What makes who we are

Surely, we must be who we are because of the body that we have. Our body is there day in and day out, a constant. It is more than the container that holds who we are; all we need to do is prick our leg with a pin. Then we're in no doubt that our body is more than an object we own. To some extent our body truly is us. When we think what makes us who we are, the body is part of the answer, surely.

In the final analysis, no one-dimensional way of looking at ourselves truly encapsulates who we are. What makes us us is complex. The core of our personality is made up of a dynamic combination of things, always changing. These parts interact with the other parts of us to create the whole rich, complex person. The way our thoughts interact with our feelings, the way our feelings seem to be embedded in our bodies, and the way that our bodies seem to so often be the subject of our thoughts is complex.

It leads me to conclude that the only thing that makes sense is that we are an ongoing swirl of shifting parts; and yet, paradoxically, we remain the same person. Would your family say that you had died because most of your physical body was gone? None of that is needed for you to be you.

You are you, and your identical twin is most certainly not you. We keep changing major parts of the body, and you keep being you. Then he seals up your skulls and wakes you both up.

Now, are you still you? Meanwhile, your old body would not be you—it would be Bill Clinton. So what makes you you must be your brain. The body and brain of Bill Clinton would still run out and go freak out about this to your family. We seem to be homing in on something, but the best way to get to concrete answers is by testing these theories in hypothetical scenarios. He comes over to you—normal you with your normal brain and body—and asks you a series of questions. Who should I torture? Does that change your choice?

You: Um, no. Insane people still feel pain. Torture him. Choosing your body to be the one tortured in the first situation is an argument for the Data Theory—you believe that where your data goes, you go. Those that would torture a body with their own brain in it over torturing their own body believe in the Body Theory. The Teletransporter Thought Experiment.

One of these technologies is teleportation—the ability to transport yourself to distant places at the speed of light.

The chamber walls then scan your entire body, uploading the exact molecular makeup of your body—every atom that makes up every part of you and its precise location—and as it scans, it destroys, so every cell in your body is destroyed by the scanner as it goes. The whole process, from the time you hit the button in the Departure Chamber to when you walk out of the Arrival Chamber in London, takes five minutes—but to you it feels instantaneous.

Cool, right? In , this is common technology. Everyone you know travels by teleportation. The supervisor and the woman glance awkwardly at each other. In the first part of this session will give an overview of biological sex determination and the affects of hormones on brain development. Later we will discuss gender as a social construct, giving examples from different cultures.

In the first part we will discuss human genetic diversity and introduce the theory that modern humans originated in Africa. Later we will discuss the difference between race and ethnicity and how it affects our identities.

In the final session of the class we will discuss the concept of personality, as well as the biological and environmental factors that influence it. We will also discuss mental health as a spectrum, with examples from various mental health disorders. Her current research is in mammalian genomics. This course will be supported by our virtual learning environment VLE.

To gain access to the VLE you will need to provide a valid email address when registering for the course. No academic qualification is required, and most courses are suitable for students who are new to the subject. All teaching is in English unless a foreign-language course. If your first language is not English, you need to satisfy yourself that you have the required near-native command of the language to get the maximum benefit from studying with ICE.

The course fee includes tuition, tea, coffee and travel on excursions but not entrance fees to properties visited. VAT does not apply to course fees and there is no service charge gratuities to domestic staff are left to your discretion. You may cancel a course booking at any time. This work seemed like a direct rebuttal of the theory of tabula rasa: If the skills, habits, predilections, and unique variations of each human are dictated by breeding, then maybe nature, not nurture, defines identity.

This tension between the power of heredity and the influence of experience has informed discussions of identity since the 19th century. Sigmund Freud postulated that events occurring during infancy and childhood shaped both the conscious and unconscious lives of adults.

His work influenced psychology and psychiatry, disciplines that focused on analyzing and categorizing behavior and thought. Over the course of the past century, psychologists have come up with a series of taxonomies to describe personality, designing and executing a battery of tests to determine how different individuals might react to the same situation.

By examining motive, bias, and automatic reaction, researchers hope to establish a better understanding of how and why people are the way they are. Even though a tremendous amount of money and time has been devoted to unraveling the way our needs and desires interact with the environment to create personality, psychology is not a science of absolutes. Studies trumpet informative averages and likely outcomes, but predictions are not strict prophecy.

For example, a series of studies on children and teens has established that physical activity is linked to higher rates of self-esteem.

Meanwhile, advances in technology have allowed researchers to examine not only the wiring of the brain itself, and the chemicals and hormones that affect its function, but also the blueprint for these particularities, the strands of DNA housed in our every cell. In the last few decades, scientists have been able to create detailed maps of how genes contained in DNA affect human life. We now know that there are genes that have a hand in how cilantro tastes to you , how nice you are , how well you can control your temper , or whether you might be prone to depression.

Why and how do we dream?