For all that I am still something (Descartes, 5) To say that I am ‘something’ is to imply that we should think “What something am I?” A soul, a body, a mind or nothing?
The soul theory is the theory where we believe that we ‘occupy’ our bodies but that isn’t what defines out personal identity. We are a non-physical, immaterial soul. But, we know hardly anything about the soul, for example- Do we only have one soul? When we die will our soul die? Do we switch souls? How can we state that our personal identity is an immaterial possibility? We cannot. The protest stands that there is no way to test the hypothesis of having a soul; No way to prove that souls exist in all persons. “Since you can never bite into my soul, can never see or touch …show more content…
Our emotions, mental states, memories are the things that make up our minds and thus, who we are. Though this makes sense, take into consideration that as people grow and age our new memories flood the old. We remember our childhood at 100 and by the time we are 150 we hardly remember anything before age 20. This goes on until age 969 when theres no memory past the 839th year. (David Lewis, 43). Looking at this case our bodies haven’t changed but if our mind is what defines our personal identity, it’s impossible to be the same person.
The body theory believes that you are a body. You go where your body goes, you’re alive as long as your body is alive. The problem is, If you were to swap bodies, or change your body to all new parts, is it still your body? there is no body continuity, there’s no memories or experiences with the ‘new’ body, so how can it truly be you? The parts that make up who we are cannot be changed- because the changed parts are no longer continuous. You would go on saying it’s you, but it’s not the original you (Plutarch, paragraph 3, quote)
The bundle theory; An attempt to say that we don’t really need to answer the question “What is a person?” what we call a person is really just a bunch of mental states so in a sense, there are no ‘persons’. This isn’t practical- We have to identify as a person with a name and responsibilities. We cannot say that we aren’t anything but a bunch of mental states- We have to
The soul theory is the theory where we believe that we ‘occupy’ our bodies but that isn’t what defines out personal identity. We are a non-physical, immaterial soul. But, we know hardly anything about the soul, for example- Do we only have one soul? When we die will our soul die? Do we switch souls? How can we state that our personal identity is an immaterial possibility? We cannot. The protest stands that there is no way to test the hypothesis of having a soul; No way to prove that souls exist in all persons. “Since you can never bite into my soul, can never see or touch …show more content…
Our emotions, mental states, memories are the things that make up our minds and thus, who we are. Though this makes sense, take into consideration that as people grow and age our new memories flood the old. We remember our childhood at 100 and by the time we are 150 we hardly remember anything before age 20. This goes on until age 969 when theres no memory past the 839th year. (David Lewis, 43). Looking at this case our bodies haven’t changed but if our mind is what defines our personal identity, it’s impossible to be the same person.
The body theory believes that you are a body. You go where your body goes, you’re alive as long as your body is alive. The problem is, If you were to swap bodies, or change your body to all new parts, is it still your body? there is no body continuity, there’s no memories or experiences with the ‘new’ body, so how can it truly be you? The parts that make up who we are cannot be changed- because the changed parts are no longer continuous. You would go on saying it’s you, but it’s not the original you (Plutarch, paragraph 3, quote)
The bundle theory; An attempt to say that we don’t really need to answer the question “What is a person?” what we call a person is really just a bunch of mental states so in a sense, there are no ‘persons’. This isn’t practical- We have to identify as a person with a name and responsibilities. We cannot say that we aren’t anything but a bunch of mental states- We have to