Nature Of Personal Identity

• Personal identity is the nature, characteristics, behaviour, emotions of a person. I strongly believe that personal identity is unique nature of a person which do not change through his lifetime. Physical features of person which can change in due time like bodily growth, hair style, body size etc but the mental thought process such as ideology, personality traits, behavioural aspects like courage, guts, self-esteem, beliefs, conviction, nature and emotional, intellectual and spiritual characteristics. There is a standard assumption in society about personal identity is our physical body even though there will change in our physical features from time to time like body size, hair style etc. Philosophers Plato and Descartes said that personal

When you eventually regain consciousness, you feel that your bodies are exchanged rather than your brains are swapped, now would you still be you? Yes, this concludes that wherever your brain goes your personal identity follows. Will you be still you according to your family members? No, they won’t accept you because your physical features are changed. Now let us consider a hypothetical situation where the doctor without any physical transplantation swapped your brains data, which consists your personality, memories, experiences, now would you be still you? Yes. [2] There is an argument among philosophers that a person at a time A is same as at time B because their personal identity is same as they are spatiotemporally continuous (continuous in space and time) and others argue that it is because of psychologically continuous. (mental states of person at time B are derived from mental states at time A). [6] Lets us consider one more situation that if you donate your half of the brain to other brain less person, after regaining consciousness both of you are psychologically continuous with same mental behaviour and experiences but representing different physical bodies. Does both of you has the same personal

Yes, it satisfies but will the society accept that personal identity remains the same? Absolutely no. Therefore, there is something which is seems more closely to personal identity, perhaps it may be our brain or soul. If it is brain, then which part of brain is responsible for the personal identity, let us consider a situation where a small injury has happened to brain which part stores the information of language or something like solving maths, because of this he lost the memory of talking Hindi or solving maths, will he be still he? Yes sure. Let us consider about the non-technical capabilities such as remembering about your college days, friends, family relatives etc will you be still you if you lost all the information in the brain? Yes, because whatever is remaining, that is your character, way of responding to situations remains same, you can say in some fundamental way that your personal identity remains same. So, in the survival of memory I could forget everything and that could still be me. “This proves us that personal identity is not the bodily survival, it is something that, if I put in others body or in a jar it could be still me.”