 We begin by describing the different characteristics of an individual’s “identity”. One sense of this term is that of numerical identity over time: what makes some person at time t1 the same person as the person at time t2? (see SEP entry on  identity over time).  This is, in the first instance, a metaphysical question and not our interest here. A different sense of “identity” refers to those characteristics that make one the particular person one is, as judged both by oneself and by others. This includes narrative, biographical, and practical identities. It is less about criteria for sameness over time and more about the constitutive or defining features of one’s self- (or social) conception. This is the sense of “identity” we will be concerned with.