Philosophy Of Personal Identity

Different theories of how one person is themselves over time...

  • Body theory: Bodily continuity. As long as the person is in the same body, its the same person. Problems with this theory: Ship of Theseus(we are constantly changing), Teleportation problem.
  • Memory Theory: as long as you can remember a previous version of you, and that version would have remembered an even older version of you, creating a chain as long as your life. Problems: we don't have memory as children, missing memory, etc.
  • Survival Theory: Who I am are the parts that survived till now. If a memory is forgotten, that's no longer part of me.

The Psychology of Identity will go int Social identity theory and Self-Concept.

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