In philosophy, the issue of personal identity concerns the conditions under which a person at one time is the same person at another time. An analysis of personal identity provides a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for the identity of the person over time. This concept of personal identity is sometimes referred to as the diachronic problem of personal identity. It contrasts with the synchronic problem, which is the question of what constitutes personhood at a time - what kind of thing is a person? These five broad types of question are called analytical or logical, epistemological, ethical, metaphysical, and aesthetic respectively. ... Person, in the classic sense, refers to a living human being. ... Diachronic study is the study of the development of a language over a period of time. ... Synchronic study is the study of language at a particular point in time. ...

The problem of personal identity is at the center of discussions about survival of death and immortality. In order to survive death, there has to be a person after death who is the same person as the person who died. So in virtue of what is the post-death individual the same person as the earlier temporal stage of the person who it is claimed is survived in the post-death individual?

There have been many thought experiments about personal identity, for example, "swamp man". Swamp man is the title given to a philosophical thought experiment about causality and personal identity, first put forward in this form by Donald Davidson: Suppose Don goes hiking in the swamp and is struck and killed by a lightning bolt. ...

Further reading

• Daniel Dennett, Where am I?
• Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons, part 3.
• Bernard Williams, The Self and the Future, in Philosophical Review 79.
• Personal life
• Ship of Theseus (about identity of things generally, not only of persons)
• John Locke, Of Ideas of Identity and Diversity

Daniel Dennett Daniel Clement Dennett (born March 28, 1942) is a prominent American philosopher. ... Derek Parfit is a philosopher who specializes in problems of personal identity, rationality and ethics, and the relations between them. ... Sir Bernard Arthur Owen Williams (September 21, 1929 – June 10, 2003) was an English moral philosopher, noted by The Times as the most brilliant and most important British moral philosopher of his time. ... ... The Ship of Theseus is a replacement paradox also known as Theseuss paradox. ... Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: John Locke Free, full-text works by John Locke Works by John Locke at Project Gutenberg Works by Locke on the Web John Locke Online Bibliography Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry John Locke Bibliography John Locke Manuscripts Readable versions of the Essay...

See also

• Identity and change
• Personally identifiable information
• Privacy

This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ... In information security and privacy, personally identifiable information or personally identifying information (PII) is any piece of information which can potentially be used to uniquely identify, contact, or locate a single person. ... Privacy is the ability of an individual or group to stop information about themselves from becoming known to people other than those they choose to give the information to. ...

External link

• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on personal identity