Personal identity can mean two things. The first refers to the connection between the mind and the body. The second, and the aspect most relevant to personal identity, refers to what makes you the same person over time.
Then we have to consider what we mean by the same. There are two types of sameness, numerical and qualitative.
Numerical similarity means that something is ‘one and the same’, it is made up of the same stuff.
Qualitative refers to something that you are similar too.
Some philosophers such as David Hume have made a mistake in using these terms (also I made this mistake too). He thought that personal identity cannot be continuous, we are lots of different persons over time who perceive ourselves as different because we have a bundle of continuous perceptions which we are consciously aware off. However this is a mistake. He is taking the idea of sameness quite too literally.
For instance, you could take the view that you are not the same you as you were when you were 8 years old because you do not weigh the same. When I was 8 I was 6 stone, today I am 36 and I am 14 stone. Therefore I am not the same weight. However we need to adjust the variable. You could say that in 1983 I was 8 stone and this would be true. I would be numerically similar because the 8 year me and the 36 year old mean would be eight stone in 1980.
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