Parfit believes there is no real way to answer what personal identity is. I do believe to an extent there is some truth to his belief. The very idea of what it means to be a person and have an identity are the same. Identity is what differentiates us from other human beings and animals as well. Then to say we have a personal identity is saying you have these private, differences about what makes you. Parfit claims how we project emotions could play into the difficulty of explaining personal identity. I do support this claim by the reason of how easy it is for people to project what they’re truly feeling. It’s mostly a defense mechanism so they can forget just for a moment how terrible their situation can be or already is. The concept of me now and later is the same. People tend to forget the true parameters of time, it’s linear and set.
The notion that our identity is not right or true is simply a fallacy. Who one is now and was and will be are the results of life choices. Parfit mentions if we question personal identity but then don’t believe in the answers it loses value. He makes a correlation between the division of our brain’s hemispheres. By doing so, he brings light to the fact that if we’re able to consciously split our mind into two just like blinking then we have complete control. Overall, I do support Parfit’s claim about how personal identity can be defined to a certain degree, but it has to be a choice. One common idea that was consistent in his essay was the question aspect and I do think how we answer can tell everything there needs to be known about a person.
