Identity (philosophy)

“ The identity, which we are to consider, is, as I have already said, the identity only of the principle which feels and thinks, without regard to the changeable state of the particles of the brain, or of the body in general. This unity and permanence of the principle, which thinks, if we had still to invent a phrase, I would rather call mental identity, than personal identity, though the latter phrase may now be considered as almost fixed by the general use of philosophers. ”

“ It must be the mind itself, standing above the senses, which performs the identification. Thus the ideas of identity and difference are not yielded to me by my senses. The intellect itself introduces them into things. ”

“ The ideas of identity and distinction originate in the ideas of being and of not-being; and thus the idea of copulative being, which affirms the identity of a predicate with a subject, flows also in a manner from the idea of substantive being. ”

“ The belief of the identity of self, then, as the one permanent subject of the transient feelings remembered by us, arises from a law of thought, which is essential to the very constitution of the mind. It has accordingly all the qualities, which I can imagine to be required by the most rigid scrutinizer of our principles of intuitive assent. It is universal, and immediate, and irresistible. ”

“ And I do not think that the history of philosophy can exhibit a grosser case of this very confusion against which we who believe in identity are so specially warned. Yes, you may try to drive out nature, and nature (as the saying goes) will always come back, but it will not always come back as nature. And you may strive to banish identity of character, and identity always will return, and it will not always return in a tolerable form. ”

“ What then gives us so great a propension to ascribe an identity to these successive perceptions, and to suppose ourselves possest of an invariable and uninterrupted existence thro' the whole course of our lives? In order to answer this question, we must distinguish betwixt personal identity, as it regards our thought or imagination, and as it regards our passions or the concern we take in ourselves. ”

“ The upholders of universal identity, besides contradicting a primitive and fundamental fact of consciousness, signally fail in their efforts to explain by it either the origin of intellectual representation or its conformity to its object. Evidently no man has an intuition of the nature of the individual me, and still less of the absolute being which these philosophers suppose as the substratum of whatever exists or appears. ”

“ To view it more profoundly and accurately, is to observe, even in matter, constant changes of state, where the identity has continued entire, and changes as opposite, as those of the mind itself, when, at different periods, it presents itself in different aspects, as sad and cheerful, ignorant and wise, cruel and benevolent. ”

“ This defining is philosophy. Philosophy is the account which the human mind gives to itself of the constitution of the world. Two cardinal facts lie forever at the base: the one, and the two.—1. Unity, or Identity; and, 2, Variety. We unite all things, by perceiving the law which pervades them; by perceiving the superficial differences, and the profound resemblances. But every mental act,—this very perception of identity or oneness, recognizes the difference of things. Oneness and otherness. It is impossible to speak, or to think, without embracing both. ”

“ The whole of this doctrine leads us to a conclusion, which is of great importance in the present affair, viz., that all the nice and subtile questions concerning personal identity can never possibly be decided, and are to be regarded rather as grammatical than as philosophical difficulties. Identity depends on the relations of ideas; and these relations produce identity, by means of that easy transition they occasion. ”

“ In addition to this positive evidence of our identity, we have seen, that the strongest objections which we could imagine to be urged against it, are, as might have been expected, sophistical, in the false test of identity which they assume,—that the contrasts of momentary feeling, and even the more permanent alterations of general character, in the same individual, afford no valid argument against it ”

“ Because diversity of any kind seems, in these familiar cases, to be inconsistent with absolute identity, we draw hastily the universal conclusion, that it is inconsistent with absolute identity in any case. ”

“ If in all judgments there is affirmation of identity, or non-identity, and all our cognitions either begin or end in a judgment, it would seem that they all ought to be reduced to a simple perception of identity. The general formula of our cognitions will then be: A is A, or, a thing is itself. ”

“ Wherefore, the man, or that thing which is to be the knower, must have had individuality or personality, from other principles, antecedently to this knowledge, called consciousness: and, consequently, he will retain his identity, or continue the same man, or (which is equivalent) the same person, as long as he has those individuating principles.... ”

“ The inward sense attests with irresistible certainty the identity of the me. This unity, this identity, is as certain, as evident to the child who begins to feel pleasure or pain, and is sure that he is one and the same that experiences both impressions, as they are to the [Pg 186] philosopher who has spent long years in profoundly investigating the idea of the me and the unity of consciousness. ”

“ We now proceed to explain the nature of personal identity, which has become so great a question in philosophy, especially of late years in England where all the abstruser sciences are study'd with a peculiar ardour and application. ”

“ It is only of spiritual immaterial existence that identity, in its strict and complete sense, is properly predicable, since it is only this class of existences that retains, unimpaired, its simple oneness, sameness, continuity of essence.
Personal Identity.—When we speak of personal identity, we mean that of the spirit, the soul, the ego, in distinction from the corporeal material part. The evidence of personal identity is consciousness. ”

“ You know that that principle in you does not constitute your individuality. It constitutes your personality; but that in you which is undergoing change, and develops from a lower to a higher degree of knowledge, constitutes your individuality. This unchanging, ever-present, conscious identity is the very divine life within you, from which you derive all life. This outside identity, which thinks and wills, is no part of my immortal nature, separate from this divine principle within me. ”

“ There is, in sanest hours, a consciousness, a thought that rises, independent, lifted out from all else, calm, like the stars, shining, eternal. This is the thought of identity—yours for you, whoever you are, as mine for me. ”

