3 discussion forum and reply each discussion to three classmates

Watch the video below on personhood and the one on arguments against personal identity, and then answer these questions: Which of the theories about personal identity do you find the most plausible/convincing and why? Which of the arguments against personal identity do you find most plausible/convincing and why?

Personhood: Crash Course Philosophy #21. YouTube video file. [9:13]. CrashCourse. 2016, Jul 25. youtu.be/GxM9BZeRrUI

Personhood: Crash Course Philosophy #20. YouTube video file. [9:43]. CrashCourse. 2016, Jul 11. youtu.be/17WiQ_tNld4

Reply to the discussion of these three students：

1.Juan Martinez

RE: Who Are You?

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The theory I believe most

convincing is that the key to personhood is sentience the ability to feel pleasure and pain, because of the fact that something that doesn’t contain a developed nervous system really doesn’t have personhood. Because of the fact that it doesn’t feel pain, then follows the question if a person in a persistent vegetative state is a person and I think that they aren’t a person for the time being, because of the fact that the body would have sense of self or feel until he’s better. The argument that I found most convincing is the Humes theory that the so called selfie is just an illusion, it’s a bundle of impressions consisting of many things. I’m convinced with that theory because you can never live on and be the same person you were before for example let’s say you experience memory loss and forgot everything about yourself, you then there become someone completely different from before the incident you can try to regain that self image people believed you to be but it’ll never be the same. The same is to say about normal person that is living day to day, that same person is experiencing and changing ever so slightly . Obviously having memory loss is way more of a drastic change but they both are going through some sort of change.

2.Bonnie Enochs

RE: Who Are You?

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I found some points in the crash course video that were most plausible/convincing when it comes to personal identity. Person hood criteria was brought up that includes “consciousness, self-motivation, capacity to communicate, and self-awareness.” Is you don’t have all these then you’re not a person even if you have DNA. Which to me kind of makes sense because I didn’t think of being a human and a person to be a different thing until now. You can be a human and not a person or be both a human and person. But being a person you need to be able to fend for yourself and be able to I say have a personality in some sense. I also found the Luther and superman example to be interesting. Luther says superman is not a person but Superman’s family says he is. But then Luther is less of a person because of all his hatred against the world. A person should be respectable to the world around them, and work there best to make it better. Superman did that, but Luther was trying to destroy everything so therefor he was a human but not a person. That is what I got out of that example. The last thing I found interesting and convincing is the question “is it possible to be a human, yet not a person?” That is what I brought up in the beginning of my response and that statement is most plausible/convincing to me. And the example for this is that fetuses are considered human but not a person because they cannot think for themselves, talk, or fend for themselves.

The argument against personal identity that I found most plausible/convincing was David Hume’s. Which states “The idea of the self doesn’t persist over time. There is no you that is the same person from birth to death.” Which makes sense because we change over time where we change interests in things, or we improve on ourselves, etc. I call it evolving into a different self that is always changing. This hurt my brain to think of but honesty makes sense. Our personal identity is consistently changes, and we are adding to ourselves. But then I have to think is that is what personal identity is then what the parts of us is when it comes to memories. We keep all the memories in our brain from birth to death, even if we go through changes those memories cannot change so what our those? Does that not make up our personal identity? That is just what my mind was going to at the end of this.

All and all I found both of these videos to be very informative and interesting, it made me think harder about the different arguments and theories. I never knew that personal identity was so much more complex.

2.Saeedeh Rafiee

RE: Who Are You?

The videos were very interesting. Human definition is different from personhood. A human is defined by genetic and biological characteristics. All the theories on Personhood seemed plausible. However, they all had deficiencies. As the video explained someone like superman could be regarded more person than a criminal entity because of Morality. The cognitive criterion seemed most plausible because it was more comprehensive than other theories. And when you think of the definition of Person in a literal manner it refers to an entity. So a crimial or a benevolent they both are person. However, we can describe them as bad or good. According to Cognitive theory Consciousness is the number one Quality which makes sense since we are talking about animated beings and not objects. Reasoning is also generic. Evil or dim they both have their reasoning for their self-motivated activities. The capacity to communicate also makes sense. The capacity might not always be fully be developed but it's there. Furthermore, all entities who are regarded as a person have feelings and some sort of character which makes them self-aware. These criterion will definitely separate us from animals, objects. However, the biggest issue is a robot. with these definitions a robot can also be regarded as a person. unless we involve the biological as one of the items of this criterion.

About the arguments against personal identity. The most plausible one was Parfit's theory of survival. However, I think differently. I believe we can not talk about personalities without regarding Sigmund Freud. According to Freud our personal identity is based on the events that happened in out childhood. Therefore, we cannot fully accept Parfit's theory since he is saying the initial chains of our identity will become loose and we will lose those connections. According to Freud those chains will remain with us, however in our subconscious. To me the theory of Frued can our identity far better than Parfit's. All in all these theories including Hume's had helped each other to be developed and Parfit's theory seems come along with Hume's and Frued seems come along with these two. Each day we are adding to our identity by creating new chains, However, those chains depends on the chains we made yesterday and the days before. We are defined by our past but that doesn't mean we cannot change.