 Today I am going to discuss about the problem of personal identity. The problem of personal identity is one of the most important problems in the contemporary issues in philosophy of mind and cognitions because the way we have been identifying the person with different things with different objects like with machines and if you are identifying persons with machines then how can we identify persons from one time to another time. What is that continuity there in the personal identity and all these problems we are going to discuss in this lectures. First there is no single problems of personal identity but rather a wide range of loosely connected questions. Here are the most important and familiar one is that who am I, who is it to be a person, what does it take for a person to persist from one time to another that is for the same person to exist at different times. Then how do we find out who is who, what determines how many of us there are now, what am I, how could I have been, what matters in identity. All these questions plays vital role in the problem of personal identity. First we have to see the questions on who am I. We often speak of one's personal identity as what makes one's one the person one is. Your identity in this sense consists roughly of what makes you unique as an individual and different from others. Or it is the way you see or define yourself or the network of values and conventions that structure your life. This individual identity is a property or a set of properties. Presumably it is one you have only contingently. You might have had a different identity from the one you in fact have. It is also a property that you may have only temporarily. You could swap your current individual identity for a new one or perhaps even get by without anything. Now secondly we have to see the second question is on personhood. What is it to be a person? What is necessary and what is sufficient for something to count as a person as opposed to a non person? What have people got that non people have not got? This amounts more or less to asking for the definition of the word person. An answer would take from necessarily x is a person if and only if x is something like this. More specifically we can ask at what point in one's development from a fertilized egg there comes to be a person. Or what it would take for a sympathy or a martin or an electronic computer to be a person if they could ever be. And the third question is very much related to persistence. What does it take for a person to persist from one time to another? That is for the same person to exist at different times. What sort of adventures could you possible survive in the broadest sense of the word possible? And what sort of events would necessarily bring you exist to an end? What determines which past or future beings is you? Suppose you point to a child in an old class photograph and say that is me. What makes you that one rather than one of the others? What is it about the way she relates then to you as you are now that makes her you? For that matter what makes it the case that anyone at all who existed back then is you. This is the question of personal identity over time and answer to it as an account of our persistence, conditions or a criteria of personal identity over time. Historically this question often arises out of the hope or out of the fear that we might continue to exist after we die. Plato's feud is a famous example whether this could happens depends on whether biological death necessarily brings one's existence to an end. Imagine that after your death there really will be someone in the next world or in this one who resembles you in certain ways. How would that being have to relate to you as you are now in order to survive? How would that be you rather than someone else? What would the higher powers keep you in existence after your death or is there anything they could do? The answer to these questions depends on the answer to the persistent questions. Now we have to see the evidence. How do we find out who is who? What is evidence bears on the question of whether the person here now is the one who was there yesterday? What ought we to do when different kinds of evidence supports opposing verdicts? One source of evidence is first person memory. If you remember doing some particular actions or at least seem to remember and someone really did do it then that person is probably you. Another source is first person memory. Or physically continuity. If the person would did it looks just like you or even better if she is in some sense physically or spatio-temporally continuous with you. That is reason to think she is you. Who is of this source is more fundamental? Does first person memory counts as evidence all by itself for instance? Or only in so far as we can check it against publicly available physical evidence. The evidence questions dominated the philosophical literature on personal identity if we see either writings on Shumekar and Shumekar has given elaborate explanation that I will be explaining later on. It is important to distinguish if the person who was there yesterday or the person who was there yesterday. If you read from the persistent questions what it takes for you to persist through time is one thing and how we might find out whether you have is another. If the criminal had fingerprints just like yours, the court may conclude that he is you. But even if that is conclusive evidence having your fingerprints is not what it is for a past or future being to be your being to be you. It is necessary you could survive without any fingers at all. Not sufficient someone else could have fingerprints just like yours. This question is very much related to evidence. And this question is very much related to evidence. And this question is very much related to evidence. This evidence also plays vital role in order to identify the personal identity. Now, we have to see problem of populations. If we think of the persistent questions as asking which of the characters introduced at the beginning of a story have survived to become the ones at the end of of it. We may also want to ask how many are on the stage at any one time, what it determines how many of us there are now. If there are some 7 billion people on the earth at present, what facts like biological or psychological or psychological or what how you make that the right number. The question is not what causes there to be a certain number of