Personal Identity In Parfit's The Unimportance Of Identity

Bodily Criterion Accepted
In “The Unimportance of Identity” Parfit begins by stating that our concern for our future is not necessarily because it is ours, but because we care about our survival. He believes it has nothing to do with personal identity but with other factors, and he introduces cases where the two have no relation to see what matters. Following an explanation of his account, I will object his view on the bodily criterion, by proving that the ‘new’ person will not be him. Afterwards, I will respond defending Parfit’s rejection, stating that it all boils down to survival and having something left for others and to complete what we could not. Finally I will agree with the objection that the bodily criterion should be accepted because the ‘new’ person will not be the old you. …show more content…
346). Parfit proceeds to give a hypothetical example of himself (a paraplegic) and his twin brother (who had recently died) to say if his head were to be grafted onto his brother’s body, his brain would control the body of his deceased brother. Parfit states that those who believe identity matters, would say to not complete the surgery because either he would die, his brother would awake mistakenly believing he is Parfit, or an unknown person could emerge from surgery. All of these results keep the identity of the person awakening from surgery at the forefront. However, Parfit sees the identity of the person is not important, and that he who is emerging from surgery would not only believe he was Parfit, but be psychologically and have memories like Parfit, therefore a continued life of his brain; therefore the resulting person of this experiment would indeed be him, and ultimately agrees that the bodily criterion should be