Questions about personal identity have been grappling the field of psychology for years now. The answer to such questions requires people to make certain judgments concerning what makes up a person. One of these questions is whether a person can be numerically the same over time. The presupposition that an individual can be the same at one point and then be the same over at two different times provides a challenge to the conventional knowledge that things change. Also, it supports the notion that things stay the same. It is difficult to imagine how something can be both identical and different from one time to the next. At first glance, the problem of personal identity seems trivial as we include the time-honored distinction between qualitative and numerical identity. Saying that a and b are numerically identical means that a and b are the one thing while saying that they are qualitatively similar means that one exactly resembles the other. The scenario leads to the contended question of what it takes for an individual to remain the same from one time to another.
The question can try to ask what would have to happen for the same person to exist in two different times. To illustrate this, it is possible to use the formulation; if a person exists at one point and another b exists at a different time, under what conditions is that a is b? This question, in turn, asks whether the past or future person will be one. The answer to this question can be determined through psychological-continuity views. In this case, the thing that should happen for a person to remain the same in two different times is psychological relation.
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A person has to inherit the mental features that include the capacity of rational thinking, preferences, beliefs, memories, and such things to be the future person from whom he or she inherited. For instance, you are that same person whose mental features you inherited. And the next person has to inherit these characteristics from you to be the same as you at different times. However, there is a controversy about what kind of inheritance can make two chronologically separated people the same. This asks whether it has to be underlined by some physical continuity or if there has to be a non-branching requirement. Also, a confusing notion is what features should be inherited for this to be true.
Continuity must contain the right cause to ensure that personal identity is differentiated from survival. A person can survive by having psychological similarity with another individual. When branching or reduplication occurs, then survival takes place and not the existence of personal identity.
The view of psychological continuity can be used to handle the split brain in the following way. When the organ is transplanted from one person to another, it carries with it the memory sectors and elements. The person who receives this brain will have the same memories as that from whom the organ is removed. The brain will convince the person that he had existed before. A past or future person can only be you if and just if he or she can remember what you experienced before the brain hemispheres were separated, or vice versa. When a person’s blueprint of both physical and psychological attributes that are stored in the mental framework to ensure that the person becomes as the source. There is a need for one to be self-understanding and have a sense of self. If a brain can make a person see the experiences and actions after the interchange, then they can be related to the donor.
Psychological continuity is sufficient as it states that memory alone cannot define personal identity. Humans are made from multiple entities that make up self-consciousness. There must be enough memory and links between the two parties to make a person and another the same at different times.
However, there is a deficit in the psychological continuity theory in describing what goes on with the people who participate with the split brain. In other words, the mere fact that memory alone can describe personal identity is not stable and convincing enough. It is not enough for a person who remembers experiences to be the exact person like you. It is imperative to think of a situation where a person’s hemispheres were split and given two separate people. Suppose you were triplets and your brain is split into halves and transplanted to the two siblings, it is confusing to state that they are both you. This would make them the same because they own the brain of the same person. The psychological continuity view leaves many questions unanswered. Supposed it was possible to copy all the mental material from one brain to another as it can in computers, it is difficult to state whether the recipient of the organ with foreign content is either the same as the owner of the material or the owner of the brain. For instance, if the contents of the brain of person a are copied to the brain of person b and this erases the characteristics of the brain b. Then, the resultant material is transplanted to a person c. This means that the recipient will be the same as the owner of the content and not the one who donated the brain. This means that it is confusing to conclude that through brain transfers, a person can be the same as the other at different times.
