Personal Identity: Crash Course Philosophy #19

48 Comments

1. In morden day we simply use id/passport number toconsider if you are the same person or not…

2. The pay check analogy got me. Got one! Thanks a bunch

3. 2:15
   Worth noting:
   At the time of this recording, the first human head transplant already took place

4. Awww it's baby Hank!!0:49

5. I would just stop working for someone if they stopped paying me. No need to argue about philosophy.

6. While, you may stay the same person throughout your life, you have multiple identitites. You presumably identify with some religion, geography, nationality, and ethnicity, or none at all. Although identifying as no particular ethnicity is kind of ridiculous, I suppose you could do so. If you were born in Chicago, then we can classify you as a Chicagoan based on geography. Likewise for larger constructs like religion and nationality.

   Most of these things are independent of each other and they can change while the others stay the same. If you move countries you may decide to change your identity. Or if you are a Rhodesian fleeing Rhodesia who decides later on to regect racism then you may ask to be called a Zimbabwean. All the while, your brother could still identify as a Rhodesian. In this way, your ethnicity can change. And often times, certain ethnicities are reclassified. Like Sicilians being reclassified as white in America.

   There is much debate about whether or not you can classify humans like insects but this is the reality that exists.

7. My identity theory: Peoples' main identity is their soul. If the soul has been enlightened by grace, it shines forth in luminous essence: joy, peace, love, goodness, kindness, etc.

8. I will never accept memory theory cause as he say if a person will change if he lost his memory if we see it like that we ( ourselves ) are built through our memories it's not true we have our own personal behaviour like kindness , rudeness ,mercyfullness so I won't accept it

9. ppl use the method / way they thought they are right to identity themselves, and some don't care and some never try. but overall, it's useless to identity a self or the Self.

10. I'd say it's the same person because their consciousness is happening the whole time and isn't cut off

11. This is a fabulous course.Thanks to Square Space.

12. After existential crisis here comes the identity crisis!

13. Hopefully you embezzled company funds last Friday and your boss can’t prosecute you either.

14. Graph at 6:09 explains everything.

15. I think peoples identities are formed by what they have been through in life and the way they have reacted to those events as well as what their personality types are. one person who is born into poverty will learn that they must work hard to get by which may make them hard honest workers. Another person who is also born into poverty may choose to resort to crime like dealing drugs and weapons to make good money instead of looking for honest work and pay. One wealthy person may choose to donate much of there wealth, while another may choose to keep it all for himself and his children. Another factor that has an impact on identity is their ability to learn. One person may choose to chase degrees and accomplish great things like become a doctor, lawyer or other high states positions, while another person may choose to get a random job and stay with it until retirement.

16. that thing about running bare foot and etc was beutiful

17. I'm quite fond of memory theory, but it doesn't really work for objects since they don't have memories.
    For that I propose another theory: the continuity theory. My idea is that people and objects can be considered as lines in spacetime, and just as lines on a graph are considered one contiguous line even though they change their position on the Y axis, the object remains the same object even if parts of it are replaced or altered. Smaller lines might branch off of it and merge with it, and it's shape might change, but the main line remains continuous since the changes happen gradually. An object's Identity is that line, not any one point along it.

18. I think that you are both the body and the mind put together.

19. The “chain of memory” idea was introduced by Derek Parfit. Locke actually stated that if, for example, you couldn’t remember a murder you comitted, your aren’t the same person as when you did it and so shouldn’t be held accountable (provided you proved this lack of memory somehow).

20. I actually think Danganronpa V3 does a great job of discussing the "fictional person" thing

21. "People don't change. They only become more who they really are." ~RDR2 Rains Falls

22. I watched this because I was having an identity crisis but I think this just made it worse

23. I'm missing the perspective that what you are is a pattern.

    A pattern that persists over time, even though the matter that it consists of changes. Similar to the boat. It is this pattern that is being duplicated when you get children and that gets duplicated when you share your ideas with others. The pattern of you can change, so "the you" is in that part that is most like the pattern was before, and the new you is the old you, just a changed version of it. If your brain gets transplanted, the thoughts of you go into the newly transplanted body and the body version of you stays in the same body, you are split.

    I know that this is not a published scientific perspective, but it makes so much more sense and seems to solve most of the problems that these two face – just my two cents

24. Dammmmnnn looking like a snack bottom right-hand corner

25. I am sure trump lost his mind 😉

26. some would say your soul is what your identity lies in

27. Our memories are no more us than a dictionary is a novel. Our bodies are not us or there would be way fewer divorces. I would vote for personality.

