1

UNIT 1 PERSONAL IDENTITY AND SELF

Contents
1.0 Objectives
1.1 Introduction
1.2 Counting the Uncountable
1.3 Some Issues connected with Personal Identity
1.4 Identity based on Consciousness
1.5 Anthropological Insights
1.6 Conclusion
1.7 Let us Sum up
1.8 Key Words
1.9 Further Readings and References

1.0 OBJECTIVES
• To explore some of the philosophical issues related to personal identity and self.
• To appreciate how self and personal identity are preserved in spite of our bodily changes.
1.1 INTRODUCTION
Before asking ourselves questions like “What is my identity?” “How is my self preserved?, we
shall begin with a story. This story comes from Plutarch (46-126 ACE), which is often used to
clarify the problem of identity and change. Theseus was a legendary king of Athens famous for
many exploits, and appearing in works by many authors and on countless vases. The ship
wherein Theseus and the youth of Athens returned from Crete had thirty oars and was preserved
by the Athenians down to the time of Demetrius Phalereus. They took away the old planks as
they decayed, putting in new and stronger timber in their place. This ship became a standing
example among the philosophers; for the question of things that change. Some thinkers hold the
view that the ship remained the same, while others contend that it was not the same. In the
renewal process of the ship, there comes a point at which none of the original components
remain. Is it then the same ship? Thomas Hobbes asks: If someone went around picking up the
discarded parts and constructed a (new) ship with them, which would be the better candidate for
being the original ship? This raises the question of whether an object, which has had all its
component parts replaced, remains fundamentally the same.
This takes us to the issues related to personal identity and self. How do we preserve our identity
through time and by gathering more experiences? Thereafter we proceed to reflect on some
anthropological issues like the renewal of the cells in the body and the notion of personality, as
the focus of our attention. Finally we indicate the relationship between the scientific notion of
“centre of gravity” and that of the self and show that the self (and reality itself) is in fact a
network of interrelating entities.
 2

1.2 COUNTING THE UNCOUNTABLE

Pythagorean philosophy was the prime source of inspiration for Plato and Aristotle; the most
influential philosophers in history. The school of Pythagoras (580-500 BCE) was every bit a
religion as it was a school of mathematics. (For example, here are some of the rules he enjoined
on his followers: To abstain from beans. Not to pick up what has fallen. Not to touch a white
cock. Not to stir the fire with iron. Do not look in a mirror beside a light. Vegetarianism was
strictly practiced probably because Pythagoras preached the transmigration of souls. The school
of Pythagoras represents the mystic tradition in the scientific.) The Pythagorean philosophy may
be understood better from this quote: “There are three kinds of men and three sorts of people that
attend the Olympic Games. The lowest class is made up of those who come to buy and sell, the
next above them are those who compete. Best of all, however, are those who come simply to
look on. The greatest purification of all is, therefore, disinterested science, and it is the man who
devotes himself to that, [sic.] the true philosopher, who has most effectually released himself
from the ‘wheel of birth.’(http://www.math.tamu.edu/~don.allen/history/pythag/pythag.html.)
Pythagoreans believed that all relations could be reduced to number relations. The assertion that
“all things are numbers” aptly sums up their philosophy. This generalization stemmed from
certain observations in music, mathematics, and astronomy. The Pythagoreans noticed that the
vibrating strings produce harmonious tones when the ratios of the lengths of the strings are
whole numbers and that these ratios could be extended to other instruments. They knew, as did
the Egyptians before them, that any triangle whose sides were in the ratio 3:4:5 was a right-
angled triangle. The so-called Pythagorean theorem, that the square of the hypotenuse of a right
triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides, may have been known in
Babylonia, where Pythagoras traveled in his youth. The Pythagoreans, however, are usually
credited with the first proof of this theorem. In astronomy, the Pythagoreans were well aware of
the periodic numerical relations of the heavenly bodies. The celestial spheres of the planets were
thought to produce a harmony called the music of the spheres. Pythagoreans believed that the
earth itself was in motion. Greek mathematicians, as well as the Pythagoreans, believed that
whole numbers and their ratios could account for geometrical properties.
The most eminent mathematician of the last century, Bertrand Russell, commended: “It is to this
gentleman that we owe pure mathematics. The contemplative ideal – since it led to pure
mathematics or contemplation – was the source of a useful activity. This increased its prestige
and gave it a success in theology, in ethics, and in philosophy.” (Bertrand Russell,
http://www.math.tamu.edu/~don.allen/history/pythag/ pythag.html.) Mathematics, so honored,
became the model for other sciences. Thought became superior to the senses; intuition became
superior to observation.
Though modern science will not approve of all that Pythagoras’ stood for, it is evident that
number played a very important role in the existence of reality as we know them. (Here it is
important that the atomic number and the basic constants of nature may be alluded as examples.)
In this unit , what we want to stress is the role of relationship and placement in the ordinary
counting with numbers. The zero, which is credited to Indians, is crucial at least in the counting
system. What is significant is that the value of a number is based not only on its numerical value
but on their positioning. Here zero constitutes an additional aspect of the number system and
contributes to its meaning. Thus the number system that we use in our routine life enables us to
 3

