Ideas about personal identity

• Many people believe a combination of ideas to be true
• Three views of personal identity:

  1. Physical
  2. Metaphysical
  3. Psychologal
• Physical identity as psychological:

  • The physicalism view is that a functioning brain is essential to being a person
  • There are many changes to the body throughout life
  • So bodily 'identity' is about spatio-temporal continuity
• Personal identity as metaphysical:

  • What is real about individuals is their unchanged conscious awareness
• Personal identity as psychological:

  • A well-know example of this can be seen in the views of Parfit
  • During our lives there is connectedness to the past and the future, but no deeper and enduring level of 'self'
  • There is genetic and, in recent cases, psychological continuity with ancestors and, after death, with offspring and descendants