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Full Idea
During the period from boyhood to old age, man does not retain the same attributes, though he is called the same person.
Gist of Idea
We call a person the same throughout life, but all their attributes change
Source
Plato (The Symposium [c.384 BCE], 207d)
Book Ref
Plato: 'The Symposium', ed/tr. Hamilton,W [Penguin 1951], p.88
A Reaction
This precisely identifies the basic problem of personal identity over time. If this is the problem, DNA looks more and more significant for the answer, though it would be an awful mistake to think a pattern of DNA was a person.
| 180 | We call a person the same throughout life, but all their attributes change [Plato] |
| 181 | Only the gods stay unchanged; we replace our losses with similar acquisitions [Plato] |
| 12809 | Nothing about me is essential [Locke] |
| 24139 | A 'person' is just one possible abstraction from a bundle of qualities [Nietzsche] |
| 15803 | Bad theories of the self see it as abstract, or as a bundle, or as a process [Chisholm] |
| 21843 | People consist of many undetermined lines, some rigid, some supple, some 'lines of flight' [Deleuze] |