Identity: Three Different Theories Of Personal Identity

Since the dawn of time, humans have strived to understand their identity through a variety of different theories. This paper will be a look at three different theories used at understanding identity and what sort of issues and questions come along with these different theories. First things first, what is personal identity? Personal identity is the idea and ideas that you develop about yourself through your life and eventually become the way you identify yourself in that life. This identity includes factors that you have no control over, such as environmental circumstances and your ethnicity. While others you do have control over those being the decisions you make in life. These decisions can be in what you believe and how you spend your time. …show more content…
Things that possess a strict identity possess the exact same qualities as each other, meaning whatever can be said about one can be said about the other. Strict identity is ruled by a principle called Indiscernibility of Identicals. This principle simply states that if b is strictly identical with a, then b and a have the exact same properties. Numerical identity pertains to the total or the absolute qualitative identity, and how it distinguishes itself between another thing and itself. Its name implies it has a numerical basis it is the only identity relation in which we can count or number things. Identifying things as being identical is to say that these things hold the same qualities of sameness. “Sameness” and “Identity” referring to the same thing, quite literally their meanings are identical. Nevertheless, these terms can be ambiguous. But where is the issue in forming our …show more content…
What sort of factors does it take for one person to persist over time? What factors does it take to exist rather than ceasing to exist? Suppose you look at a younger photo of yourself and you say “That’s me.” What makes you that person still? This is usually referred to as the question of personal identity over time, where many philosophers can only find some sort of answer due too persistence conditions. These persistence conditions would rely significantly on a strict sense of identity, just because if you didn't have them in the exact way they were presented then you wouldn't be the same person you are. Nevertheless, there is and issue, I have grown from the time of my younger photo to the present so I can not say that I am exactly the same person as I once was. Strict identity creates statement that are logically symmetrical i.e. if heads are identical to bodies then bodies are identical to heads. Meaning I cannot refer myself to be the same as I was in the photo which makes it not possible to be my strict