Introduction
The chapter addresses the problem of personal identity. It addresses the question of who am I , what constitutes a person and if the person I’m today will be the same person I will be tomorrow. A name is not an enough identification of who someone is. It is just a simple tool that is used in differentiating people. Remaining the same person is good only for good people. If you have bad character, then changing to the positive is the best option.
The problem of identifying personality has been the spearheading factor in many philosophers as they try to explain and understand who human beings are and what makes them different from other creatures. They also try to explain why it has not been possible for scientists to produce a copy of a human being that will behave exactly the same way as the original person. We owe our existence solely to God. God created human beings being mortal. Therefore, there is no way we can avoid death. We have to die. After death, human beings ascend to heaven and stay there. When we die, our souls ascend to heaven while our bodies are left to rot underground. The soul in heaven is therefore the soul that used to be in the body during our lives on earth. There is eternal life. So, after death, it is only our body that dies. The soul simply leaves the body and goes to heaven.
Duplicating a human being is contrary to Gods will and it should extremely be discouraged. It is only God who has the responsibility to create human beings since we are a replication of what exactly He is. Furthermore, the duplicate will not be exactly the same as the original person. If we allow human beings to be duplicated it will a violation of God’s laws since it means that we have to exclude the original person and leave the duplicate. The duplicate lacks a sense of reasoning and does not undergo spiritual and emotional changes with time hence cannot be termed as a human being.
Personal identity has specifically been difficult to understand due to the fact we undergo changes with time. A baby is born, grows, ages and finally dies. Throughout life, people undergo physical, spiritual and emotional changes. According to bundle theory, human beings are a collection of body and mental items. It is the soul that makes us what we are. Every person has a soul. The soul actually depicts who we are. The question of whether there is a soul in our bodies or not should not be existing in the mind of an individual. There is also the mind that plays a major role in perception. Our experiences in life make us what we are.
Losing a part of your body does not change who you are. We change our personality when our qualities change. It therefore follows that we maintain our personality if we do not change our characters. If we change our characters we become a different person altogether. Memories connect us. If one can directly recall what they were ten years ago, then it means that they are the same person although their physical characteristics may have changed greatly. Our thoughts, soul, body, mind and experience make our personality. The changes we undergo change our personality.
References
Nagel, T. (1986). The view from nowhere. New York: Oxford University Press.
