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Personal Identity & Time

A New Look At Personal Identity

Michael Allen Fox argues that old approaches to the problem don’t work.

Who am I? That’s a difficult question to tackle, and each of us must do so for him- or herself, if it is to be tackled at all. But importantly related to this question is another: Am I the same person now as I used to be? For part of the issue of personal identity is how growth, change and life experiences transform one’s self. Perhaps they alter me totally, I may think. The identity problem is compounded by asking further: Might I be a very different person in the future?

Most responses to these questions assume a substantive view of a self or person. That is, they assert that something abides through the stream of events and varying circumstances of one’s life, even in spite of them.

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