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Psychological Continuity Essay

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In this paper, I will discuss the psychological continuity analysis of personal identity, and an example against the sufficiency of psychological continuity for personal identity with transitivity. Psychological continuity refers to the continuity between individuals in a mental state. This is not a necessary condition for personal identity because memory is not transitive, and identity is. Quantitative sameness means that something is completely identical with something else, which is usually itself. This relationship is best described by Leibniz’s law, which states that “x is identical to y if and only if everything true of x is true of y.” For psychological continuity, episodic memory is the idea that two or more people can be classified …show more content…

This makes memory not a necessary condition for personal identity. For example, if in five years I do not remember that I went to class on the second Monday of November, then I will not be continuous with myself from five years ago according to this view. Memory is not a transitive relation, but identity is transitive. If I remembered what I did on the first day that I arrived at UC Davis, then I am identical to that person, y. If y had some sort episodic memory of the day before I arrived, which would be person z, then y will be identical to that person, z. However, the psychological continuity view says that memory is a necessary condition for identity, which suggests that person x and person z are not identical if x does not remember being in the position of z. This does not make sense, since the idea that x is identical to y and y is identical to z implies that x is identical to z by transitivity of …show more content…

In simpler terms, if x has episodic memory of y, and y has episodic memory of z, then x and z are psychologically connected. As shown, psychological connectedness is a transitive relation. For example, if my 7 year old self remembers what my 6 year old self did during Christmas, and if my 6 year old self remembers what my 5 year old self did during Christmas, but my 7 year old self does not remember what my 5 year old self did during Christmas, then my 5 and 7 year old self are not psychologically continuous due to not being able to remember, but they are psychologically connected. With psychological connectedness leads to the question of fission, where I could be psychologically continuous with more people if they had identical brains with me. If the mental states between myself and another person are the same, then by psychological continuity, we would be the same person. Realistically, this view would not make sense in the real

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