Personal Identity: General framework

1
Personal Identity General framework

• Identity is a relation, personal identity is the
  conditions under which x is the same person as y.
  
• Type identity vs. Token identity type identity
  says that two things are identical if they have
  the same kind of stuff token identity is the
  same exact stuff.

2
Three issues of personal identity

• 1. what makes a person one person -- the question
  of unity
• 2. what someone the same person? -- the question
  of identity over time.
• 3. what makes something a person? the question
  of personhood.

3
Criteria of personal identity

• Two separate issues
• 1. Criteria as the unity relations themselves.
  (What is it to be the same person?)
• 2. Criteria as evidence for a single person over
  time. (How do we know if x is the same person as
  y?)

4
Perry, First Night

• Body theory to be Gretchen Weirob is to have
  this body that you identify as Gretchen Weirobs.
• Soul theory what makes a person the same person
  through time is that they have the same immortal
  soul or mind.

5
Lockes Theory of Identity

• A thing of type x is identical with a previous
  occurrence of an x if the current x has a
  continuous history linking it with the previous
  x.
• Locke distinguishes four kinds of things that
  have different criteria of identity

6
Four types of identity (Locke)

• 1. Identity of non-living objects -- a continued
  body, having the same matter through time.
• 2. Identity of plants and animals continued
  life of an organized body
• 3. Identity of human -- same type of criteria as
  for animals
• 4. Identity of persons

7
Lockes innovation

• To distinguish 3 from 4 is Lockes innovation.
• Thus, person, human, substance are three
  different ways that a human can be identified.

8
Lockes Theory of PIPsychological Continuity

• A person is "a thinking intelligent being, that
  has reason and reflection, and can consider
  itself as itself, the same thinking thing, in
  different times and places which it does only by
  that consciousness which is inseparable from
  thinking, and, as it seems to me, essential to
  it" (349a)

9
Lockes Criteria of Evidence for Same Person
Memory

• x is the same person as y if they share the same
  memories of themselves as one self.