The Philosophy Of Personal Identity - Who Are You? 

I don’t believe you can ever be the same person you were at anytime. But you can think the same as you did in the past or future.

Plot twist: This channel's personal identity is actually duolingo in disguise.

I was never in a place where there was not me.

Fascinating video. I've come across versions of Parfit's idea in science-fiction and always found it troubling. Would you agree to be scanned, have a duplicate you created elsewhere, and the original - i.e., you - destroyed? If the answer is no, then you must believe that identity trumps mere survival. The duplicate may suffice for your friends, family, etc., but the original has been killed. The you that stepped into the machine does not experience the future life of the copy.

I’ll never forget the Northern Exposure episode where Chris is on trial for a crime he had committed long ago in the past. His lawyer argued (unsuccessfully) that Chris is philosophically literally a different person now and therefore can’t be convicted of a crime “somebody else” committed

Great vid. The fundamental problem is that that the experience of being "you" is the experience of "structured consciousness", which cannot be adequately explained by science yet. Science can explain the chemical and electrical interactions in your brain and body, but why do you have the sensation of a singular experience, despite all the processing your brain does, is still a mystery. Is it simply an emergent quality that arises from complex information processing? Is it necessary at all to exist? Why can't you simply be an emotionless robot, doing all the things necessary for life, without having an emotional self-aware constructed experience, or a sense of "you". It is a very difficult question. How can consciousness arise from something inanimate, or that had no consciousness in it's prior state? Keep up the good work.

Nothing is better than learning that your thoughts on a subject is on par with a great philosopher.

You know, it's things like this that make me consider the idea of a soul most seriously. At its root, this problem is about consciousness, which frankly, no science we have so far can really explain. Dark Matter, while I'm not rehearsed in it, is something that I think might be the substance self-awarenss/a soul is made from. Spiritual feelings and emotions can at least be seen in the brain, but do they originate there? I've been religious for most of my life, and frankly, it is not because of some proof or science but things that I feel. In fact, it's mostly because of the fact that I can feel. I remember once having a discussion with an atheist friend of mine. He told me that maybe self-awareness is just actions going on in the brain. His wording interested me, though. He said that he is probably just feeling what goes on in his brain. His phrasing entirely separated his identity from his brain. His brain was simply something that he was able to feel the thinking from. I'm sure people will disagree with this, but my personal belief about what makes me me is my soul/ability to feel. Also, fun theory: Assume that we all have souls of awareness that can pull and interact with a brain. It is possible that we could flit around from body to body, but never know it because we leave behind memories with the previous body.

Great video with a clear explanation, which is easy to follow!

Identity is not a specific space occupied by a body rather it is realization of self. If this realization can be manipulated quantitatively then it is possible to magnify identity in space and time but qualitative manipulation of identity is impossible as it breaks down the identity itself. For example a drop of water on a table and the pacific ocean are liquid water bodies, if that drop of liquid water gets vaporized then it looses its identity as a liquid water body. Quantitative manipulation can possibly magnify identity whereas qualitative manipulation breaks down identity.

Got an Oxford Philosophy interview today, cramming all sorts of philosophical topics rn hahaha

Interesting thoughts 🤔

Man these videos are so good why did you stop :(

I think we are the same person,inside a different body(as time goes by),with a different percepission about the world surround us!

You are who you are. If You try to know who You are your simply chasing your tail. Language itself falls at your feet. "You must unlearn what you have learned".

At first i thought this video was going to tackle a topic I always thought about. Turns out they talked about they most overrated kind of personal identity. The timely you, the you that changes with time. But what about the timeless you, the you that what suddenly born without any reason and the you that hosts this body?

My view is not to care. Identity is just a word, a concept. And it has no use for me. I apply it only to myself in as far as law and friends and family seem to require it to keep recognizing me and offer the ensuing benefits, while clearly distancing myself from accepting and pondering the concept in a deep way. I see no possible benefit coming out of any „answer“ to the „problem“ of identity, so I don’t ask the question. The only thing related to continuity I am interested in is to have enough memory to still know years from now where to find all the externalized information, memories and things that have been created in this world. It is also nice to know that taking care of my body now pays off because my mind keeps operating from this body.

One thing I always wondered is if we don't remember early life, who experienced it? I cracked my femur as an infant after my sister and I fell down the stairs. If I do not remember the event, it is not part of my experience, so did anybody really experience it? Did anyone feel pain if it is not part of the experience of any dead or alive person? Also if I make a decision I do not remember making, who made the decision? If I am not conscious of my past decisions, then is the me who made those past decisions really me?

