Personal Identity - Philosophy Tube

Who are you? And how do you know? And what makes it so? We explore the question of what makes you you over time.

Twitter: @PhilosopyTube

YouTube Poops of me and Emily!

[Lys]

I just found this channel, in the middle of a depression, and I have to say that using philosophy as a tool to understand humanity and life is getting me interested in living in general. Keep up the good work, this is brilliant!

[desertsage]

Prescient that this pops up in my recommendations today.

[kitfair]

This is so wonderfully consistent, Abigail. You were and remain the same insightful and clever person you've always been!

[shitpostingstevebecauseall]

Can't be a coincidence that this is in my recommendations.

[hotwheelsdeepstate]

YouTube algorithm thinks it’s clever apparently

[farhanpiruzdelan]

you deserve so much more subscribers, this content is golden

[aimhrialta]

"The question isn't 'Will I be numerically identical to some future philosophytube presenter?', the question is 'Will I survive?''' This hits different now. Glad she survived.

Also I'm pretty late to the party but I'm sure there'll be a few more people coming to look back at some of her old videos. I kinda wonder if you can think about the chain differently, not as a chain of memory, but as a chain of creation. I am me now because of the choices past me made. It's something a friend suggested when I was feeling a bit weird about taking ADHD medication - it doesn't change my personality exactly, but it changes how I pay attention, which does have an effect on what decisions I make. Which is more me, the person I am with 10mg of ritalin in me, or me without? My friend's theory is that I'm the one who decided to take the pill, and I am also the me that is the result of that choice, and if when it wears off I decide to drink a whole tray of vodka shots, the resulting choice is also me, if not a particularly coherent version.

[ygbrutt]

I think it actually is memories! See, when you used the duplication example, you pointed out that both duplicates remember being the original-- which is correct-- but you left out one key factor: at the exact moment the duplication happened, their memories split! They can both remember being the original, but they cannot remember being each other, which is congruent with the dualism. Their traits are not all the same, so they cannot be the same person-- and psychological continuity actually SUPPORTS this, because they start having different memories from each other at the exact moment of the duplication!

[NarutoXDism]

You helped me pass this course in Thank you!

[Lucidthinking]

Hey Olly,
You did a great job, in this video, to present the solutions suggested by Locke and others to personal identity, and their weaknesses, that is the inability of their solutions to answer this question.
I believe the reason they didn't manage to answer the question of self-identity is that they were not familiar with a certain phenomenon that explains many things: What is usually referred to by the term *consciousness* is, in fact, two different phenomenon (and not one): The object of consciousness (Thoughts, emotions, sensations, memories, etc...) and the observer (The subject of consciousness) - which is the real self.
It is not easy to explain the existence of an observer who is different from the subject of observation. One must see its existence with his own "eyes".
I explain it in detail in a video I have created called *who am I? - The answer to the riddle of the self*

[PamSesheta]

Abbie, redo this video with the last frame you walk in as you are today, instead of your old self walking in on old self :)

[elizajay]

Just wanted to let you know that this video has been a godsend! Taking Philosophy as a complimentary at uni without realising quite what I was letting myself in for. This video useful for my essay, will definitely be watching more of your work. Keep it up and thank you!! xxx 

[natasharedmane]

I'd love to see you revisit this subject again on these new format and longer videos

[ryanfranz]

Everyone's explanations are so complicated. I am somewhat of a philosopher, and not surprisingly I am drunk right now. Everybody has one thing: their immediate experience of reality. That is it. You have your experiences, and how these stimuli interact with your present memories is really all you have. If you were to "suddenly become someone else" you would have their memories and whatever they were experiencing at the moment, and that's it (and that's all you have too! Whatever memories are encoded in your brain and the immediate information of your senses is it!). Therefore you wouldn't notice anything is wrong if you were to suddenly become someone else because you would only have access to their memories and their immediate experience. You exist only for a moment, but that moment lasts forever. I'm confusing myself now, so that's all I have, you're welcome unless this doesn't make sense, in which case I'm sorry. I would like to personally thank spell check.

[jacobgoldman]

Greetings from the USA! Your videos are absolutely PERFECT. You explain everything so well - I've learned so much. Also, I love how you keep it fun and funny with your cultural references and humor! Spot on, Olly m'boy!

[katherinemerrylees]

This video just kept getting better. Thankyou for making my revision somewhat interesting.

[jamessullivan]

You are everything put together. Your name, your position in space, your psychological continuity, your hair, your gender etc.

The thing that makes you the same over time is because your label changes as you change. For example, a large ship called "ship A" is floating on the water. You then take away a trait from it. You take away a plank. Is it the same ship? Yes. Why? Because labels are to do with perspective. We perceive the ship as 99% the same ship, so we round that back up to 100%. As long as we take off the planks one by one, we can keep rounding up to 100% and perceiving the ship as Ship A.

An interesting thing happens when we do this though. If we keep rounding up to 100% after a small change, the perspective/definition of what ship A actually is will start to change. It is still ship A, but it's definition is slowly changing and when it reaches a highly noticeable difference, a new definition will be given to ship A. Because the perception of ship A has changed.


Jenny has blonde hair. She then dyes her hair black. Now the person Jenny is has changed, a new definition to Jenny has been given. We round 99% of original Jenny to 100% and say this is who Jenny is now. We can do this because the difference is highly noticeable and a new perspective of Jenny has formed. However, if we take Jenny and change her gender, name, appearance, personality, desires, beliefs, psychological continuity, memories, and position in space all at once, we will not perceive the new person as Jenny. We did not have the time to round up to 100% and therefore a new definition for Jenny could not be given. Who is this new person that appeared randomly in space? And where is Jenny?

~James Sullivan, school student, young philosophical mind

[mondescan]

"The question isn't: will I ever be identical to some future YouTube presenter". It's 2022 and this got me thinking.

[ceciliakjellman]

I got this recommended in 2021, early febraury 2021.

[Von_D]

Oh my good grief. You earned a sub just because you mentioned Draon Ball. My prof mentioned Star Trek, but that just made me more confused! Now if I pass my finals, I will watch your content religiously, even if I don't take a philosophy course ever again.