Dennett Scattered Individual View

A major strength of the ‘scattered individual view’ is that it is a blatant combination of both the brain and the body views of personal identity. In other words, its strength is inherent in the fact that it is a combination of two seemingly polar physical continuity theories of personal identity. This marriage hence allows it to provide a more progressive answer to the persistence question in the case where both the brain and body views individually fail to construct a coherent appeal to personal identity. The strength of this view is better illuminated in Dennett’s essay (Dennett, D. C. 1981). Dennett’s essay in essence, remonstrates that there is no candid answer to the question of ‘Where am I’ as it is appears that neither his brain nor his body can be dissociated from ‘himself’ . This hence suggests that perhaps the solution to the question of personal identity lies somewhere between the body and the brain views – A conclusion of which can be better accommodated for by the scattered individual view rather than by the aforementioned
For the scattered individual view intimates that: “If someone retains the same brain and body, although scattered, then they are the same person at t1 and t2.” However, Dennett feels he survives, despite his being presently composed of a computer-brain and a foreign body, simply because he retains all of his character traits, beliefs and memories (Dennett, D. C. 1981, pp. 319-323). Thus is the weakness of the scattered individual approach – It claims the numerical termination of a person, although it appears intuitively plausible for them to persist despite the destruction of their mental and physical states. This scenario thereupon proposes that the criterion for personal identity is instead some sort of psychological