Our body and mind improve with time. Am i the same person before years?? Yes i am, but my body and my mind change a little maybe in a positive way and maybe in a negative one. Should i stay the same person after 3 or 4 years? Maybe my mind will stay the same if i don't improve it,but my body will change physically . Who am i? What's my purpose in life? Why I'm here? Why I'm alive? Is my presence means anything to the humanity if i don't improve myself? Should i die without doing anything to the humanity? Why i have to live just to survive ? Those questions can make anyone confused about his identity...

Isn't this just crash course Hank's video just altered a year later lmao

I am but a representation of a person (me) in my brain. I even see myself differently from that representation of me, whenever I see myself in a picture, or when I don't recognize my own recorded voice. We are many things, but what we think we are, what we think of as "Me" is nothing but an illusion. Ones and zeros in our brains harddrive, so to speak. Very far from how other people, animals, or machines perceive us, and very far from the infinitelly complex reality of all that there is.

2:23 Once i put a hard disk with windows xp from a dell computer into a modern hp computer and tried to boot - it bluescreened, claiming my pc was not acpi compliant, which it is. Probably what happened here. hardware driver incompatibility

I dont think that identity is your consciousness or your body but the people around you are the ones creating your identity. If you experience amnesia, you won't know who you are. However, your family and friends still remember you as the "original version". Not only that but we create our thoughts based on the influence of others and we link our thoughts with our identity. Those are my arguments for the given theory.

WHAT A NICE VIDEO!!!!!

I believe in a completely different theory. In this our brain is collecting all the informations everytime everywhere. And analyze it very deeply. These form the basic requirements of taking decisions, doing things and behaviour. If both of them has same information in brain so you are same.

What is the “SELF?” GISH JEN and others try to help understand what the self is. Spinoza, a 17century philosopher wrote his Ethics which has contributed to society in psychology, philosophy, science, and rational thinking. If Spinoza’s Ethic was read and understood, they would understand and know the nature of the mind and of human emotions. Spinoza’s idea of a self is a thinking being. The self reflects the mind, the mind is comprised of clear or confused ideas. The ego state is a lower sense of self, the intelligent thinking mind is a higher sense of self. Neuroscientist believes that the brain is the mind, this is not true. The brain is an organ that helps regulate all the systems of the body and it’s a storehouse of memory. The mind is a nontangible thing, it can only be understood intuitively. Science relates to the physical world; it measures and compares things to other things.

Richard Dawkins says we are all collectives of cells just trying to survive. I somewhat agree with it and I believe my "consciousness" is probably with my body, but because of my association with my psychological self, I would forfeit my physical self for my psychological self. Maybe that is something my selfish genes didn't account for in evolution.

You are embodied, perspective, experience, self, and ego, but it's all the same thing.

Imagine you could "rewind" time back 5 years. You consciously get to see out of your eyes as everything rapidly moves backwards, and then it pauses at that point (5 years in the past). You are given the choice of: (A) Continuing your conscious awareness by "taking over" the "you" from 5 years ago, and then having to re-live the last 5 years from that point forward; or (B) Allowing the conscious awareness that was you 5 years ago to suddenly acquire your memories, and then that consciousness gets to live from that point forward with the new knowledge tucked in the mind. Do you see a distinct difference between these two options? I personally see (B) as committing suicide. Because "Me" is not only dependent on where my body is, and where my mind is, but _when_ I am. Me from 5 years ago is a different consciousness than "now" me.

3:10 This gives me a haunting vision. Imagine watching your own body be tortured after the mind swap. Steve would yell at you with your own voice and get mutilated in your own body. That is horrifying. Still would take the money though.

There is a novelette called "Think Like A Dinosaur" by James Patrick Kelly which actually has Derek Parfit's device in it. it was also adapted as as an episode on the show "The Outer limits". I also watched a video by Minute Physics which claimed that Quantum Physics have a "no cloning priniciple" which states that it is impossible to have 2 identical quantum states in the universe, which would make it impossible to have 2 identical "identities". Even if the clone is 99.999.. .etc % like you it is still someone else in space and time.

While watching Star Trek with my wife told me "Transporters are awesome, it would make life so much easier!" I replied, "youre right, cause you'd be dead."

