Understanding identity. What is the best account of personal identity?

Essay from the year 2020 in the subject Philosophy - Theoretical (Realisation, Science, Logic, Language), grade: First Class Honours, London School of Economics, language: English, abstract: The question of personal identity can be spelled out as: 'What is a sufficient condition for Person X at time 0 to be numerically identical to Person Y at time 1?'. This essay will claim that the best account of personal identity consists of three parts; one pre-condition and two necessary conditions: 1. Identity as an equivalence relation (pre-condition), 2. Memory continuity (necessary condition), 3. Physical continuity (necessary condition) Generally, people either argue for a pure physical continuity account or a pure psychological continuity account. Both accounts are problematic by themselves for various reasons. This essay tries to synthesize both accounts into one and uses the term of embodied memories to describe this synthesis.