Digital ID Coach

Going deep into identity

September 24th, 2008

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This blog post isn’t going very deep, but I didn’t want to miss the opportunity to invite you to learn more about what a personal identity is all about from a philosophical perspective.

As you might imagine, philosophers have a field day with concepts like identity. “Who am I” is a great starting point for long discussions of great academic importance. Hey, in your philosophical moments you may have had this discussion too. The mystery of life is a compelling inquiry.

If you’re interested in learning more about how academic philosophers approach the question of personal identity, you might be interested in reading this paper by Eric T. Olson at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP).

In the first part of the paper, The Problems of Personal identity, Olson outlines several “loosely connected questions:

Who am I? (what makes us individual and unique?)
Personhood (what is it that defines us to be a person?)
Persistence (survival, existence in a place or time, beyond death)
Evidence (sources that support who someone is)
Population (facts that help us determine how many of us there are)
What am I? (in a metaphysical sense)
How (different) could I have been? (my essential properties)
What matters in identity? (responsibility, a selfish interest, etc.)

The question of identity is not a new question, nor has the notion been settled or defined. Who we are at any point in our lives is also subject to change with time, circumstances, desires, or any reason we find compelling. These discussions will continue to inform us for many years to come.

Coaching moment: The next time you sit down with friends or family, ask them if they’ve ever thought about what makes them who they are. There are no right or wrong answers. The question is merely to help you explore if the subject of identity has ever occurred to people, and if so, how do they approach it.

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