Personal identity
Personal identity is the unique identity of a person over time. Discussions regarding personal identity typically aim to determine the necessary and sufficient conditions under which a person at one time and a person at another time can be said to be the same person, persisting through time.
In philosophy, the problem of personal identity is concerned with how one is able to identify a single person over a time interval, dealing with such questions as, “What makes it true that a person at one time is the same thing as a person at another time?” or “What kinds of things are we persons?”
In contemporary metaphysics, the matter of personal identity is referred to as the diachronic problem of personal identity. The synchronic problem concerns the question of what features and traits characterize a person at a given time. Analytic philosophy and continental philosophy both inquire about the nature of identity. Continental philosophy deals with conceptually maintaining identity when confronted by different philosophic propositions, postulates, and presuppositions about the world and its nature.
The personal identity problem is a philosophical question about what makes a person the same person over time. It explores how a person persists through change by examining criteria like the continuity of the physical body, psychological continuity (memory and character), or an immaterial soul. This leads to questions about the nature of the self and what constitutes personhood itself.
Key questions within the problem
- Persistence: What conditions must be met for a person at one time to be the same person at a different time?
- Nature of the self: What sort of thing is a person?
- Is the self a physical body, a psychological entity, an immaterial soul, or something else?
- What is personhood? What are the essential qualities necessary to be considered a person?
Major theories and concepts
- Physical or body-based theories: Argue that personal identity is based on the continuity of the physical body.
- Psychological continuity: Posits that identity is based on psychological connections, such as memory, consciousness, and character traits
- Memory theory: Identity is maintained through a chain of overlapping memories, where each memory is linked to the one before it.
- Soul theory: Suggests that identity is tied to an enduring, immaterial soul that can be separated from the body.
- Illusion of the self: Some philosophers, like David Hume, argue that there is no persistent self, but rather a “bundle” of constantly changing perceptions and experiences.
Challenges and thought experiments
The Teletransporter Paradox: A thought experiment where a person is disintegrated and replicated elsewhere. Does the replicated person have the same identity, or is it a new person?
Memory issues: Memory is not a perfect record and can be flawed or lost, complicating theories that rely heavily on it.
Character changes: While character traits can be more stable than memories, they also change over time, and it’s debated whether a person is just the sum of their character states.
AI responses may include mistakes.
[1] https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2008/entries/identity-personal/
[2] wikipedia/en/Personal_identity
[3] https://philosophynow.org/issues/97/A_Philosophical_Identity_Crisis
[4] https://www.rep.routledge.com/articles/thematic/personal-identity/v-3