Response To Brison's Account Of Personal Identity

In Brison 's account of personal identity, she offers it from a perspective most of us can not; a perspective from trauma. In her post modern view she objects to traditional beliefs of personal identity. I will state the traditional view, and then why Brison objects to it. After that I will raise a possible objection to Brisons arguments, and defend her Criticism of the traditional belief. The first traditional belief that is challenged by Brison is that philosophy is to be clean, and controllable. Thought experiments are to be pure and simplified in order to reach a clearer truth. However, Brison argues that the real world is messy, and the real world perspective should be taken into the account of the philosophy of personal identity. Trauma victims have experienced that are unimaginable to most, and their stories help us to understand how one 's perspectives might change, develop, or cease to be. Their perspectives are complicated and as a result a complicated sense of personal identity may result. The second traditional belief is that the body doesn 't have much to do with personal identity, and the body is irrelevant and bad in that context. Brison objects to this by saying that during a trauma the mind and body can become …show more content…
It is unique according to experience, the disassociation or stronger connection of mind-body, the ability to cope, and the support available from others. The traditional accounts do make sense in a clean way, not burdened by the social factor. What these accounts failed to recognize was the real world, and how our perceptions of situations and other people can change our thoughts so rapidly. Bodily and emotional trauma can cause change so fast that identity is lost in persistence of memory and emotion, but can also be healed or recovered in some way from the empathy of those around