Abstract

As the humanity was entering modern times, the notion of personal identity came into the limelight among many philosophers, giving rise to a range of related theories and concepts. Of them, the skepticism about personal identity advanced by David Hume is still sending us an important message. Dealing with the notion of personal identity, he introduced the three relations of resemblance, contiguity, and causation, but renounced them as having any objective basis from which to develop them into viable principles for explaining our notions of personal identity. However, in dealing with the problem of personal identity, consistency of standards is more important than their objectivity, and the difficulties facing the humanity providing accurate answers to compelling questions such as those about the self and death are basically ascribable to our failure to provide consistent standards. Applying a consistent standard, it becomes clear that non-identity among others and personal identity are incompatible, and this points to the need for a shift of perspective in ethics. This paper concludes that the relations among humans and many different points in time within a self are fundamentally the same, and going one step further, intends to set up a new framework of ethics including a concept of the universal effect of existence.