The Self Through Time
What makes you the same person?
The Puzzle of Personal Identity
You have different cells, different memories, and different beliefs than you did as a child; yet you call yourself the same person. Philosophers ask what, if anything, makes that true. John Locke argued identity is carried not by the body or an immaterial soul but by continuity of memory and consciousness. Others, like Derek Parfit, suggest strict identity may matter far less than we assume.
“Personal identity consists in the sameness of a rational being.”
Where this sits in the course
“The Self Through Time” is lesson 1 of 3 in Being & the Self, a course about the deeper structure: identity, free will, mind, and being.. The lessons are sequenced rather than a menu, so this one assumes what came before it.
Being & the Self is itself one of 18 courses in thinkr. The set opens with what philosophy is, moves through the Stoics and the Eastern traditions, then into what can be known, what exists, how to act and how power works — closing on practical reasoning you can use in an argument this week.
More from John Locke
“No man's knowledge here can go beyond his experience.”
“The actions of men are the best interpreters of their thoughts.”
“But there is only one thing which gathers people into seditious commotion, and that is oppression.”
In the app this lesson is followed by 5 exercises that check whether the idea actually landed — and every answer, right or wrong, is explained rather than scored. That is the part a written page cannot reproduce.