people at a given time, but what they are being that matters consistent in. You may think that the number of people who are on the earth at the beginning of a story have survived. The question is not what causes there to be a certain number of people at a given time, but what they are being that matters consistent in. You may think that the number of people at any given time is simply the number of human organisms. There are then, but this is disputed. Surgeons sometimes call the nerves bands connecting ones cerebellar hemispheres. This results in behavior that suggest some sort of radical disunity of consciousness such as simultaneously pulling one's body to the other. You may think that this gives us two people sharing one organism. This is sometimes called the the problem of synchronic identity as opposed to the diachronic identity of the persistent questions. The counter facture identity of the questions we have seen that this is a need to be a careful handling. They are apt to give the impression that identity comes in two kinds synchronic identity. The first one is the diachronic and diachronic. A serious blunder that truth is simply that there are two kinds of situation where we can ask how many people or other things there are synchronic situation involving just one moment and the diachronic ones involving a stretch of time. Now, we have to see what am I? The question of what I am is very much important in the philosophy of mind and also the in particular to the personal identity. What sort of things metaphysically speaking are you and I and other human people? What is our basic metaphysically nature? For example, what are we made of? Are we made of entirely of matter as stones are or partly or only of something else? What are we made of? What are we made of? What are we made of? What are we made of? Anything else? If we are made of matter, what matter is it? Just the matter that makes of our bodies or might we be larger or smaller than our bodies? Where in other words, do our special boundaries lie more fundamentally? What fixes those boundaries? Are we substance metaphysically independent beings or is of a state or an aspect of something else or perhaps some sort of process or events? One possible answer to this board question is that we are biologically biological organism. So, sometimes many philosophers reject this view as we are biological organism. Another is that we are part less immaterial substances or compound things made of an immaterial soul and a material body. Hume suggested that each of us is a bundle of perceptions. A popular view nowadays is that we are material things consisted by organisms. You are made of the same matter as a certain animal, but you and the animal are different things. Because what it takes for you to persist in different? This is the view of Shumekar. Another is the fact that we are material things consist by organisms. You are made of the same matter as a certain animal, but you and the animal are different things, because what it takes for you to persist in different? This is the view of Shumekar. Another is the fact that we are temporarily parts of animal and this is the view of Horsens. And there is even the paradoxical view that there is nothing that we are, we do not really exist at all. If you see the some other writings they have explained in that way. Now we have to see the question on how could animal and this is the view of horses and there is even the paradoxical view that there is nothing that we are, we do not really exist at all, if you see in some other writings they have explained in that way. Now, we have to see the question on how could I have been, how different could I have been from the way I actually am, which of my properties do I have essentially and which only accidentally or contingently, could I have had different parents for example, Frank, Sanitra and Doris Day might have had children together, could I have been one of them or could they only have had children other than me, could I have existed in the womb and died before ever becoming conscious are there possible worlds just like the actual one except for who is who, where people have changed places so that what is impact your career is mine and vice versa, whether these are the best described as questions about personal identities debatable, they are not about whether being whether beings in other words are identical with other in the actual world, but they are sometimes discussed in connection with others. Now, we have to see the questions on what matters in identity, what is the practical importance of facts about our identity and persistence, why should we care about it, why does it matter, imagine that surgeons are going to put your brain into my head and that neither of us has any choice about this will the resulting a person who will resemble think he is you be responsible for my actions or for yours or both or neither suppose he will be in terrible pain after the operations unless one of us pays a large sum in advance, if we wear both entirely selfish which of us would have a reason to pay, the answer may seem to turn entirely on whether the resulting person would be you or I only you can responsible for your actions, the only one whose future welfare you cannot rationally ignore is yourself, you have a special selfish interest in your own future and no one else identity itself matters practically, but some deny this, they say that someone else could be responsible for your actions, you could have an entirely selfish reason to care about someone else well being for his own sake, but what gives me a reason to care about what happens to the man, people will call by my name tomorrow is not that he is me, but that he is then psychological continuous with me as I am now or because he relates to me in some other way that does imply that he and I are one, if someone or other than me where a psychological continuous tomorrow with me as I am now, he would have what matters to me and I ought to transform my selfish concern to him, identity itself has practical importance that completes our survey of problems, though these eight questions are obviously related it is hard to find any important common feature that makes them all questions about personal identity and all these questions plays vital role in order to identify, in order to explain about the problem of personal identity, different scientist, philosopher and ordinary people they have