''Be yourself, no matter what they say'' is the advice that Sting gives us in his elegant song Shape of My Heart. I agree. But how do we do that? How can we be ourselves? Deeper still, what does it mean to be ourselves? And how do I know who my-self is? After all, whatever I …
Category: personal identity
People Change and Stay the Same
The title of this article is contradictory on purpose. Do you think that people can change or do you think that they stay fundamentally the same? This question is far less contradictory, isn't it? That is just because it has 'or' in the middle, not 'and'. Indeed, could there be an 'and' in the middle, or, in …
Am I what I do? Functionalism in Philosophy
How do you usually introduce yourself? What is it that you say when asked to tell others about yourself? Who are you? There are variations in answers, of course, as well as exceptions to common conventions. However, I have yet to meet a person who'd start their introduction by stating that, for instance, he is a human …
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Be Ready to Drop Your Assumptions
This last weekend I was working on my first academic philosophy writing, an essay on Hume's views of the "self". He was a convinced empiricist and was sceptical about rationalism and its assumption that we can know things based on and thanks to our reason alone. Hume thought that the only way we can develop …
What makes you You? An imaginary dialogue with John Locke
Are you the same person you were 10 years ago? What about when you were a child? And what about yesterday? And since we are talking about it – will you be the same person tomorrow? Perhaps we should start by asking what does it mean to be the same person and what a “person” …
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