appreciate the fact that it is the relationship and the sequencing between the entities that makes
the system meaningful. Incidentally we may note that using finite numerals by humans have
devised a way of reaching the infinite. From the above observation it is evident that, though
number does matter, “pattern prevails and configuration counts” both in the numerical system
and in the larger life system. This leads to questions on relationship with things and persons as
well as to one’s own self: personal identity.

Check Your Progress I

Note: Use the space provided for your answer

1. Who claims that “all things are numbers”?

.............. .................... ............................... ............................. ..........................

.............. .................... ............................... ............................. ..........................

.............. .................... ............................... ............................. .......................... ...........................

2. How is number system related to relationship and sequencing?
.............. .................... ............................... ............................. .......................... ...........................

.............. .................... ............................... ............................. .......................... ...........................

.............. .................... ............................... ............................. .......................... ...........................

1.3 SOME ISSUES CONNECTED WITH PERSONAL IDENTITY
In philosophy, personal identity refers to the numerical identity of persons through time. In other
words, the conditions under which a person is said to be identical to himself or herself through
time are regarded collectively as one’s personal identity. Personal identity deals with questions
that arise about ourselves by virtue of our being people (or, as lawyers and philosophers like to
say, persons). Many of these questions are familiar ones that occur to everyone at some time:
What am I? When did I begin? What will happen to me when I die? Others are more abstruse.
Personal identity has been discussed since the origins of Western philosophy, and most major
figures have had something to say about it.
The question regarding personal identity has addressed the conditions under which a person at
one time is the same person at another time, known as personal continuity. This sort of analysis
of personal identity provides a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for the identity of the
person over time. In the modern philosophy of mind, this concept of personal identity is
sometimes referred to as the diachronic problem of personal identity. The synchronic problem is
grounded in the question of what features or traits characterize a given person at one time. Thus
 4

