You cannot be reduced to a body, a mind or a particular social role. An emerging theory of selfhood gets this complexity
Kathleen Wallace at aeon website
My point here is well known.Who am I? We all ask ourselves this question, and many like it. Is my identity determined by my DNA or am I product of how I’m raised? Can I change, and if so, how much? Is my identity just one thing, or can I have more than one?
We all ask these questions of ourselves as individuals. Individuals who have lived different lives in various places around the globe, born and raised at different times, indoctrinated as children in different ways, and having accumulated different experiences precipitating, at times, very different understandings of the world around us.
So, given this what are philosophers able to establish about human identity that might be thought of as applicable to all of us?
Thus...
But here I muddy the waters all the more by making a distinction between the either/or world Self and the is/ought world "self". The essential biological, demographic, empirical, circumstantial Self vs. the existential "self" espousing widely distinctive moral and political and spiritual value judgments regarding human interactions that come into conflict.Since its beginning, philosophy has grappled with these questions, which are important to how we make choices and how we interact with the world around us.
Thus, here, Socrates and governments are no less confronted with this distinction. It's one thing to correctly understand yourself in regard to your "biological, demographic, empirical, circumstantial" reality, and another thing altogether to understand yourself in regard to the many, many "conflicting goods" that divide us in any given community.Socrates thought that self-understanding was essential to knowing how to live, and how to live well with oneself and with others. Self-determination depends on self-knowledge, on knowledge of others and of the world around you. Even forms of government are grounded in how we understand ourselves and human nature. So the question ‘Who am I?’ has far-reaching implications.
Right?
https://ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=176529