In his article, “A New Look at Personal Identity,” Michael Allen Fox, argues his opinion on the feisty historic debate about physical and psychological continuity views on personal identity (Fox, 2007). He brings in his view of the “self-developed by existential philosophy” as what makes a person. He does not invalidate the original views but says that the issue of what makes a person remains a task for philosophers to investigate.
Fox wants to handle the often tricky dilemma of personal identity that has been tackled by philosophers since time immemorial. He identifies some questions to solve; “Who am I?” and “Might I be a very different person in the future?” He begins by stating that according to most responses, the conclusion boils
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He says that according to the former, someone never changes as they have had the same body since their birth. To support the argument, he recounts an ancient enigma called ‘The Ship of Theseus.’ He states that Theseus was the king and that gradually his whole ship’s parts got replacement so that no part of it remained as the first. He further says that this is the philosophers’ basis of their argument; that incremental replacement occurs on the gut, the epidermis, red blood cells, bone and muscles. He also introduces organ transplant to strengthen on their claim. He goes on to say that the cerebral and visual cortexes never regenerate and concludes that the most important parts of us do not change in relation to the subject at hand. He also introduces the concept of the DNA as another hurdle to the physical approach. He explains that as unique as the DNA is, it does not form part of all our body; only ten percent of the body DNA resides in our cells. He questions why philosophers have not ventured to use DNA as one of the bases of individual