Abstract

This article examines the problems concerning personal identity. It identifies two issues that are central to the question of personal identity: one concerns causality and the other concerns the notion of first person. It discusses the difficulty in determining the relation between personal identity and the first person and attempts to identify what it is about the first person that contributes so much to our puzzlement about the identity of the self, over and above the problems raised by the causal complexity of persons. It outlines the connection between causality and the identities of concrete objects generally, and how specifically it applies to the case of persons.