Who Am I? Finally, There Is an Answer to the Eternal Question of Self-Identity

by Tsur Taub
Learning Mind

Throughout the history, one of the deepest questions mankind has asked itself is the question of its true identity: Who am I?

While science refers human beings as a biological organism, philosophers understood that this perspective isn’t sufficient. Our body is changing continuously, yet we remain ourselves. For example, it is claimed that every seven years all the cells of our body are being replaced. So the body I have now is not the body I had seven years ago, yet I remained. So what is this “I” that remained?

Western philosophy is clueless

The philosopher Rene Descartes suggested that our mind and thoughts are our true identity. An identity, he called a “soul”. The philosopher John Locke argued that momentary thoughts are not consistent and change over time. They cannot be our identity since identity is something that must be consistent over time. He suggested that what makes a person himself is a minimal amount of memory that must remain constant throughout his life. For example, I am myself and not another because I remember being myself as a little child, as a teenager and as an adult. He termed this consistency of memory, “sameness of consciousness”.
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