L'identità personale. Un groviglio di contingenze?

[Autom. eng. transl.] To construct an adequate philosophical anthropology it is necessary to use reliable, correct, verified descriptions of the human. Neither introspective data nor experience data to which the analytic philosophy of common sense and phenomenology have resorted. In contemporary culture we have at our disposal the collection of scientific data that integrate, broaden and correct our self-perceptions. In particular, neuroscience, psychoanalysis, and systemic thought give us a picture of the human being very different from the ordinary one: man has a stable organization that binds the material and manifest parts; it is an integrated system in which the body, emotions and thought interact with each other and contribute to maintaining unity and identity; knowledge is a free, selective, discriminatory activity; the brain is a plastic organ, which changes with experiences and choices. Philosophical anthropology stands at a meta-level with respect to scientific disciplines, but if it wants to take these results into account while maintaining a link with the empirical, it will be inclined to reject dualistic, functionalistic, reductionist theses. On the other hand, a highly unitary anthropology is compatible with contemporary scientific theories, for example that summarized by Aristotle in De anima, for which the human being owes his identity to an immaterial principle (or form) and his possibility of changing to the different activities that derive from this principle. It remains to be investigated whether this principle can be immortal and eternal, as Aristotle suggests and Thomas concludes.