PHILOS 2120 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Personal Identity, Cosmological Argument
Document Summary
In this story, we are invited to accept that there are two people residing in the same body. If this is the case, then continuity of body is not sufficient for personal identity. What we"ve learned so far: personal identity over time is not a straight forward philosophical issue, the two most common answers are continuity of consciousness and continuity of body. But each of these face serious objections. What causes the problem: the subjects we are considering (the people) are complex, made up of many things. And it is not clear which/how many of those things are sufficient for identity. A proposed solution: atman: a continuity of soul view, to make this a philosophically resilient as possible. So, there is only one soul: atman. This is clearest with living things but ultimately all things are identical. The appearances of difference is an illusion.