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Reflective Essay: The Metaphysicality Of Personal Identity

724 Words3 Pages

The metaphysicality of personal identity is abstract in the context that questions endurance and its relation to memories, experiences, and our principles. It questions how much these attributes are specific to maintaining a personal identity that endures through time. According to Locke, memory constitutes personal identity; so therefore, as long as we remember a specific event in our life, we’re the same people as we were then. Stated by Locke, the lack of ability to unite consciousness results in the same man, but not the same person. For me, personal identity endurance doesn’t necessarily come from memories, moreso learning experiences.
Experiences shape us into complex individuals with different morals, principles and beliefs that derives us to behave in the ways we do. The more we are involved in the reality of our existence, the more we allow ourselves to be shaped by our experiences. The only aspect of endurance we sense, is that we are shaping daily into intellectual individuals. Endurance of personal identity is conditional. There are many different features that structure our identities, that considering persistence of identity is like comparing apples to oranges. We learn new things every single day that have the potential to impact our morals and everyday thinking. Similarly to the butterfly effect, every decision we have made in our …show more content…

I, myself, will endure; but personal identity is always undergoing change. How we allow our real world experiences define our morals and principles is what defines our personal identity. More than Locke’s definition, memories constitute personal identity, I believe it’s more so about how we allow memories to shape us as individuals and how we allow it to impact our lives and our consciousness. Psychological continuity is essential in the condition that our learning experiences persist in our consciousness, more than the actual memory

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