Relation to oneself· Identity and freedom
Psychological continuity
Axis: Nature of the self — What makes me remain myself through time?
What constitutes personal identity is not a substance but the continuous chain of mental states: memory, character, intentions. I am the same person as yesterday because my memories and psychological traits connect to it without interruption.
Philosophers 1
Lockeexplicit
Locke detaches personal identity from substance, whether material or spiritual: what makes me the same person over time is the continuity of consciousness, and notably the memory linking my past actions to my present. Person is thus a forensic term, bound to imputation: before the name existed.
Essay Concerning Human Understanding, II, ch. 27 ("Of Identity and Diversity")
- Descriptive Thought experimentThe teletransporter
If you are scanned here, your body destroyed, and an exact copy with all your memories rebuilt on Mars, is it you who arrives, or did you die, replaced by a double who believes he is you?
a person