I would pick my body to with different memories to get the money, because he is only swapping the memories he isnt swapping the physical brains, so I would consciously still be in the 1st body but with a different personality and memories, if you chose the other body you would essentially be giving your old mind/ego the money while your current one would be tortured. Just like how the first example the character changed over the course of a year, you would still be the same person but changed. Just because they adopted the characteristics of your mind, and the characteristics of your mind now matches their, does not make the two of you swap identities. I also would never enter the hypothetical vaporizing teleportation machine because you would be ending your life, just for someone to be made with your characteristics to appear somewhere else. So your mind and consciousness would cease but a new identical one would form, but that would not be you. Hope that if you're reading this you understand my reasoning.

You originally said just the memories will be swapped so id simply choose my body to get the money because id still be me just with other memories

Every philosopher's scenario involves incredible or even impossible premises. Brain transplants would be an incredible advance in science and we can only conjecture blindly as to what this would entail in the end.

1)The child i was when i was two years old is now dead... im 33, me and that child have less incommon than me and a stranger from Africa. 2) Good example is when you are on a lot of drugs or alcohol... is that you? I think not, because again... you and that person dont have much incommon 3) if you have a brain damage, you can change as a person... again... old and new you dont have much incommon (happened to my grendma and for me she was dead... body was there, some little peaces of her personality... but for me she was dead like that child who was I when i was 2 SO :), i think that what makes me - me, is the way my brain works now with my memories, subconcious part, and hormons that naturally drug me every day and effect who i am... and if we look from statistical point of view... some average value of all that... + continuity of concence... THAT IS WHY IM AFRAID ALL MY LIFE OF GETTING TO SLEEP BECAUSE I THINK THAT IN THE MORNING I WILL NOT BE THE SAME AND NOT EVEN REALIZE THAT, it happens every time that i feel like me, and people say it is me, so statisticaly speaking... its probably me 😂😂😊, But nice subject and good night with hope that ill be the same in 8 hours 😏 P.s. i said a few years ago when i was thinking about all this: we are getting old by dying multiple times on the way... What do you think?

3:34 Well not really. So I said for the other body to get 1 million pounds. In that body, I would not feel like I am 100% of me because I am in a different body even though my mind is same. I choose the other to get a million as my conscious is in that body but that doesn't mean I feel like I'm my self. No cus I will always know that I am not in my body. And If I don't remember the choice, well it doesn't change anything as that still isn't my body only that I am unaware of it. Hopefully it makes sense

I can tell you all of the things that I do, but that doesn’t explain who I am… (someone struggling with identity)

'I' is the mental consciousness which developed its perspective according to the experiences gained in time

Multiple personality could be the solution, I mean your past you and future you could be the same person but they are different from your present you It's a continuous infinite cycle

I have no identity and I’m confused. We only have temporary identifications such as me being confused. But now I’m not so I’m not confused. Identity is not something we create no matter how hard we pretend.

i believe that your identity or you being you is from your experiences, consider two identical twins, they are physically pretty much the same but from the moment they are born (or before idk) they become different individuals because they sense the world from different perspectives. imo, the copy of you that steps out from the teleportation device was exactly the same person as you at the moment when you were scanned to make a copy of. but since your copy is created somewhere else and what you're experiencing is not what your clone is experiencing the two become different individuals like the twins. As to who of these two is the real you, i have no answer because you and your clone are physically identical and to a point in time psychologycally identical (but I'd say just shoot the clone).

That depends on self-awareness, when someone begins to self-aware, he labels himself with some qualities of himself observed over-time and stored as memories affecting those traits to label himself as him, so if we were able to modify someone's memories erasing all the previous memories of traits with which he labels himeself, adding new ones, at the first moments of having those new memories he will recognise the new himself as the "true one", not even probably knowing that there was a previous identity.

I think the sense of self is an illusion brought on by the continuity of memories. We are not the same person from decade to decade. Not in body or mind. Alzheimer's patients experience this loss of self as they progress to the later stages.

la vidéo était cool merci par contre vous voulez pas faire un résumé, merci ,cordialement moi même

We are now.

the music slaps

Underration identified 👆

I am that which is.

