Introduction
The personal identity of a person may change with time depending on environmental conditional In which the person is being brought .The identity may also change with the age of a person. As a person continues developing, the identity will tend to change. This will be depicted by how the person socializes with others, mostly those above his age. This will also be identified by the way the person communicates. Also with time, personal identity may change due to the social status of a person. A Person who was known to be of good character may tend to be notorious and ill- mannered. Personal identity changes either negatively or positively with time. This can be determined by behavioral and psychological changes. , determined by a person’s environment. Behavioral factors can change identity in the case where there is change in the use of substance, such as drugs and alcohol. A person will therefore be identified from the rest with these, especially if they are used at a large scale. Psychological factors can make a person’s identity change, positively due to factors such as education. Gaining high levels of education will make a person to be identified from the rest, with lower levels of education. At the same time, ability to think and come up with quick solutions can also be used as an identity.
Personal identity is the numerical identity of people over time. Therefore, personal identity over time is the conditions through which an individual is usually identical to oneself in the course of time. Both analytical and continental philosophy comprises the identity issue. What sense can an individual uphold as far as the modern notion of identity while recognizing a number of preceding assumptions about the world we live in are actually correct, this is the subject matter contained in continental philosophy. What it takes for people to endure from time to time is what constitutes personal identity over time.
Mostly, personal identity is concerned with the issues that take places about individuals because of our being persons. Such issues are not unique to us and they usually take to almost all human beings over time (Garrett 11). Some of these issues include questions such as who am I? At what time did I begin existing and when I die, what will probably happen to me when I am out of this life. Since the beginning of western philosophy, personal identity has always being discussed. However, the issue concerning personal identity always addresses the circumstances through which an individual is the same at all times. This is situation is referred to as personal continuity which is a kind of provides as set of satisfactory and essential conditions for personal identity through time.
According to the mind philosophy, personal continuity refereed to diachronic setback of personal identity while the synchronic setback is usually grounded in the issue of what aspects or characters distinguishes an individual at a particular time.
Some of these setbacks include the mind verses the body issue which deals with the rationalization of the affiliation that subsist between intellect and bodily processes. Mostly, the philosophers who deal mainly deals with the mind verses body issue are usually concerned in offering explanation on how it is possible for a non-material intellect to take control of the material body (MacBrid 22). However, our discernment experiences rely on our body stimuli which come from a number of sensory organs usually from the outside world. In most instances, the stimuli alter the condition of our mind thereby causing us to experience a sensational feeling.
Notably, this sensational feeling may not be pleasing, may be pleasing or in some situations may contain both the unpleasant a pleasant feeling hence, neutral. For instance, if a personal want to pick something from somewhere, she or he will tend to move his /her body in a more specific course so as to reach what she want to pick (Frankel et al 12). What get into peoples’ mind is how the conscious familiarity possibly raises up out of grey matter which comprises of electrochemical characteristics. How it is possible for such things like individual desires and beliefs to cause a person’s muscles to contract while neurons fires in the same accurate way. However, such actions are said to contain some kind of mystery that has kept the philosophers of brainpower as well as epistemologists confronted for quite a long time.
Some philosophers with an example of John Locke measured the personal identity with consciousness s opposed to a matter of body or soul. Consciousness has always been perceived to be among the first modern characteristics of consciousness. Moral responsibility can be credited to the subject as well as punishment which can actually be made possible through personal identification. In addition guilt can as well be vindicated. From John Locke perspectives, human beings are the same to the degree that we are usually aware of our past as well as our future actions and thoughts just the similar ways we are responsive to our current actions and thoughts. From this perception, personal identity is solely formed on a repetitive act of realization. It is evident that personal identity is under no circumstance based on soul because a human being can only be the same is the same to another person if this person has similar awareness of thoughts of the other person. This is because one soul usually has quite a number of personalities which an actually fit another person’s personal characters. On the contrary, personal identity is not established on the matter of the body. This is because is prone to changes triggered by growth and therefore the body may change in the course of ones life. Personal identity is believed to be based on consciousness.
Some philosophers argues that, in case of judgment on criminal charges, the person judging may actually be in dilemma of whether they are giving judgment as well as punishment to the same human being or they are giving judgment to the identical body. This means that a person may be condemned because of the actions of his/her body since these actions is perceptible to all mankind with exemption of God. Despite that, human beings are merely responsible for the actions which they are aware of. However, this forms the foundation of insanity defense whereby an individual is not held responsible for actions which he/she was not conscious with. The insanity defense raises a number of fascinating questions on the issue of self identity.
The personal background of an individual greatly affects and pays large attribute towards the personal identity of the person. For example, if a youthful man is brought up in a violent neighborhood, the young man has higher chances of proceeding to become a violent young man who may resolve into ways of crime as education in his life has come to bear negligible meaning. At the same time, the growth stage and development aspect of the same boy also affects his personal identity. For instance, if the boy was raised in the same aggressive background, he would be in possession of higher chances of reforming to better ways of livelihood through education, than when the same boy was brought into the neighborhood as a teenager. Development processes within the human body at certain stages determine the way the individual responds to certain stimuli from the environment which also differ with the stage of growth or development of the individual. It is this same aspect that becomes the chief feature that determines the identity of the individual as their activities mentally and physically affect their image towards the society.
Philosophers such as john Locke’s believes that personal character is establish on the body matter but in the similar awareness which is continued and different from ones soul. This is because the soul has no awareness of it self. Locke seems to identify consciousness with the brain. Just the same way the body changes, the brain changes while the ones awareness continues being the same although the issue of personal identity is central to immorality as well as existence after death. In order to have life after death, there have to be a person after death and this person should be the same person who actually died. People tend to believe that they are same individuals they were seven years ago (Noonan 17). People believe in this perspective yet they have actually undergone changes.
However, people experiences different changes with time but they still appear the same. Such philosophers like Hume believe there is no difference between the numerous features and the unexplained identity that apparently holds these aspects (Brennan, 34). Basically, the direction of an individual’s thinking as well as the invariable revolution of our thoughts and ideas makes our imagination to run with no trouble from one thought to another similar thought. However, this quality serves to visualize a satisfactory attachment. Personal identity becomes a substance of distinguishing the free consistency of an individual personal experience. Hume asserts that what matters is not the existence of identity but the relations of contiguity, similarities as well as causation.
Work cited
Andrew Brennan, Personal identity and personal survival. Analysis, 42, 44-50. 1982.
Ellen Frankel Paul, Fred Dycus Miller, Jeffrey Paul. Personal identity London:Cambridge University Press, 2005
Brian Garrett. Personal identity and self-consciousness New York: Routledge, 2003
Fraser MacBride. Identity and modality New York: Routledge, 2003
Harold W. Noonan. Personal identity New York: Routledge, 2006
