What is a personality?

Answer 1

This question can only be answered in context: legal, spiritual, biological and perhaps others. Legally - corporations are persons because you can sue them. Viability is the general legal standard for human persons because it is the only one that can be factually proven. Spiritually or in a religious context -ensoulment is the critical issue but that can't be proven so it has no legal application. Biologically - an argument can be made for biological personhood at conception, but a logical disconnect is the fact that so many fertilzed eggs are spontaneously aborted. Physicians define the death of a person related to the end of brain activity, so I believe the best argument for the beginning of the life of a person is the beginning of brain activity. As concerns the issue of abortion - For practical reasons, any government trying to legislate on this issue must create a standard that can be objectively applied, religious and spiritual criteria are not capable of physical proof by definition. Under the 14th amendment to the U.S. Constitution all persons are entitled to equal protection under the law. This means that one class of persons can not be singled out and treated differently from another. No abortion law without objective standards can stand constitutional scrutiny unless there is an objective, physically provable standard. Most dictionaries are vague on this... which one would think might be easy to define. They usually revolve around "an individual human being". But, that is being seen as insufficient by many people in the anti-abortion debate. They assert that an unborn child is also a person. Their opponents say that an unborn child is not an individual.... that they are a part of the mother. There are shades of opinion which define the 'person'-hood of the unborn at different points on the continuum from the moment of conception right up to the moment of birth.

Answer 2

A personality is the description for the combination of characteristics or qualities that form an individual's distinctive character.

For example, someone's personality may be described as funny, caring, trustworthy, etc.

Answer 3

A personality is a combination of qualities and characteristics that make up each person's unique character.