explained personal identity different way and all these questions will be facing, they will be discussing while discussing on the problem of personal identity, in any case there are different and failing to keep them separate will only bring troubles. Now, we have to see some of the basics problems on the understanding the persistent questions. The question is what is necessary and sufficient for a past or future being to be you, if we point to you now and then describe someone or something existing at another time, we can ask whether we are referring to one thing twice or referring once to each of them things. The persistent questions ask what determines the answer to such questions or makes possible answer true or false, the question is about numerically identity to say that this and that are numerical identical is to say that they are one and the same one thing rather than two, this is different from qualitative identity. Things are qualitatively identical when they are exactly similar, identical twins may be qualitatively identical, there may be no telling them apart, but not numerical identical as there are two of them that what makes them twins, a past or future person need not be at that past or future time exactly like you are now in order to be you that is in order to be numerical identical with you, you do not remain qualitatively the same throughout your life, you change, you get bigger or smaller, you learn new things and forget others and so on. So, the question is not what it takes for a past or future being to be qualitatively just like you, but what it takes for a past or future being to be opposed to someone or something other than you. The confusions of qualitatively with numerical identity is one of the important aspects in personal identity and there is some kind of misunderstanding about the persistent questions. Here is another, people sometimes ask what it takes for someone to remain the same person from one time to another, the idea is that if I were to alter in certain ways, if I lost most of my memory or my personality changed dramatically or I underwent a profound religious conversions, say then I should no longer to be person I was before. The question of what it takes for someone to remain the same person is not the persistent questions, it is not even a question about numerical identity, if it were it would answer itself, I necessarily remain numerically the same for as long as I exist, nothing could make me a numerical different person from the one I am now, for someone existing tomorrow to be numerical identity for me is precisely for him to be mean, nothing can start out as one thing and end of as another thing a different one. This has nothing to do with personal identity in particular, what is simply a fact about the logic of identity and this logic of identity also plays very vital role in the problem of personal identity, because very ordinary people they identify with the logic of identity and this logic of identity may not sufficient to explain the personal identity, logically we may prove some kind of personal identity, but it is empirically it is impossible and I will be discussing all these things in the due course. Those who say that after certain sort of advances you would be a different person or that you would no longer be the person you once were, presumably mean that you would still exist, but what have changed in some important way, they are usually thinking of once individual identity in the whom I am I sense and about the possible of your losing some or all of the properties that makes up your individual identity and occurring new once and this has nothing to do with the persistent questions. It is inconvenient that the word identity and the same means so many different things, numerical identity and qualitative identity, individual psychological identity and more to make matters worse, some philosophers speak of surviving in a way that does not imply numerical identity. So, that I could survive a certain adventure without existing afterwards, confusion is inviteable, here is a more insidious misunderstanding, persistent question is that under what possible circumstances is a person existing at one time identical with a person existing at another time, in other words what does it take for a past or future person to be you, we have a person existing at one time and a person existing at another and the confusion is what is necessary and sufficient for them to be one person rather than two, this is not the persistent questions it is too narrow, we may want to know whether you were even an embrace or fetus or whether you could survive in an irreversible vegetative state or as a cross, these are clearly questions about what it takes for us to persist and account of our identity over time or to answer them, their answers may have important ethical implications, it matters to the morality of abortions and whether someone that is in an embrace or fetus at one time can be an adult person at another time or whether the adult person is always numerically different from the fetus, but many philosophers defines person as something that has certain special mental properties, John Locke for example, famously said that a person is a thinking intelligent being that has reason and reflections and can consider itself as itself the same thinking thing in different times and places, this implies that something is a person at a given time and if and only if it has those mental properties then and a neurologist say that early term fetus and human beings in a persistent vegetative state have no mental properties at all then, if anything like Locke's definition is right, such beings are not people not at that time anyway. In that case, we cannot infer anything about whether you were once an embrace or could come to be a vegetable by discovering what it takes for a past or future person to be you, we can illustrate the point by considering particular answer to questions one necessarily a person who exist at one time is identical with a person who exist at a second time, if and only if the first person can at the same time remember and experience the second person has at the second time or vice versa that is a past or a future person is you just in the case that you can now remember and experience she had then or she can then remember and experience you are having now, then we can say that memory is the main criteria for personal identity. Therefore, with