The Ego Trick (baggini, Julian) / quote 118 of 254
Parfit: psychological connectedness and continuity
What makes for a single person over time is therefore, in the formulation of contemporary philosopher Derek Parfit, psychological connectedness and continuity. That is why a person remains the same person, even when their bodies radically change. That is why we doubt whether the person we once knew still exists when the continuity has been severely disrupted by disease or brain trauma. That is why memory seems intuitively to be so important to personal identity, but is not enough to fix it, because it is the primary but not only source of psychological connectedness and continuity.