there is no single problem of personal identity, but rather a wide range of loosely connected
questions (Wikipedia).
Who am I? We often speak of one's “personal identity” as what makes one the person one is.
Your identity in this sense consists roughly of what makes you unique as an individual and
different from others. Or it is the way you see or define yourself, or the network of values and
convictions that structure your life. This individual identity is a property (or set of properties).
Presumably it is one you have only contingently—you might have had a different identity from
the one you in fact have—and one that you might have for a while and then lose: you could
acquire a new individual identity, or perhaps even get by without one (Stanford Encyclopedia).
Personhood
What is it to be a person? What is necessary, and what suffices, for something to count as a
person, as opposed to a non-person? What have people got that non-people haven't got? This
amounts more or less to asking for the definition of the word person. In psychology (which
historically is philosophically concerned with dualism), personal continuity, also called personal
persistence, is the uninterrupted connection concerning a particular person of his or her private
life and personality. Personal continuity is the union affecting the facets arising from personality
in order to avoid discontinuities from one moment of time to another time. Personal continuity is
an important part of identity; this is the process of ensuring that the quality of the mind are
consistent from moment to the next, generally regarded to comprise qualities such as self-
awareness, sentience, sapience, and the ability to perceive the relationship between oneself and
one's environment. Personal continuity is the property of a continuous and connected period of
time and is intimately concerned with a person's body or physical being.
Historically this question often arises out of the hope that we might continue to exist after we
die—Plato's Phaedo, is a famous example. Whether this could happen depends on whether
biological death necessarily brings one's existence to an end. Imagine that after your death there
really will be someone, in the next world or in this one, who resembles you in certain ways. How
would that being have to relate to you as you are now in order to be you, rather than someone
else? What would the Higher Powers have to do to keep you in existence after your death? Or is
there anything they could do? The answer to these questions depends on the answer to the
Persistence Question.
What am I?
What sort of things, metaphysically speaking, are you and I and other human people? What is
our basic metaphysical nature? For instance, what are we made of? Are we made up entirely of
matter, just as stones are, or partly or wholly of something else? If we are made of matter, what
matter is it? (Just the matter that makes up our bodies, or might we be larger or smaller than our
bodies?) Where, in other words, do our spatial boundaries lie? More fundamentally, what fixes
those boundaries? Are we substances—metaphysically independent beings—or is each of us a
state or an aspect of something else, or perhaps some sort of process or event?
How could I have been?
How different could I have been from the way I actually am? Which of my properties do I have
essentially, and which only accidentally or contingently? Could I, for instance, have had different
parents? Frank Sinatra and Doris Day might have had children together. Could I have been one
of them? Or could they only have had children other than me? Could I have died in the womb
 5

before ever becoming conscious? Are there possible worlds just like the actual one except for
who is who—where people have “changed places” so that what is in fact your career is mine and
vice versa? Whether these are best described as questions about personal identity is debatable.
1.4 IDENTITY BASED ON CONSCIOUSNESS
John Locke considered personal identity (or the self) to be founded on consciousness and not on
the substance of either the soul or the body. The chapter "On Identity and Diversity" in An Essay
Concerning Human Understanding (1689) has been said to be one of the first modern
conceptualization of consciousness as the repeated self-identification of oneself. Through this
identification, moral responsibility could be attributed to the subject and punishment and guilt
could be justified, as critics such as Nietzsche would point out (Self-awareness 2010).
According to Locke, personal identity (the self) depends on consciousness, not on the particular
substance nor on the soul. We are the same person to the extent that we are conscious of our past
and future thoughts and actions in the same way as we are conscious of our present thoughts and
actions. If consciousness is this "thought" which "that goes along with the substance ... which
makes the same person", then personal identity is only founded on the repeated act or experience
of consciousness: "This may show us wherein personal identity consists: not in the identity of
substance, but... in the identity of consciousness". For example, one may claim to be a
reincarnation of Plato, therefore having the same soul substance. However, one would be the
same person as Plato only if one had the same consciousness of Plato's thoughts and actions that
he himself did (in his previous birth). Therefore, self-identity is not based on the soul. On the
other hand, one soul may have various personalities (Self-awareness 2010).
Neither is self-identity founded on the body substance, argues Locke, as the body may change
while the person remains the same. Even the identity of animals is not founded on their body:
"animal identity is preserved in identity of life, and not of substance", as the body of the animal
grows and changes during its life. On the other hand, identity of humans is based on their
consciousness. Take for example a prince's mind which enters the body of a cobbler: to all
exterior eyes, the cobbler would remain a cobbler. But to the prince himself, the cobbler would
be himself, as he would be conscious of the prince's thoughts and acts, and not those of the
cobbler. A prince's consciousness in a cobbler's body: thus the cobbler is, in fact, a prince.
But this interesting border-case leads to this problematic thought that since personal identity is
based on consciousness, and that only oneself can be aware of his consciousness, exterior human
judges may never know if they really are judging - and punishing - the same person, or simply
the same body. In other words, Locke argues that you may be judged only for the acts of your
body, as this is what is apparent to all but God; however, you are in truth only responsible for the
acts for which you are conscious. This forms the basis of the insanity defense: one cannot be held
accountable for acts from which one was unconscious - and therefore leads to interesting
philosophical issues:
"Personal identity consists [not in the identity of substance] but in the identity of consciousness,
wherein if Socrates and the present mayor of Queenborough agree, they are the same person: if
the same Socrates waking and sleeping do not partake of the same consciousness, Socrates
waking and sleeping is not the same person. And to punish Socrates waking for what sleeping
Socrates thought, and waking Socrates was never conscious of, would be no more right, than to
punish one twin for what his brother-twin did, whereof he knew nothing, because their outsides
were so like, that they could not be distinguished; for such twins have been seen (Locke 1956)."
 6