If I am not this temporary material body, then who am I at the core of my being? Most would identify with their feelings and desires. They fell, yes, this is who I am. Because of material nature there are desires that enter into the material mind. Endless desires and endless contradictions in those desires are bombarding the living entity. There is actually no logic to these desires. There are simply demands, always demanding our attention. First there are desires to play and learn. Then during adolescence there are desires for procreation, sex enjoyment, having children. Then there is a desire to get free from hassles that the children and others are causing us. Desires are always flooding in. When I identify myself as a temporary material being, I am in the illusion that my business in life is to choose which desires to fulfill. That I think that my happiness will be achieved by following these material desires. But there are always new desires and so no one is ever truly satisfied and peaceful. There will always be another material desire. Then we have this dream in our mind. We work very hard to achieve this, to satisfy my desires. Often the new desires are totally contradictory to the previous desires. First, I think I will be happy if I have these children and then I think I will be happy if I get rid of these children. So, there's never peace. What do all these contradictions in the desires mean? These are not your desires. Material nature is providing these. If these desires are me, then why do I keep having contradictory desires? Why do they pull me right and pull me left? As long as I try to satisfy these material desires, I can never be happy. I will never have peace.

Why is Steve's beard the Illuminati symbol? 1:10

The theory pf soul remaining eternal and possesed by you and only changing bodies birth after birth solves this problem. Hinduism and Jainism has valid answers f9r this question.

I feel like it could be a bit more spiritual hence your soul because your body is more of a vessel.

We're chatting about retaining bodily continuity via rejuvenation biotechnology in a futurist live chat discord.gg/ftSbffu

Ahem thank you 11 you need to move forward you need to keep moving change change is good as long as you dont forget the people you were thank you good night

Someone pls give me a definition of identity

I’m so confused

I am me

Many people waste their life away 'philosophising' instead of actually participating...

No próximo vídeo coloque legenda em português para entender melhor o seu vídeo

if this interests you then you should play the game SOMA

SOMETHING ELSE SIR

"Who are you? " What my mind says to me every day.

I'm creeped out by their eyes

Comment 100!

I woke up with both my hands replaced by hooks, which is why it's taken me so long to finish typing this comment.

I forgot the Initial question, is this brain game, or induction

( REHAB TIME! ) PERSONAL IDENTITY DEPENDS ON CONSCIOUSNESS NOT ON SUBSTANCE. FACTS OVA FEELINGS!

I don't know the language, I like me the philosofy and I want lern more. I'm reading the myth of sysiphus and is interesting, ok bye.

Your brain makes you you you can slap to peoples minds they will still be themselves where they’ll perceive things differently maybe in their other body they love chocolate cake it may be in this body they can’t stand chocolate cake maybe another body they can’t have walnuts find a new body they can sew physically they’re different in some personal ways they’re different but mentally they are still themselves if you wanna switch my brain with someone else I’m still Max and they are still with them

I think consciousness is immaterial and every consciousness/person has a haecceity so the clone from the machine isn't you

I definitely lean towards psychological continuity, but as the thought experiments outlined haven’t been shown to even be possible, I’d say they don’t fully affect my beliefs. A “brain swap” or “transporter accident” have never occurred, so we don’t really know what would happen. Maybe after a brain swap your brain would be unable to control the host body because it “speaks a different language” and it’d be akin to being a baby and having to relearn everything (if communication is even possible) In the transporter accident, when you are vaporized, maybe your consciousness doesn’t carry over so “you” die in your subjective experience. If consciousness did carry over, presuming the scenario where the original is not vaporized, maybe you exist in a personal hell of dual consciousness and inhabit two bodies at the same time (possibly akin to a schizophrenic episode). It will be fascinating to see if/when we are able to reach such a technological level what the true scenarios will be

Physical continuity. Because I would never want pain inflicted on my body even if my brain was switched

All I really knw is, if possible, my body needs ta b tortured, whilst my brain needsta go spend that 💰 in homeboys body

Simulation

👍👍👍👍👍👍👍🧑‍🍼

Gak bisa bahasa Inggris

SPOILER ALERT! 1:16 xD

Robocop

I believe I identity is in Christ. It is not what we have done. That makes us who we are. But what he has done. Jesus died for us so that we can know are true self.

Steve sold out

Neither are valid👍🏻

I am an idiot sandwich

Philosophy is stupid why is this a requirement.

My guess is that Steve finally got laid, and liked it, that's why he changed...

As long as your brains the same you're the same. Just updated like you payed to customize your character again

this video is not very awesome

Boring

I identify as a person who doesn't give a F about your identity. 😆 🤣 😂