Meanings
- uncountablehuman sciencesThe criteria for the persistence of persons over time (i.e. what makes one the same person as one was yesterday, or ten years ago), and the criteria for the individuation of persons from others.
It was largely in order to defend the justice of divine rewards and punishments in the face of his own relative agnosticism about substantial souls that Locke offered his reductive empiricist analysis of personal identity in terms of consciousness and memory.
2002, Don Garrett, Cognition and Commitment in Hume's Philosophy, page 163
Synonyms & antonyms
nounthe distinct personality of an individual regarded as a persisting entity
Synonym sets from Open English WordNet, CC BY 4.0.
Cite this entry
personal identity. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/personal%20identity
“personal identity.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/personal%20identity. Accessed November 4, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “personal identity,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/personal%20identity.
Source: personal identity on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.