The Self

[Post-Something]

I have an exam after tomorrow, and I've attended almost no lectures this term. After doing a bit of research, I found out what some of the topics were. One of them is "the self and identity". Does anyone have any experience in this field? I need to know what (if anything) makes it the case that a person x, existing at one time, is person y, who existed at an earlier time? In other words: what conditions are necessary and sufficient for person x to be (numerically identical to, i.e. the same person as) person
y? What are a person’s persistence or survival conditions; what are person’s criteria of identity?

The type of questions which have come up before are:


‘When I am an old man, I might surely be constituted by none of the atoms
that constitute me now. Hence there is nothing problematic about the idea
that, if I step into a teletransporter in Glasgow, it will be I who am
reconstructed in New York from new atoms and my e-mailed blueprint.’
Discuss.

and


Are your persistence conditions those of an animal, an animal’s brain, or neither?


Thanks in advace.

[h0lmes]

I have an exam after tomorrow, and I've attended almost no lectures this term. After doing a bit of research, I found out what some of the topics were. One of them is "the self and identity". Does anyone have any experience in this field? I need to know what (if anything) makes it the case that a person x, existing at one time, is person y, who existed at an earlier time? In other words: what conditions are necessary and sufficient for person x to be (numerically identical to, i.e. the same person as) person
y? What are a person’s persistence or survival conditions; what are person’s criteria of identity?

The type of questions which have come up before are:



and




Thanks in advace.

This sounds a lot like Four Dimensionalism which is the idea that objects exist across time as well as across space.

Take me for example. I was born 22 years ago and I will die at some point in the future. My self is that object which existed from the point I was born to the point in which I die. The way I am at this moment is merely a temporal part of my entire self, much like my arm is a proper part of my body.

Are you familiar with the Ship of Theseus?