the help of memory can identify with some persons the memory criteria may seem to imply that if you you were to remember into one irreversible vegetative state the resulting the vegetable would not be you as it would be able unable to remembering anything, you would have seized to exist or perhaps passed on to the next world, but in fact it implies no such thing, assuming that a human vegetable is not a person that is not a case involving a person existing at one time and a person existing at another time. The memory criteria supposed to tell us which past or future person you are, but not which past or future thing, in other words it is says what it takes for one to persist as a person, but now what it takes for one to persist without qualifications. So, it implies nothing at all about whether you could come to be a vegetable or a coughs for the same reason it tells us nothing about whether you were even an embryo. So, rather than question one we ought to ask what it takes for any part of future being persons or not to be you or I, now we have to see questions on persistence under what possible circumstances is a person who exist at one time identical with something that exist at another time. This is the persistent questions philosophers typically ask one rather than question one rather than question two because they assume that every person is a person essentially nothing that is in fact a person could possible exist without being a person. By contrast we can say that something that is in fact a student would could exist without being a student, no student is essentially a student and it would be a mistake to inquire about the condition of student identity by asking what it takes for a student existing at one time to be identical to a student at another time. This claim persons essentialism implies that whatever is a persons at one time must be a person at every time when she exist making the two questions equivalent. Persons essentialism together with something like the Lockean account of person would which implies that you could not possibly have been an embryo. The embryo that gave rise to you is not strictly you, you came into being only when it develop certain mental capacities nor could you come to be a human vegetable for that matter. It rules out our being biological organism since no organism is a person essentially every human organism starts out as un on thinking embryo and may end up in a vegetative state accounts of our identity through time and this plays also very vital role and this personal identity if you see through time and that will plays important role. Now we have to see the personal identity through time almost all proposed answer to the persistent questions fall into one of three categories. First one is the psychological approach, semantic approach and anti criteria approaches. First is the psychological approach according to which some psychological relation is necessary and sufficient for one to persist. You are that future being that in some sense inherent its mental features belief, memories, performance, the capacity for rational thought that sort of things from you and you are the past being whose mental features you have inherited in this way. There is dispute over what sort of inheritance that has to be whether it must be undermined by some kind of physical continuity. For an instant whether a non branching requirement is needed there is also a disagreement about what mental features need to be inherited, but most philosophers writing on personal identity since the early 20th century have endured some version of the psychological approach. The memory criteria mentioned earlier is an example. A second idea is that our identity through time consist in some brute physical relations. You are that part or that past or future being that has your body that is the same biological organism as you are or the like whether you survive or perish has nothing to do with psychological facts. You may think the truth lies somewhere between the two. We need both mental and the physical continuity to survive or perhaps either would suffice without the other. These of this sort are usually version of the psychological approach as we have defined it. Here is a test case. For example, imagine that your brain is transplanted into mind head. Two beings result the person who ends up with your cerebrum and most of your mental features and the empty headed being left behind which may perhaps be biological alive, but will have no mental features. Those who say that you would be the same who gets your brain usually say so because they believe that some relation involving psychological suffice for you to persist. They accept the psychological approach. Those who say that you would be the empty headed vegetable say so because they take you identity to consist in something entirely non-psychological as the somatic approach has it. Both the psychological and somatic approach agree that this somatic approach is nothing but for them that the bodily criteria is the primary to identify the persons. Both these approaches they agree that there is something that it takes for us to proceed that our identity through time consist in or necessarily follows from something other than itself. A third view is that anti-criterialism which denies this mental and physical continuity are evidence for identity. It says, but do not always guarantee it and may not be required. No sort of continuity is both necessary and sufficient for you to survive. The only correct and complete answer the persistent question is the survival statement that a person existing at one time is identical with a being existing at another and only if they are identical. Anti-criterialism is poorly understood and deserves more attention than it has received. It seems that the persistent questions must have an answer. One of these three views and these three views plays vital role to explain on some of the problems on personal identity. If there is such a thing as you if there is anything sitting there and reading this now then some condition must be necessary and sufficient for it to persist. Those conditions will involve psychology or only brute physical continuity or something else or they are trivial and uniformative. As anti-criterialism has it, moreover at most one such view can be true. We will see this approaches some other way, but if you see many philosophers and many students of philosopher