Jessica asked:

"A person has a body."

"A person is a body."

Which of these statements more accurately expresses the truth about personal identity?

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To me, they are both misleading half truths. "A person has a body" implies that the person is separate
from the body, and stands in the relationships of owner to possession. "A person is a body" contains
the implied phrase "nothing more than" between 'is' and 'a'. Neither implication is warranted. The first
encapsulates a dualist answer to the mind-body problem, while the second conveys a materialist
answer.

I follow neither view. Rather, I see a person as a mind-body, or (as Peter Strawson puts it) an
individual. This view, also advanced by Spinoza, is called a double-aspect theory. Minds and bodies
are merely different ways of looking at persons, which are in themselves one multi-aspectual sort of
thing.

Tim Sprod