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
Therefore, we can conclude that the personality and characteristic traits of a person become the element that you can recognize the person who had conversation with you yesterday because the personality can uniquely identify of a person though by the attitude, responses, judgement and so on. Instead, we also cannot conclude that personal identity is the personality. We just only can prove that the personality is the element that support of the personal identity. It is because those definitions of personality we can clearly see that it is simply a pattern of responses or a complex of attributes and it is not the person themselves such as the example of “I have a dog” and “I am a dog”. In this case, we know that personality is something “to have” and it is not something “to be”.
When we think about our personal identity, we finally come to a question: “Am I the same person that I’ve been earlier in my life?”, and usually we end up with an opinion that even though our bodies change over time, we still remain being the same persons. Of course excluding the cases of severe memory loss or any other similar condition. Through this essay I will convince you that this point of view is mistaken. At first, I will share a light on Locke’s identity of consciousness argument. Furthermore, after showing Locke’s view of the consistence of personal identity over time, I will talk you through Thomas Reid’s “transitivity of identity” argument.
A fundamental right in our society nowadays and since we are moving towards a more and more individualistic culture exceedingly crucial. It seems to be more important than ever before to be who we are. Yet, who defines who we are? What exactly are identity and individuality? Looking up these terms in dictionaries, identity is defined as “who a person is, or the qualities of a person or group that make them different from others” (“Cambridge Dictionary”).
Identity is who someone is as a person. People have different views of what identity is and what can be done to find it. Identity can be your actions and thoughts. It’s what makes someone unique and different from anyone else. The Bible has its own view of identity as well.
For my definition of identity, I believe that identity is how you present yourself to society. For some people their identity is molded by society. People fear being different and being looked down upon, so they present themselves as a person who is socially acceptable. Other people do not worry about society’s opinion and present themselves as what their characteristics show them to be. Sinha Gunjan from Psychology Today states that, “DNA and life experience conspire to mold our personalities”.
These arguments on the whole try to establish a cognitive criterion for personhood. That the characteristic attribute worthy of our moral consideration is the development of consciousness. Consciousness is still a deep mystery. Science has not been able to answer what is consciousness, how it comes about and how is it related to the material brain. However, the study of brain damage has at least established that there is a relation between consciousness and brain activity.
• Social identity. PERSONAL IDENTITY Personal identity is what a person thinks about himself, it is the opinion formulated by the person about himself over a long period of time. It is nothing but how a person defines oneself. As stated above personal identity develops over a period of time. It may change as a person ages, it is influenced by numerous aspects in one’s life and the situations one goes through.
A fundamental right in our society nowadays and since we are moving towards a more and more individualistic culture very crucial. It seems to be more important than ever before to be who we are. Yet, who defines who we are? What exactly are identity and individuality? Looking up these terms in dictionaries, identity is defined as “who a person is, or the qualities of a person or group that make them different from others” (“Cambridge Dictionary”).
Identity is a socially constructed concept. We learn about our own respective identity and the identity of others through interactions with family, peers, organisations, institutions, the media and through other connections we make in everyday life. Identity is the beliefs, qualities, personality, appearance and culture that make a person who they are. Identity relates to self image, self esteem and individuality. Personal identity evolves over the course of our lives and may involve aspects of our lives that we have no control over such as where you grew up, the colour of your skin, as well as the choices you make, like where you choose to spend your time and your beliefs.