and students of psychology they have explained that persons in the psychological approach because it seems obvious that you would go along with your brain if it was transparent and that this is so because that organs you carry with your memories and other mental features. This would lead to a recipient to believe that he or she was you and why should this believe is mistaken. And this is one way of psychological approach of explaining a person identity and this make it easy to suppose that our identity over time has something to do with psychology. It is notoriously difficult however to get from this commission to plausible answer to the persistent questions. What psychological relation might our identity through time consist in? We have already mentioned memory a past or future being might be you if and only if you can now remember and experience she had then or vice versa. First suppose a young student is find for overdue library books. Later as a middle age lawyer she remembers paying the fine. Later she is still in your dotage and she remembers her law career, but has entirely forgotten not only paying the fine, but everything else she did in her youth. According to memory criteria the young student is the middle aged lawyer. The lawyer is the old woman, but the old man is not the young student. This is an impossible result if x and y are 1 and y and z are 1 x and z cannot be the two. Identity is transitive, memory continuity is not. Secondly it seems to belong to the very idea of remembering that you can remember only your own experience to remember paying a fine is to remember yourself paying. That makes it trivial and informative to say that you are the person whose experiences you can remember that is the memory continuity is sufficient for personal identity. It is informative because you cannot know whether someone genuinely remember a past experience without already knowing whether he is the one who had it. Suppose we want to know whether blot who exist now is the same as clot who we know to have existed at sometime in the past. The memory criteria tells us that blot is clot if blot can now remember an experience of clots that occurred at that past time, but blot seeming to remember one of clots experience from that time count was genuine memory only if blot actually is clot. So, we should already have to know whether blot is clot before we could apply the principle that is supposed to tell us how this she is. One response to the first person is to modify the memory criteria by switching from direct to indirect memory connections. The world woman is the young student is because she can recall experience the lawyer had at a time when the lawyer remember the students life. The second problem is traditionally met by replacing memory with a new concept retro cognitions or quasi memory which is just like memory but without the identity requirement. Even if it is self-contraded to say that remember doing something I did not do, but someone else did I could still quasi remember it and this quasi remember also one of the important thing sometimes we used to make in our day to day life whenever we meet our very old friend and very old officials then we used to say that I think we have seen or I have seen we like that this kind of memory is known as quasi memory. Neither moves get us far however as both the original and the modified memory criteria face a more obvious problems. There are many times in my past that I cannot remember quasi remember at all and to which I am not linked indirectly by an overlapping chain of memories for instance there is no time when I could recall anything that happened to me while I was dreamlessly sleeping last night. The memory criteria has the absolute implications that I have never existed at any time when I was completely unconscious. The man sleeping in my bed last night was someone else a better solution appeal to questions is dependency. We can define two notions psychological connectedness and the psychological continuity a being is psychologically connected at one future time with me as I am now just if he is in the psychological state he is in then in large a part because of the psychological state I am in now having a current memory or a quasi memory of an earlier experience is one sort of psychological connections the experience causes the memory of it but there are other. Importantly one current mental state can be caused in part by mental state one was in at times when one was unconscious for example most of my current beliefs are the same ones I had while I slept last night those beliefs have cause themselves to continue existing we can then define the second notion thus therefore the psychological continuous with a past or future being just if someone of my current mental states relate to those is in then by a chain of psychological connections. Now suppose that a person X who exist at one time is identical with something Y existing at another time if and only if X is at one time psychological continuous with Y as it is at the other time this avoid the most obvious objection to the memory criteria the stills leaves important questions unanswered however suppose we could somehow copy all the mental acquaintance of your brain one on to mind much as we can copy the contents of one computer device on the computer one on to another and suppose this process erased the previous currents of both brains although this would be a case of psychological continuity depends on what sort of causal difference counts the resulting being would be mentally like us where before and not like I was and he would have inherited your mental properties in a way a funny way is it the right way could you literally move from one human animal to another by a brain state transfer and all these questions are very vital questions in the problem of personal identity whenever we identify some persons and these kinds of problem arises and you know to identify particular persons and therefore the problem of personal identity is one of the important issue in philosophy of mind and cognitions and in the next lectures I will explain some of the deeper issues on personal identity in respect to non-metallistic view on persons whether can we say that psychology or somatic or physical continuity is the personal identity or there is something called non-physical continuity is there which is identify as a persons that I will explain in the next lectures thank you.