Personal identity

Does personal identity rest on identity of a body?

Multiple personalities

Reincarnation

The memory criterion

If I can remember being here 15 weeks ago I am the same person who appeared before you on this challenging spot 15 weeks ago.

'For, it being the same consciousness that makes a
man be himself to himself, personal identity depends on that only ...' Locke The Essay, Book 2 Chapter XXVII Para 10

Penelhum's formulation, Reader, p.430:

"Person a at time T2 is the same as person B at some earlier time T1 if and only if, among the experiences that a person A has at T2 there are memories of experiences that person B had at T1."

The non-physical entity theory

'This is the doctrine that in spite of the changingness of our mental lives, there is some hidden core to it that persists unchanged throughout, thus providing a backdrop against which the changes occur." Penelhum, Reader p.430.

'It follows from Descartes' view of mind that personal identity consists in the continuation of an immaterial substance, a mind or soul.' Woolhouse, The Empiricists, p.99.

The Romantic seed-self

Nice things about the non-physical entity theory

Clarification: the difference between the memory criterion for personal identity and the thesis that the self is an enduring non-physical entity.

Difficulties of the concept of the self as a non-physical entity

Mysterious relationship to the physical world

You can't tell the difference between one self and a succession of selves.

Is there an alternative to the body as the ground for differentiating persons?

Hume's objection

The self as a program

VP