Therefore, Locke's conception of personal identity is in fact founded on the "same continued
consciousness", which is also distinct from the soul since the soul may have no consciousness of
itself. The problem of personal identity is at the center of discussions about life after death, and
immortality (See next Unit). In order to exist after death, there has to be a person after death who
is the same person as the person who died.
Check Your Progress II
Note: Use the space provided for your answer

1. What are some of the issues connected to personal identity?

.............. .................... ............................... ............................. ..........................

.............. .................... ............................... ............................. .......................... ...........................

.............. .................... ............................... ............................. .......................... ...........................

2. Where does John Locke base identity?
.............. .................... ............................... ............................. .......................... ...........................

.............. .................... ............................... ............................. .......................... ...........................

.............. .................... ............................... ............................. .......................... ...........................

1.5 ANTROPOLOGICAL INSIGHTS

After having studied some of the scientific insights that indicate the relationality of nature, we
take up some specific human issues: that of the body and the self. Here too we attempt to
indicate the focusing aspect of human being, that open ourselves to a interlacing and relational
dimension of the human being.
Our Skin Sheds Itself…
Recently, The New York Times published an article which posited that whatever be one’s age,
the body is many years younger. In fact, even the middle aged may be just 10 years old or less,
as far as the body cells are concerned. This arises from the fact that most of the body’s tissues
are under constant renewal and has been underlined by a novel method of estimating the age of
human cells. Its inventor, a Swedish scientist, Jonas Frisen, believes that the average age of all
the cells in an adult’s body may turn out to be as young as 7 to 10 years. But Dr. Frisen, a stem
cell biologist at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, has also discovered a fact that explains
why people behave their birth age, not the physical age of their cells: a few of the body’s cell
types endure from birth to death without renewal, and this special minority includes some or all
of the cells of the cerebral cortex.
 7

In the scientific circles, it was a dispute over whether the cortex ever makes any new cells that
got Dr. Frisen looking for a new way of figuring out how old human cells really are. Existing
techniques depend on tagging DNA with chemicals but are far from perfect. Wondering if some
natural tag might already be in place, Dr. Frisen recalled that the nuclear weapons tested above
ground until 1963 had injected a pulse of radioactive carbon 14 into the atmosphere. Breathed in
by plants worldwide and eaten by animals and people, the carbon 14 gets incorporated into the
DNA of cells each time the cell divides and the DNA is duplicated.
Most molecules in a cell are constantly being replaced but the DNA is not. All carbon 14 in a
cell’s DNA is acquired on the cell’s birth date, the day its parent cell divided. Hence the extent of
carbon 14 enrichment could be used to figure out the cell’s age, Dr. Frisen surmised. In practice,
the method has to be used on tissues, not individual cells, because not enough carbon 14 gets into
any single cell to signal its age. Dr. Frisen then worked out a scale for converting carbon 14
enrichment into calendar dates by measuring the carbon 14 incorporated into individual tree
rings in Swedish pine trees.
Having validated the method with various tests, he and his colleagues have the results of their
first tests with a few body tissues. Cells from the muscles of the ribs, taken from people in their
late 30’s, have an average age of 15.1 years, they say. The epithelial cells that line the surface of
the gut have a rough life and are known by other methods to last only five days. Ignoring these
surface cells, the average age of those in the main body of the gut is 15.9 years, Dr. Frisen found.
Similarly, the human body constantly creates, from materials consumed, new component parts
and cells as old cells die. The average age of cells in an adult body may be less than 10 years.
(Nicholas Wade, “Your Body is Younger than you Think“ http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/02/
)
This team then turned to the brain, the renewal of whose cells has been a matter of much
contention. The prevailing belief, by and large, is that the brain does not generate new neurons,
once its structure is complete, except in two specific regions, the olfactory bulb that mediates the
sense of smell, and the hippocampus, where initial memories of faces and places are laid down.
This consensus view was challenged a few years ago by Elizabeth Gould of Princeton, who
reported finding new neurons in the cerebral cortex, along with the elegant idea that each day’s
memories might be recorded in the neurons generated that day.
Dr. Frisen’s method enables all regions of the brain to be dated to see if any new neurons are
generated. So far he has tested only cells from the visual cortex. He finds these are exactly of the
same age as the individual, showing that new neurons are not generated after birth in this region
of the cerebral cortex, or at least not in significant numbers. Cells of the cerebellum are slightly
younger than those of the cortex, which fits with the idea that the cerebellum continues
developing after birth. Another contentious issue is whether the heart generates new muscle cells
after birth. The conventional view that it does not have recently been challenged by Dr. Piero
Anversa of the New York Medical College in Valhalla. Dr. Frisen has found the heart as a whole
is generating new cells, but he has not yet measured the turnover rate of the heart’s muscle cells.
Thus the anthropological findings regarding our own bodies are interesting. On the average our
body cells last about ten years. At the same time there are specific cells that last from the
beginning of our life. This throws light on how dependent our bodies are on the changing cells.
The interesting question that comes out of this investigation is: if our cells keep on changing,
 8

