Personal Identity In Philosophy
Personal identity in philosophy.
Philosophy is mostly interested in personal identity from metaphysical perspective. How do we know that we are the same person throughout our life? When does a personhood begin? Where is the self – is it in our brain, is our self an immaterial soul/egos or is it our consciousness?
Where is the self?
The existence of soul.
The view of religions on this subject is unsurprisingly unifying – the soul is our identity. As the soul is something that can be measured and proved it 's difficult for this view to participate in the debate, thus this view is called a Simple view.
Mind-body dichotomy or Cartesian dualism.
Cartesian dualism name so after Rene Descartes believes that mind and body are two different substances coexisting together or near each other in the body. Descartes ' reasoning regarding this subject can be summarised as – the only thing that I can be sure of is my thought, I 'm not sure that my body exists, therefore my body and mind are distinct things.(Rene Descartes “Discourse” part IV.) http://www.gutenberg.org/files/59/59-h/59-h.htm
Nowadays this considered as being a logical fallacy as by thinking of himself as a thinking thing Descartes was merely stating his thoughts about himself and not his real properties. An analogous example can be the following:
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The idea of consciousness has also been present in many eastern religions, thus a question arises if and how can consciousness exist after the death of a body? And also – where consciousness comes from, is it internally human or die animals have consciousness?
Is our self is simply out material body?
As a growing organism which is constantly undergoing change how can we determine whether a physical body in the past is the same thing is this physical body in the present. Throughout our life we develop from foetus to a grown up human being that constantly ages, like any other organic material, how can we know that we are still the same thing, if our self is contained only in constantly changing physical
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