Philosophers have been struggling for centuries with solve how personal identity manifests itself in people, but they are especially concerned with how it carries over through space-time as a unique portion of the person said identity originates from. Philosophers are concerned with personal identity 's connection to the physiology of human beings because of the immensely physical nature of the world we occupy. The physicalist perspective is also a stronger rational backing because the alternative perspective to the physicalist perspective, the dualist perspective, offers a more complex explanation of the nature of physical identity. If the assumption is made that the dualist view of personal identity and the physicalist view of personal identity both accommodate the how personal identity operates equally well, the simpler view is the more probable view due to the argument made by Occam 's Razor. This argument is that probabilistically speaking, if there are less things need to be taken into consideration for an argument, the likelihood of that argument being true is greater due to the necessity of only one or a few conditions needing to exist. In this paper, a few popular possible arguments for personal identity in relation to human anatomy will be discussed. The equivalence of a person to his/her theory view will be summarized and a counterexample will be provided to attempt to disprove the brain view, this will also be done for the the memory continuity theory. Then,

My purpose is to show my individuality and to express myself. This is for others including myself, to see and to remind us that our identity is very complex.

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.

Many people question themselves, what is it exactly that makes them unique? What is it that defines them as a unique person that no one in the world possesses? In philosophy, these questions do not have just one answer, and all answers are correct depending on which theory appeals most and makes sense to you. In general, there are two ways people approach this question, some say that a person’s identity is the “self” that carries all of their experiences, thoughts, memories, and consciousness (ego theorists), and some say that a person’s identity is just a bundle of experiences and events that a person has been through in their life, these people deny that the “self” exists (bundle theorists). In this paper, I will be arguing that a person’s identity is just a bundle of experiences, denying the self and the memory criterion.