what gives us a permanent self or identity? Are our bodies like the ship of Theseus, which is
given the same identity only by external observers?

The Centre, that Is the Self

What is a self? I will try to answer this question by developing an analogy with something much
simpler, something which is nowhere near as puzzling as a self, but has some properties in
common with selves. This leads us to investigate the phenomenon of self or personhood, using
another scientific notion of “centre of gravity.” In physics, the centre of gravity is an imaginary
point in a body of matter where, for convenience in certain calculations, the total weight of the
body may be thought to be concentrated. The concept is sometimes useful in designing static
structures (e.g., buildings and bridges) or in predicting the behaviour of a moving body when it is
acted on by gravity. (http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9037797/centre-of-gravity) The
centre of gravity, a well-behaved Newtonian concept is not an atom or a subatomic particle or
any other physical item in the world. It has no mass; it has no colour; it has no physical
properties at all, except for spatio-temporal location. It is a fine example of what Hans
Reichenbach would call an abstractum. It is a purely abstract object. It is a theorist’s fiction. It is
not one of the real things in the universe in addition to the atoms. But it is a fiction that has a
neatly defined, well delineated and well behaved role within physics.
This theoretical abstractum is a robust and familiar idea. Consider a chair. Like all other
physical objects, it has a centre of gravity. If you start tipping it, you can tell more or less
accurately whether it would start to fall over or fall back in place if you let go of it. We’re all
quite good at making predictions involving centers of gravity and finding explanations about
when and why things fall over. Place a book on the chair. It, too, has a centre of gravity. If you
start to push it over the edge, we know that at some point it will fall. It will fall when its centre of
gravity is no longer directly over a point of its supporting base (the chair seat). The key terms in
it are all interdefinable. And yet it can also figure in explanations that appear to be causal
explanations of some sort. We ask “Why doesn’t that lamp tip over?” We reply “Because its
centre of gravity is so low.” Is this a causal explanation? It can compete with explanations that
are clearly causal, such as: “Because it’s nailed to the table,” or “Because it’s supported by
wires.”
We can manipulate centers of gravity. For instance, I change the centre of gravity of a water
pitcher easily, by pouring some of the water out. So, although a centre of gravity is a purely
abstract object, it has a spatio-temporal character, which I can affect by my actions. It has a
history, but its history can include some rather strange episodes. Although it moves around in
space and time, its motion can be discontinuous. For instance, if I were to take a piece of bubble
gum and suddenly stick it on the pitcher’s handle, that would shift the pitcher’s centre of gravity
from point A to point B. But the centre of gravity would not have to move through all the
intervening positions. As an abstractum, it is not bound by all the constraints of physical travel.
Consider the centre of gravity of a slightly more complicated object. Suppose we wanted to keep
track of the career of the centre of gravity of some complex machine with lots of turning gears
and camshafts and reciprocating rods – the engine of a steam-powered unicycle, perhaps. And
suppose our theory of the machine’s operation permitted us to plot the complicated trajectory of
the centre of gravity precisely. And suppose that we discovered that in this particular machine
the trajectory of the centre of gravity was precisely the same as the trajectory of a particular iron
 9

