Category philosophy

Who Am I After This?

What exactly is a person? Is it a mind, a body, a memory, a pattern? Is it something solid—or something we keep reassembling each day without noticing? Philosophers have offered different answers. Some say a person is the continuity of experience over time. Some say it’s a single mental state, moment by moment. Some tie it to memory. Others root it in brain function—a network of cells doing what cells do. And some suggest there may be no unified self at all, just a shifting chorus of parts that take turns speaking as “I.” I used to read these theories with detached interest. But last week, I had an accident—and now, part of my brain is gone. Now, I’m not just thinking about them—I’m living inside them.

Modular Morality

We often think of moral contradiction as a flaw—someone says one thing, does another, lives two lives. But what if some of those contradictions aren’t just failures of integrity? What if they reflect an internal structure we’ve never properly articulated—one where a person can act consistently within one role, and in conflict with it in another? This isn’t an attempt to excuse hypocrisy. We can still favour those who strive for alignment and call out harm when it occurs. But maybe there’s something to learn by looking more closely at the way morality behaves inside us—how it divides, coheres, and reshapes itself across the different lives we live. Somewhere between judgment and justification, there might be a more useful way to think about what it means to be good.