
Personal Identity (2015) - lainon
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/identity-personal/
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danidiaz
Derek Parfit saw his reductionist view of personal identity as ultimately
liberating, in an almost Buddhist sense:

> "Is the truth depressing? Some may find it so. But I find it liberating, and
> consoling. When I believed that my existence was a further fact, I seemed
> imprisoned in myself. My life seemed like a glass tunnel, through which I
> was moving faster every year, and at the end of which there was darkness.
> When I changed my view, the walls of my glass tunnel disappeared. I now live
> in the open air. There is still a difference between my life and the lives
> of other people. But the difference is less. I am less concerned about the
> rest of my own life, and more concerned about the lives of others."

But I wonder if such view can have more sinister interpretations. For example,
a "parfitian" might become obsessed in imposing his own worldview and tastes
on other people, feeling that this affords him a measure of "immortality". A
bit like the ancient greek heroes' thirst for fame, perhaps.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kleos#cite_ref-4](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kleos#cite_ref-4)

> "When doubts invade us and cloud our faith in the immortality of the soul, a
> vigorous and painful impulse is given to the anxiety to perpetuate our name
> and fame, to grasp at least a shadow of immortality. And hence this
> tremendous struggle to singularize ourselves, to survive in some way in the
> memory of others and of posterity … Each one seeks to affirm himself, if
> only in appearance … Man habitually sacrifices his life to his purse, but he
> sacrifices his purse to his vanity. He boasts even of his weaknesses and his
> misfortunes, for want of anything better to boast of, and is like a child
> who, in order to attract attention, struts about with a bandaged finger."
> —Miguel de Unamuno, The Tragic Sense of Life

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dvt
It's interesting seeing this on HN, but I should warn people that (most) of
these philosophy snippets are pretty tough to understand without proper
context. For what it's worth, I've never been a fan of philosophy of mind,
mainly because there's a lot of speculation and hand-waving.

With that said, I most align with Strawson's view of personhood as a "logical
primitive," as he described it in his seminal _Persons_ (1959)[1] where it
seems that a person is an inseparable "bundle" of things, including memories,
dreams, aspirations, autonomy, physical features, and so on. In that sense,
there is definitely some continuity between a 12-week old fetus and a grown
adult.

[1] [http://www.hist-analytic.com/Strawsonpersons.pdf](http://www.hist-
analytic.com/Strawsonpersons.pdf)

