Research Paper on:
Overview of Continuity of Personal Identity

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
and make the appropriate association between psychological continuity and personal identity, one must consider the philosophical nature of the question "What makes you you?" An approach based purely on physicalism  would assert that what makes a person the person they are is nothing more than the particular collection of atoms of which they are formed. However, such a statement  leaves no room for the changes every person experiences or the ways in which time changes people. This then leads to the conclusion that something non-physical must exist, although  this assertion does not follow logically in terms of their personal experiences. In the actual experience of an individual, he or she feels as if they remain the same continuous  person from one moment to the next. Human life allows for both continuity and discontinuity. Consider the example of a seed and a plant. Once the seed becomes  a plant, it is an entirely different entity but does that mean it has no continuity of any kind with the former seed and its body? Of course not.  Does Paul say the seed gets a "numerically new" body? Yes! Is it a numerically new body in every way, something that they never  had before in any sense, having No! The inner man possesses "eternal life" or immortality out of which the new body arises. The basis for the continuity is not  the physical body. The seed and plant each have a body (or body form) which is suited to their particular mode of existence and function. There is continuity of personal  identity and inner germ substance between the seed and plant, but discontinuity of bodily form. Continuity of life/person/identity, and discontinuity of outer form or body. But the plant definitely has