Personal Identity and the Self

I take it that I am the same person who woke up this morning, who started school years ago, and who will (I hope) sit an exam next spring. But my body has changed almost completely since childhood, my beliefs have shifted, my memories are patchy. In virtue of what am I one and the same person across all that change? This is the problem of personal identity over time, and it is one of the most debated topics in the philosophy of being human.

The body and soul theories

One natural answer is the bodily criterion: you are the same person as long as you are the same living human body or organism. This fits ordinary practice—we identify people by their faces and bodies—but faces the objection that bodies change entirely at the cellular level, and thought experiments about brain transplants sugge