Topics for review, Chapter 4 (Athenais) Summer A

Numerical identity: This is your number. You are only one (Cannot be two at the same time). You have an exclusive club with only you as a member.

Qualitative identity: This are qualities you share with others. You belong in an infinite number of clubs with other people and things. We are qualitatively identical to many people at once!

Accidental Property: A property that I can lose without ceasing to exist (if I lose my hair, I will still be myself).
Essential Property: A property that I cannot lose, otherwise I will stop existing (if I lose my brain I will die, and stop being myself).

Animalism: The doctrine that identical persons are those with identical bodies.
Identity → Body
Counter: Locke’s tale of the prince and the cobbler.

The Soul Theory of Personal Identity: The doctrine that identical persons are those with identical souls. If I have the same soul, the same mind and the exact same thoughts as another person, then I am the same as that person. Counter: Leibniz → King of China In way to be king, someone needs to die and to born again. He was born again, losing all his old memories, he won’t be the same person anymore.

Memory Theory: You are your memories. ● Quasi-memories: Memories that have been shared to us (such as the day we were born). Caused in a right way by actual experience (someone had that experience and shared it to you). ● Apparent memories: Memories of events that either didn’t happen or were not caused by the event recorded. (ex: I always thought that I once had a blue house, however everybody from my family say that it’s false) ● Fake memories: Memories that never happen. ● Real memories: A memory of an event that was experienced by the person remembering it and that was caused by the event it records.

The Brain Theory (Shoemaker): You are your brain. To be identical, you must have the same psychology, caused and realized in the same brain. Supportive thought experiment: Shoemaker’s Brain Transplant If we transplant a brain in another body, the resulting person will be the owner of the brain and not the owner of the body. The body is disregarded in this theory. Counter: Parfitt's Division. A person donates its two brain hemispheres and gives each one to someone else thus donating to two different people. According to the brain theory both people should be identical Parfit. But that’s impossible because two different people can not be one.

Self-as-Process: Existentialism, Jean-Paul Sartre: You are for-yourself (l’être pour soi), because you have free will. We are beings that are always empty (le néant). We have a constant void. What makes you different from a pen, for example, is that you have free will, when the pen hasn’t any.

Sartre's lemma: “Self is not what it is and it is what is not”

You are not the you that you were before and the you that you were after. You are at all times potential of the yous before and the yous after.

According to our life-tube:

past_// __//___//___//____now_ //_ _// _ //_ _// _ _ _ future


Self is a process over time (le devenir = becoming).

Characteristics of personhood: *Free Will, * Reason (cogito: I think, therefore I am.) *Autonomy (Have goals), *Sentience (feelings/ emotions). If a being meets all four requirements then it is considered a person (a dolphin will be considered a person, because he has free will, reason, autonomy and sentience).

Gender (Men & Women) = Social construct Sex (Male & Female) = Biological Genderqueer= Transgender individuals either “male to female” or “female to male”.

Character: is a function of our beliefs, desires, values & our actions being a function of our character.
1- Since it is observed behavior, character is public.
2- Character can change, but it's more a persistent trait.
3- Character is a negotiation between witnesses. people may agree or disagree about a person's character or aspects of her character.
4- Character can change (slowly).

Two different narratives of the self
1. Diachronic: The diachronic presents the different stages of the life as part of a continuous series ( You are your past, present and future memories). 2. Episodic. The episodic sees the different stages as discontinuous series.

Self as Process:  You are in the process of knowing who you are. This explains why people identify as “queer”. They are finding out who they are as a person. We are never fully "realized" as self. You constantly find out more of yourself as you live. That "void" is constantly filled, according to Sartre by your freedom. The self is constant “de-venir” which means “becoming”. Identity