What Makes You You

Core Idea

You are you -- but what exactly makes you "you"? Is it your body? Your memories? Your personality? If you changed your name, would you still be you? If you forgot everything, would you still be you? These are questions about personal identity, and they are some of the deepest puzzles in philosophy. Thinking about what makes you who you are helps you understand yourself and what you value most about being a person.

How It's Best Learned

Have students make a list of things that make them "them" (name, memories, body, personality traits, relationships, interests). Then ask: if we removed one of these, would you still be you? Remove them one by one and discuss which ones feel most essential. Use stories about characters who change dramatically and ask whether they are "still the same person."

Common Misconceptions

• That your identity is just your name or what you look like -- identity goes much deeper than surface characteristics.
• That you are the same person you were when you were a baby -- you have changed enormously, which raises interesting questions about what stays the same.
• That there is one simple answer to "what makes you you" -- philosophers have been debating this for centuries with no single agreed-upon answer.

Explainer

Here is a question that might seem easy at first but gets harder the more you think about it: what makes you you? You might point to your body, but your body changes constantly -- the cells in your body are replaced over time, and you look very different from when you were a baby. You might say it is your name, but if you changed your name, you would still feel like yourself. So what is it?

Many philosophers think the answer has something to do with memory and consciousness -- the stream of experiences, thoughts, and feelings that flows through your mind. You remember yesterday, and yesterday you remembered the day before that, and so on, forming a chain that connects your present self to your past self. This chain of memories gives you the feeling of being one continuous person over time.

But memories are tricky too. You probably cannot remember anything from when you were one year old. Does that mean you were a different person back then? And what about the fact that memories can be fuzzy or even wrong? If you "remember" something that did not actually happen, does that change who you are? These questions do not have easy answers, and that is exactly what makes them so fascinating.

Here is what might be the deepest part of this puzzle: you are constantly changing, and yet you feel like the same person. Your interests change, your opinions change, your body changes, your friendships change. The "you" of five years ago was different in many ways from the "you" of today. And the "you" of five years from now will be different again. Yet through all that change, something holds it together -- something that feels like "you." Figuring out what that something is -- that is one of philosophy's greatest adventures. The fact that you can even ask the question "what makes me me?" is itself part of what makes you remarkable.