“ Personal identity, therefore, is full disproof of the theory. For personal identity rests in a single abiding consciousness, in which all separate mental acts are known as its own acts, the materials for memory and comparison. The truth is, that all moral distinctions arise out of the conviction that each individual, in the center of his personality, is a soul, itself determining its rational choices and responsible for the conduct of life. ”

“ If you took two terms which had no more visibly in common than the fact that they exist or are thought, yet the comparison still has a result. You have stated the truth that existence or thought is an identity which somehow has within it these diversities, and that they somehow are connected in and qualify this unity. ”

“ As we have seen, besides, Identity is undoubtedly a negative,—not however an abstract empty Nought, but the negation of Being and its characteristics. Being so, Identity is at the same time self-relation, and, what is more, negative self-relation; in other words, it draws a distinction between it and itself. ”

“ By this means we make a difference betwixt the idea meant by the word object and that meant by itself without going the length of number, and at the same time without restraining ourselves to a strict and absolute unity.’ In other words, identity means the unity of a thing through a multiplicity of times ”

“ Resemblance is here the external guise of identity;—the identity which reason, the sense of truth, affirms, but which the imagination denies; the identity which allows an appearance of distinction to remain,—a mere phantasm, which says neither directly yes, nor directly no. ”

“ And essential to any method of analysis is the recognition of the individuality of the individual. Constitutional differences of a radical nature may be concealed beneath apparent identity of external form. ”

“ This functional identity seems really the only sort of identity in the thinker which the facts require us to suppose. Successive thinkers, numerically distinct, but all aware of the same past in the same way, form an adequate vehicle for all the experience of personal unity and sameness which we actually have. ”

“ It is this greater liveliness and force with which I can enter into my future feelings, that in a manner identifies them with my present being; and this notion of identity being once formed, the mind makes use of it to strengthen it’s habitual propensity, by giving to personal motives a reality and absolute truth which they can never have. ”

“ In order, therefore, that this principle may find its application to being or reality as subject to actual change—and this is the state in which de facto reality is presented to us as an immediate datum of experience—we must seize upon the changing reality and think of it in an indivisible instant apart from the change to which it is actually subject; only thus does the Principle of Identity apply to it—as being, not as becoming, not in fieri, but in facto esse. The Principle of Identity, which applies to all real being, whether possible or actual, tells us simply that “a thing is what it is”. ”

“ Nor let any one think, that the Questions, I have here proposed, about the Identity of Man, are bare, empty Speculations; which if they were, would be enough to shew, That there was in the Understandings of Men no innate Idea of Identity. ”

“ Will not the newly created man, by virtue of his identical material organization, possess the mind and character, the knowledge and feelings, the past, in a word, the personal identity of the other? I have made this extreme supposition in order that no doubt may be entertained as to the shape in which I hold the doctrine that for every fact of mind there is a corresponding fact of matter, and that, given the material fact, whether produced by repeated experiences in the life history of the individual, or inherited from parents, the corresponding mental fact will be the same. ”

“ The principle of identity is an abstract, incomplete truth, for it separates a thing from the variety of other things, and its relations to them. Everybody will see this to be true. Let us take the proposition: the earth is the earth. ”

“ And one should really think it self-evident, that consciousness of personal identity presupposes, and therefore cannot constitute, personal identity; any more than knowledge, in any other case, can constitute truth, which it presupposes. ”

“ Up to the present point, the spot on which we stand, the doctrine of personal identity holds good; hitherto the proud and exclusive pretensions of self ‘come, but no farther.’ The rest is air, is nothing, is a name, or but the common ground of reason and humanity. If I wish to pass beyond this point and look into my own future lot, or anticipate my future weal or woe before it has had an existence, I can do so by means of the same faculties by which I enter into and identify myself with the welfare, the being, and interests of others, but only by these. ”

“ The unity, the identity, the individuality, and the immateriality that appear in the psychic life are thus accounted for as phenomenal and temporal facts exclusively, and with no need of reference to any more simple or substantial agent than the present Thought or 'section' of the stream. ”

“ The existence of a being, or the possession, or exercise of any principle, passion or attribute, implies personality, or individual identity, which is the same thing. The mind cannot conceive of existence, passion, principle, or action, without conceiving of them inhering in actually existing Essence, which must assume in the mind the idea of personality. Therefore, personality is strictly, and properly applicable to the Divine Essence. But the doctrine of a plural personality is to be established at present. ”

“ Our consciousness of personal identity assures us of our essential simplicity: the owner of the various constituents of the self, as we have seen them, the hypothetical Arch-Ego whom we provisionally conceived as possible, is a real entity of whose existence self-consciousness makes us directly aware. ”

“ Nothing by which the world knows me, or by which it knows you, enters in to form our inmost identity. We have an identity which lies deeper than everything external; and it is this identity, which admits of no change, which says that we are the same, and will forever remain the same identical beings to all eternity. No change of position, no change of character, no destruction of reputation, no conversion of happiness into suffering, presents the least difficulty in the way of identification. ”

“ We are intuitively conscious of our own existence, and of that connexion in the train of our successive ideas, which we term our identity. We are conscious also of the existence of other minds; but not intuitively. ”

“ The idea of the identity of the individual among the more complex and perfect forms of existence in the two kingdoms of life may be dismissed, because the methods of propagation in the two are far from the same. ”