The big idea: 'Identity' looks like an easy word — until you push on it. Look at a baby photo of yourself. Almost everything has changed: your body, your looks, your ideas. Yet you say that was me. What makes that true?
Philosophers split 'identity' into two meanings. Mixing them up causes most of the confusion.
Qualitative identity
- Being exactly alike
- Two new phones off the same line
- You can be like your past self
Numerical identity
- Being one and the same thing
- Your phone today = the one you bought last year
- Are you literally the same person?
Hold onto this: Personal identity is always about the numerical kind: not 'am I similar to my past self?' but 'am I the very same person?'
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So the real puzzle is about numerical identity. Philosophers call it the persistence question: what has to carry on for you to keep existing?
There are really two questions here, and it helps to keep them apart. What are we? (what kind of thing is a person — a body, a mind, a soul?) And what makes us persist? (what keeps that thing the same over time?)