Personal Identity; A Look at Common Approaches

Personal identity, its nature and the persistence conditions of our personality are among old questions both in metaphysics and the philosophy of mind. There are two main questions here. Firstly, what does constitute my personal identity and make me different from others? Secondly, under which conditions I am allowed to call my-present-day-I the same person as myyesterday- I? Any answer that we give to such questions has important and significant consequences for other fields of philosophy like the philosophy of law and the philosophy of religion. Issues like punishment in the philosophy of law and resurrection in the philosophy of religion are directly related to the topic of personal identity. In this paper, we will consider some common and standard answers which have been given to the question of personal identity. First, we will discuss the relationship between personal identity and body. Secondly, we will critically discuss those accounts of personal identity which define it in terms of brain-continuity (or continuity of any other part of our body). After that, we will consider psychological properties and characteristics, especially memory, and their bearing with personal identity. It will be shown that reducing personal identity to psychological features will face us with difficulties not easier than the original problem of personal identity.