atom in the crankshaft. Even if this were discovered, we would be wrong even to entertain the
hypothesis that the machine’s centre of gravity was (identical with) that of the iron atom. That
would be a “category mistake”. A centre of gravity is just an abstractum. It’s just a fictional
object. But when I say it’s a fictional object, I do not mean to disparage it; it’s a wonderful
fictional object, and it has a perfectly legitimate place within serious, sober physical science.
A self is also an abstract object, a theorist’s fiction. The theory of the self may be regarded as
part of psychology, phenomenology or hermeneutics, or soul-sciences (Geisteswissenschaften).
The physicist does an interpretation of the chair and its behaviour, and comes up with the
theoretical abstraction of a centre of gravity, which is then very useful in characterizing the
behaviour of the chair in the future, under a wide variety of conditions. The hermeneuticist or
phenomenologist or anthropologist sees some rather more complicated things moving about in
the world – human beings and animals –and is faced with a similar problem of interpretation. It
turns out to be theoretically perspicuous to organize the interpretation around a central
abstraction: each person has a self (in addition to a centre of gravity). In fact we have to posit
selves for ourselves as well. The theoretical problem of self-interpretation is at least as difficult
and important as the problem of other-interpretation.
(http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/papers/selfctr.htm.)
We propose that we take this analogy seriously. “Where is the self?” A materialist philosopher
or neuroscientist might ask. It is a “category mistake” to start looking around for the self in the
brain. Unlike centres of gravity, whose sole property is their spatio-temporal position, selves
have a spatio-temporal position that is only grossly defined. Roughly speaking, in the normal
case if there are three human beings sitting on a park bench, there are three selves there, all in a
row and roughly equidistant from the fountain they face. Brain research may permit us to make
some more fine-grained localizations, but the capacity to achieve some fine-grained localization
does not give anyone grounds for supposing that the process of localization can continue
indefinitely and that the day will finally come when we can say, “That cell there, right in the
middle of hippocampus (or wherever) – that’s the self.”
The chief fictional character at the centre of that autobiography is one’s narrative self. And if we
still want to know what the self really is, we are making a “category mistake”. After all, when a
human being’s behavioural control system becomes seriously impaired, it can turn out that the
best hermeneutical story we can tell about that individual says that there is more than one
character “inhabiting” that body. This is quite possible. All that is required is that the story
doesn’t cohere around one self, one imaginary point, but coheres around two different (even
conflicting) imaginary points.
We sometimes encounter psychological disorders, or surgically created disunities, where the
only way to interpret or make sense of them is to posit in effect two centers of gravity, two
selves. One isn’t creating or discovering a little bit of “ghost in the machine” stuff in doing that.
One is merely creating another abstraction. It is an abstraction one uses as part of a theatrical
apparatus to understand, predict, and make sense of, the behaviour of some very complicated
things. The fact that these abstract selves seem so robust and real is not surprising. They are
much more complicated theoretical entities than a centre of gravity. And remember that even a
centre of gravity has a fairly robust presence, once we start playing around with it. But no one
has ever seen or ever will see a centre of gravity. As David Hume noted, no one has ever seen a
self, either. “For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble
on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or
 10

pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe
anything but the perception.... If anyone, upon serious and unprejudiced reflection, thinks he has
a different notion of himself, I must confess I can reason no longer with him. All I can allow him
is, that he may be right as well as I, and that we are essentially different in this particular. He
may, perhaps, perceive something simple and continued, which he calls himself; though I am
certain there is no such principle in me. (Treatise on Human Nature, I, IV, sec. 6.) Though the
self is not empirically perceivable, we are aware of it and we are to some extent our own selves.
Thus the self is an indicator of the relationship that involves our body and goes beyond it.
Further, it is insightful to see the relationship between the self and one’s body. Obviously,
without the material body, there is no centre of gravity and so without the physical body, there is
no self. And the self may be visualized also as the “focusing centre” that deals with the
interrelationship between various physical parts of the body. Since it is not itself physical, it can
balance the web of relationship originating from various parts of the body. Thus the self may be
seen as the best example of the relationality of reality.

