Personal Identity In Doctor Who

Doctor Who tells the story of an alien humanoid who goes by the name of the Doctor. The Doctor is a Time Lord and possess the power to travel through space and time with a machine called TARDIS and the show goes through his adventures traveling through space and time. The interesting part of the show is that the Doctor has died 11 times, but is reincarnated each time with a different personality, yet retains all the memories of the previous versions. Despite having a different personality and having a different appearance, all of the incarnations of him maintain the same identity, the “Doctor”. While this is clearly a way for the writers of the show to keep the show going (the show has been going on for over 50 years) it does coincide with …show more content…
However, there are two theories of personal identity. What most contemporary philosophers believe is the body theory Which states that, I am the same person who I was born as and will remain that same person until I die because I will remain in the same body for that entire period of time. At first glance that makes sense, since there is no way with current technology to swap our brains into another body. However, there is a problem with the body theory exposed in the thought experiment, The Ship of Theseus. It goes that a ship leaves the port of Theseus on a journey. On the journey the ship faced harsh storms and wind damaging parts of the ship. The crew then had to fix parts of the ship such as the floorboards and the sail. Eventually the ship faced so much gradual damage that every part of the ship was eventually replaced. So, when the ship returns to Theseus, is it still the same ship that left the port? When looking at the body theory the answer is no because the ship changed as soon as the first plank was replaced. If we apply that to people, our body is constantly changing. We replace older, dying cells with new ones, and therefore don’t have the same body over time. So, what about the other