28. The philosophy of identity is very interesting when applied to the Sci-Fi book and series "Altered Carbon". In the show, the consciousness of a person can be stored on a highly advanced piece of alien technology called a "stack". A person can switch bodies and retain their memories by transplanting their stack to another body. Even in this fictional universe, I would still be skeptical of my retention of self even though my memories or maybe some aspect of my consciousness would be transplanted because the brain is not part of this transference, only this chip, the stack.

    To anyone who's seen the show or understands the concept, what do you think? For instance, there's lots of talk in the transhumanist sphere that people will be able to upload all their mind data to the cloud or some other digital medium to continue living in another realm, but I find that to be more of a copy of consciousness rather than a transference because you could upload that data while remaining in your own body. But something like a stack that is connected to the body by being integrated with the neuronal activity of experience seems like a connection that, in my opinion, could be at least be considered a part of you.

    I also suspect that consciousness is not a singular process in the brain, but a coalescence of various levels of awareness. If this is true, like it most likely is, then only a part of yourself would be transfered along with the stack. Then again, this can also be said in regards to a general person as they replace cells while growing and aging.

    It seems like the study of consciousness is a back and forth kind of mind game that we may never fully pinpoint, but I am optimistic that we'll know enough that these questions can be answered with enough clarity to be useful when biotech is advanced enough to allow for artificial transplants.

    So, I don't think mind uploading is an accurate form of consciousness transfer, but I do think that transplants or progressive replacements in the form of stacks or gradual artificial neurons is closer to that if at all possible.

29. Wow

30. I think the answer to this question lies in your ability to believe in the existence of the soul. Sure your cells could all be replaced, you can lose all your memories, but you are still you because the same soul that inhabits you is still you.

    For example, if a gay person lost all of his memories does is he still gay?

31. Basically nobody knows.

32. why is the mad scientist Davros?

33. We are our brain. And our brain remains the same or grows, but not replaced.

34. I personally believe that we have a non-physical component and a physical component [a view shared by most if not all religions throughout history though I suspect my personal view is a bit different from the major religions] and so I believe that what makes me "me" is that other component, which I believe remains the same over time. Trouble with that [as with most of philosophy ] it can be believed but not proven.

35. the ending of this episode just amazing

36. It's kind of wild any of us are still debating with this false dichotomy about our consciousness vs physical nature (like Locke) when it's now definitively known that our consciousness is the result of in physical neural processes…

37. Interesting to consider that part of the issue may be that we are inclined to frame questions about reality/identity as a screenshot at a particular moment in time. (Quantum mechanics problem may also arise from similar screen-shot framing)?
    Our inclination to "screen-shot" identity/reality, may be too limiting and getting in the way of understanding the deeper reality that can be gained by framing it as a continuum.
    As Pirandello so brilliantly explored, people are comprised of shifting identities through time. You are your thoughts, and some of those thoughts are identity thoughts. But even though the arch of a few minutes, or a day, depending on our mood and frame of mind, we may have a different reaction to the same circumstance, or think of ourselves in a different way.
    Maybe interesting to frame identity as the probability of a certain thought/action output when exposed to a certain set of input/circumstances. Therefore, how you perceive and interact with circumstances defines you.

38. In my opinion, personal identity is nothing but thought process, cognition and biological make-up. If the girl in freaky Friday was in a vegetative state, she would essentially not exist as she swapped bodies with her mother. It's a relationship between all properties that creates personal identity.

39. There is hope

40. What is meant by "altarian"? I tried to look it up and failed. 🙁

41. Hmmmm hmmmm hmmmm hmmmmmmmmmmmm

42. who created the body theory?

43. Sorry I just spent the second-half of the video trying to remember what I had for lunch last Tuesday

44. I said this in the last episode, but it still applies. There are two main factors of identity. Material and Immaterial. Each of these are comprised of many parts, but each part is a building block of your identity as a whole. We might not value the carbon or the water molecules that made up the bulk of our bodies as much as we value our beliefs and treatment if others, but they at least contribute in some small part.
    So I’ll finish by saying that there are material and immaterial parts of us with varying degrees of qualifying substance. Not every atom is essential, nor is every memory. But identity is comprised of these many things regardless.

45. I’ve been waiting this whole series for him to cover dr. Who. I love that show and it’s Part of what got me interested in philosophy in the first place. I use ton of the amazing philosophical arguments that that show makes in my day to day life.

46. Trust the wallet…

47. Who else startled when he said chain of memory😂

48. I made a whole podcast for the topic from this video. It’s called the identity podcast and has cover art with purple letters and a white background. Look it up on iTunes.

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