What is the relation between identity and memory?

According to Locke’s “memory theory”, a person’s identity only reaches as far as their memory extends into the past. In other words, who one is critically depends upon what one remembers. Thus, as a person’s memory begins to disappear, so does his identity.

What is Parfit’s view on personal identity?

People exist in the same way that nations or clubs exist. Following David Hume, Parfit argued that no unique entity, such as a self, unifies a person’s experiences and dispositions over time. Therefore personal identity is not “what matters” in survival.

What is the duplication problem for the memory theory of personal identity?

The duplication argument assumes that if personal identity holds between the original person and each successor person, we get the absurd result that the successor persons are the same person as each other.

What self is for Merleau Ponty?

Maurice Merleau-Ponty believed the physical body to be an important part of what makes up the subjective self. This concept stands in contradiction to rationalism and empiricism. Rationalism asserts that reason and mental perception, rather than physical senses and experience, are the basis of knowledge and self.

What makes personal identity?

Personal identity is the concept you develop about yourself that evolves over the course of your life. This may include aspects of your life that you have no control over, such as where you grew up or the color of your skin, as well as choices you make in life, such as how you spend your time and what you believe.

What is the problem of personal identity in philosophy?

In philosophy, the problem of personal identity is concerned with how one is able to identify a single person over a time interval, dealing with such questions as, “What makes it true that a person at one time is the same thing as a person at another time?” or “What kinds of things are we persons?”

What is the branching case?

But, in the branching case, Parfit argues that we must take the importance that we attach to identity and attach it to each of the branch lines. In such a case, we must give up speaking of ‘identity’ but we mustn’t give up speaking of survival.

What is the spatiotemporal continuity theory of personal identity?

The spatiotemporal continuity theory says that spatiotemporal continuity is indeed the essence of personal identity, not just that it is a good practical guide. Personal identity just is spatiotemporal continuity. The theory must be refined a bit if it is really to work in every possible circumstance.

What is the transitivity of identity?

Identity is transitive because everything is identical to itself, but the relation of being someone’s parent is not, because no one is her own parent. A relation is symmetric just in case: if object X stands in the relation to object Y, then object Y stands in the relation to X.