The Psychological Approach Of Personal Identity And It s...

However, other theories come into play and reject the psychological approach to explaining personal identity and it’s persistence over time; claims that continuity of the brain and memory are not enough to explain and confirm personal identity are made. These theories include the biological approach, the dualist theory, and the materialist approach from Shoemaker, which involves the memory theory. Through the review of these theories respectively, a clearer understanding of personal identity can be developed and argued for. Following this, we can begin to see how cases of multiples personalities or identities can be argued to exist as well. The biological approach consists of two main claims. The first claim being that human people†¦show more content†¦From this then, it follows that the animal that survived, despite lacking the psychological properties considered necessary in the psychological approach, is the same or has the same identity. Olson (1997) takes th is argument one step further claiming that while in the vegetative state the animal cannot be considered to even be a person. The animal does not possess the components necessary to distinguish itself as not a non-human organism; these components included psychological features such as rationality and the capacity for self-consciousness. So, if this is the case then this viewpoint can also argue that identity can exist and persist through time without being a person. Moreover, the transplant of the cerebrum of an animal is also enacted to illustrate that identity should not be dependent upon the psychological concept of continuity. While this same example, in the case of the psychological approach, would argue that transplanting the cerebrum of a person into the body of another person will allow the identity of the initial individual to now be the identity of the body which the brain, containing memories and other sufficient information for psychological relation and continuity to be conserved, has been transplanted into. In the biological approach, this example shows only what it is at surface value, which is the transplant of the cerebrum that is just like a liver, kidney, or any other organ