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    Personal identity cannot consist of physical matter — Carmelics
    Home/Personal Identity
    HistoryEditSee Inverse

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    Supports→Personal identity must be grounded in an overall organization or 'Sympathy of Parts' rather than in any particular material or mental constituent

    Personal identity cannot consist of physical matter

    Personal Identity
    ?Rate how convincing each reason is below to see the overall strength.
    1 reason for
    2 reasons against

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • 1.Every particle of a person's body changes over time
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    • 2.After a span of seven to fourteen years, no original particle of a person's body remains
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    • 3.If personal identity consisted of physical matter, it would be destroyed when that matter is replaced
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Identity through material continuity does not require the persistence of identical particles, but rather the persistence of organized structural patterns.
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    • 2.A ship remains the same ship through gradual plank replacement because the functional organization and causal continuity of parts is preserved, not because matter is fixed.
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    • 3.Therefore, personal identity can consist in the continuous physical organization of a body even as constituent particles are replaced over time.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.The empirical claim that all bodily matter is replaced every seven to fourteen years is a simplification that does not hold for neurons, which largely persist for a lifetime.
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    • 2.If neurological matter provides stable physical substrate across a person's lifespan, the supporting argument's key premise is factually undermined and cannot establish immaterialist conclusions.
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    Topics

    Personal Identity

    Related

    A person remains one and the same self throughout lifeA ship remains the same ship through gradual plank replacement because the funct...After a span of seven to fourteen years, no original particle of a person's body...Every particle of a person's body changes over time
    +10 moreShow less
    Identity through material continuity does not require the persistence of identic...If neurological matter provides stable physical substrate across a person's life...If personal identity consisted of physical matter, it would be destroyed when th...No atom of body, no passion, and no thought remains the same throughout a person...Personal identity cannot consist of any single mental itemPersonal identity must be grounded in an overall organization or 'Sympathy of Pa...The empirical claim that all bodily matter is replaced every seven to fourteen y...The only remaining candidate is an overall organizing principle in which all of ...Therefore, personal identity can consist in the continuous physical organization...Yet a person remains the same self even after all bodily matter has been replace...

    Similar

    Personal identity must consist of something other than a physical or m...87%Personal identity cannot consist of any single mental item85%If personal identity consisted of physical matter, it would be destroy...83%The identity of any phenomenon is neither singular nor plural in reali...81%

    Source

    AI-extracted
    SEP: shaftesbury
    View source passageHide passage
    In The Moralists, Shaftesbury contends that there is no physical or mental element that persists through a person’s entire life, yet it seems that one can remain the same self even amid all those changes. A person is a single thing, retaining an identity throughout the years. But that identity cannot consist of physical matter, as every particle of a person changes over time. The ‘Stuff … of which we are compos’d’, says Theocles, ‘wears out in seven, or, at the longest, in twice seven Years, [as

    Details

    Type
    premise
    Perspectives
    3 (1 for, 2 against)
    Edits
    1 edit