Are People Essentially Persons

Are persons essentially persons?

Personal identity is a much-disputed debate within metaphysics and is still a cause of concern for many philosophers because it raises questions about what we essentially are and what being a person, persisting from one day to the next, necessarily consists of. In this essay I discuss the very influential view from Locke, who argues that persons are essentially persons. He concludes that personal identity is a matter of psychological continuity. Additionally, I explain the view that was first developed by Olson known as animalism. He argues that a person is essentially an animal. Animalism is the view that to be a human person is to be an organism that belongs to the species of Homo sapiens and that is where

He provides criteria of personal identity through time that consist of the necessary and sufficient conditions for the survival of persons. He considered personal identity to be based on consciousness (memory and experience) and not on the physical matter of the body. He argued that many people hastily identify the physical brain with consciousness. The body and the brain are physical objects; therefore, it is subject to change whilst consciousness consistently remains the same. Consequently, personal identity is not located in the brain, but in consciousness. A person has memories of itself existing at times in the past and is also able foresees itself existing in the future. This continuation of the same functional organism and the same life constitutes the sameness of the living thing. Therefore, ‘man’ refers to a living body of a particular shape. Locke distinguishes between man and person by using thought experiments and demonstrates that a man and person are not the same thing. If man is a living physical body – in other words, an animal of a certain kind – then a person must be something different. Locke concludes that a person is essentially a person and that a person is a thinking, intelligent being that has self-awareness of being one thinking thing that persists at different times and

Our criteria of identity derives from the fact that we are human animals. However, this does not imply that we have a fixed human animal nature. He argues using three premises. “Firstly, presently sitting in your chair is a human animal. Secondly, the human animal sitting in your chair is thinking. Thirdly, you are the thinking being sitting in your chair. Therefore, the human animal sitting in your chair is you.” I would agree as very few would deny the very existence of all animals, nor the fact that a specimen of the species Homo sapiens is presently seated in your chair. So the first premise cannot be easily rejected. Moreover, to deny that human animals think whilst accepting that dolphins and elephants are able to is a contradiction. Since we can assume that the human animal in your chair is not the only one of its kind, then clearly whichever reason one has for accepting that kinds of non-human animals are able to think must equally apply to the human animal in your chair. Lastly, to reject the third premise is to actually believe that you are not alone in sitting and thinking in that very chair. There would have to be an animal thinking and sitting while you are simultaneously sitting and thinking the very same thoughts. This causes