Practice Flashcards
Flip to reveal answersQualitative vs numerical identity?
Track your progress — Sign up free to save your progress and get smart review reminders based on spaced repetition.
All 11 Flashcards — What is identity?
Sign up free to track progress and get spaced-repetition review schedules.
Question
Qualitative vs numerical identity?
Answer
Qualitative = exactly alike. Numerical = one and the same thing. Personal identity is numerical.
Question
The persistence question?
Answer
What must carry on for a person now to be the same person earlier or later?
Question
The two identity questions?
Answer
What are we? (a body/mind/soul?) and What makes us persist? (what keeps us the same over time?)
Question
Why is identity a puzzle at all?
Answer
Everything about you changes, yet you stay one person — so something must carry on, but it's unclear what.
Question
Is 'I'm a different person now' literally true?
Answer
Usually it means qualitatively different (changed). Numerically it's still you — that's the debate.
Question
Why keep the two senses apart?
Answer
Most confusion about identity comes from mixing 'exactly alike' with 'one and the same'.
Question
Reid's 'brave officer' objection?
Answer
By memory a person both is and isn't their childhood self — a contradiction for the memory view.
Question
The teleporter thought experiment?
Answer
A perfect copy is made and the original destroyed — did you survive or die? Tests each view.
Question
The ship of Theseus?
Answer
Every plank is replaced — is it the same ship? Pressures the body view.
Question
How do you reach the top band in Section A?
Answer
Explore an issue, argue, weigh different views, and reach a reasoned conclusion — don't just describe.
Question
What does Paper 1 Section A ask?
Answer
Use an unseen stimulus + your own knowledge to explore a philosophical issue about being human [25].
Read the notes
Full study notes for What is identity?
Topic 1.1 hub
Identity
More from Topic 1.1
All flashcards in this topic
Philosophy exam skills
Paper structures & tips
Track your progress with spaced repetition
Sign up free — Aimnova tells you exactly which cards to review and when, so you remember everything before your IB exam.
Start Free