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Concept
Personal identity
Summary
Personal identity is the unique numerical identity of a person over time. Discussions regarding personal identity typically aim to determine the necessary and sufficient conditions under which a person at one time and a person at another time can be said to be the person, persisting through time.
In philosophy, the problem of personal identity is concerned with how one is able to identify a single person over a time interval, dealing with such questions as, "What makes it true that a person at one time is the same thing as a person at another time?" or "What kinds of things are we persons?"
In contemporary metaphysics, the matter of personal identity is referred to as the diachronic problem of personal identity. The synchronic problem concerns the question of what features and traits characterize a person at a given time. Analytic philosophy and continental philosophy both inquire about the nature of identity. Continental philosophy deals with conceptually maintaining identity when confronted by different philosophic propositions, postulates, and presuppositions about the world and its nature.
Physicalism and Further facts
One concept of personal persistence over time is simply to have continuous bodily existence. As the Ship of Theseus problem illustrates, even for inanimate objects there are difficulties in determining whether one physical body at one time is the same thing as a physical body at another time. With humans, over time our bodies age and grow, losing and gaining matter, and over-sufficient years will not consist of most of the matter they once consisted of. It is thus problematic to ground the persistence of personal identity over time in the continuous existence of our bodies. Nevertheless, this approach has its supporters who define humans as a biological organism and asserts the proposition that a psychological relation is not necessary for personal continuity. This personal identity ontology assumes the relational theory of life-sustaining processes instead of bodily continuity.
Official source
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Ontological neighbourhood