1.6 CONCLUSION

Starting with Pythagoras, we saw the importance of numbers (monads) and then we took up
some of the philosophical issues related to personal identity. Then we discussed two basic
anthropological domains: renewing of our physical body approximately every ten years and the
relationship of centre of gravity to the self. In all these undertakings, we have tried to illustrate
that relationality is intrinsic to reality. The whole of the cosmos is interconnected, just like the
human body, which through networking and interconnection form the person or self that we are.

Therefore, monadic understanding of ourselves as entities may be practical at times, but is

definitely inadequate to cope with the complexities of contemporary times. We are the ever
widening horizon of our consciousness, which includes definitely our physical entity and
incorporates the intellectual, emotional and spiritual dimensions of being alive. In this sense we
are not mere individuals, but patterns or relationships. We could very well describe ourselves as
the nodes of the network or the focus of interactions.

From a religious point of view, it is easy to see that when Christians affirm God as love, they
proclaim the essential relational nature of God. In the same sense, the doctrine of creation is
essentially affirming an intrinsic relationship of dependence between the Creator and creation. In
this sense without belittling the monadic dimension of reality, contemporary science rediscovers
the love aspect of reality, which vibes very well with the deepest religious insights. We are truly
bond to one another and to the Ultimate through the relationality of love. Humans are thus not
individual entities but horizons that merge and fuse with similar horizons. Such an enhancing
vision throws some light on our understanding of the self and personal identity. That is why The
Buddha attacked all attempts to conceive of a fixed self, while stating that holding the view "I
have no self" is also mistaken. This is an example of the middle way charted by the Buddha.
 11

1.7 LET US SUM UP

In this unit we have elaborately dealt on personal identity and finally related the centre of gravity
from physics to personal self in philosophy.

Check Your Progress III

Note: Use the space provided for your answer
1. What is “centre of gravity”?
.............. .................... ............................... ............................. .......................... ...........................

.............. .................... ............................... ............................. .......................... ...........................

.............. .................... ............................... ............................. .......................... ...........................

2. Give some differences between ‘self’ and ‘centre of gravity’?
.............. .................... ............................... ............................. .......................... ...........................

.............. .................... ............................... ............................. .......................... ...........................

.............. .................... ............................... ............................. .......................... ...........................

1.8 KEY WORDS
Centre of gravity: It is an imaginary point in a body of matter where, for convenience in certain
calculations, the total weight of the body may be thought to be concentrated.

Geisteswissenschaft: (More frequently used in plural form Geisteswissenschaften). It is a

traditional division of faculty in German Universities that would include subjects such
as Philosophy, Theology, and Jurisprudence. Most of its subject matter would come
under the much larger Humanities faculty in the typical English speaking University.

1.9 FURTHER READINGS AND REFERENCES

Desbruslais, Cyril. The Philosophy of Human Person, Edited by Kuruvilla Pandikattu. Pune:
Jnana-Deepa Vidyapeeth, 1997.
Locke, John. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding A Gateway Edition,. Chicago,:
Gateway Editions; distributed by H. Regnery Co., 1956.
Pandikattu, Kuruvilla. The Bliss of Being Human: Science and Religion for Self-Realisation.
Pune: Jnanam Publishers, 2004.
 12

Pandikattu, Kuruvilla. The Human Search: Issues in Philosophical Anthropology. New Delhi:
Serials Publications, 2011.
“Self-awareness,” Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-awareness, accessed 12 June
2010
Wade, Nicholas. “Your Body Is Younger Than You Think” The New York Times August 2,
2005.
Wright, John P. Hume's 'a Treatise of Human Nature' : An Introduction Cambridge Introductions
to Key Philosophical Texts. Cambridge, UK ; New York: Cambridge University Press,
2009.