In philosophy, the criteria for personhood (PH) at a specific point in time (synchronic), and the necessary and sufficient conditions of personal identity (PI) over time (diachronic) are traditionally separated. Hence, the transition between both timescales of a person's life remains largely unclear. Personal habits reflect a decision-making (DM) process that binds together synchronic and diachronic timescales. Despite the fact that the actualization of habits takes place synchronically, they presuppose, for the possibility of their generation, time in a diachronic sense. (...) The acquisition of habits therefore rests upon PI over time; that is, the temporal extension of personal decisions is the necessary condition for the possible development of habits. Conceptually, habits can thus be seen as a bridge between synchronic and diachronic timescales of a person's life. In order to investigate the empirical mediation of this temporal linkage, we draw upon the neuronal mechanisms underlying DM; in particular on the distinction between internally and externally guided DM. Externally guided DM relies on external criteria at a specific point in time (synchronic); on a neural level, this has been associated with lateral frontal and parietal brain regions. In contrast, internally guided DM is based on the person's own preferences that involve a more longitudinal and thus diachronic timescale, which has been associated with the brain's intrinsic activity. Habits can be considered to reflect a balance between internally and externally guided DM, which implicates a particular temporal balance between diachronic and synchronic elements, thus linking two different timescales. Based on such evidence, we suggest a habit-based neurophilosophical approach of PH and PI by focusing on the empirically-based linkage between the synchronic and diachronic elements of habits. By doing so, we propose to link together what philosophically has been described and analyzed separately as PH and PI. (shrink)

In this paper I outline and defend a new approach to personal-identity—personal-identity non-cognitivism—and argue that it has several advantages over its cognitivist rivals. On this view utterances of personal-identity sentences express a non-cognitive attitude towards relevant person-stages. The resulting view offers a pleasingly nuanced picture of what we are doing when we utter such sentences.

In this paper, I first consider a famous objection that the standard interpretation of the Lockean account of diachronicity (i.e., one’s sense of personal identity over time) via psychological connectedness falls prey to breaks in one’s personal narrative. I argue that recent case studies show that while this critique may hold with regard to some long-term autobiographical self-knowledge (e.g., episodic memory), it carries less warrant with respect to accounts based on trait-relevant, semantic self-knowledge. The second issue I address concerns the (...) question of diachronicity from the vantage point that there are (at least) two aspects of self—the self of psychophysical instantiation (what I term the epistemological self) and the self of first person subjectivity (what I term the ontological self; for discussion, see Klein SB, The self and its brain, Social Cognition, 30, 474–518, 2012). Each is held to be a necessary component of selfhood, and, in interaction, they are appear jointly sufficient for a synchronic sense of self (Klein SB, The self and its brain, Social Cognition, 30, 474–518, 2012). As pertains to diachronicity, by contrast, I contend that while the epistemological self, by itself, is precariously situated to do the work required by a coherent theory of personal identity across time, the ontological self may be better positioned to take up the challenge. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that much of the confusion and mystery surrounding the concept of "self" can be traced to a failure to appreciate the distinction between the self as a collection of diverse neural components that provide us with our beliefs, memories, desires, personality, emotions, etc (the epistemological self) and the self that is best conceived as subjective, unified awareness, a point of view in the first person (ontological self). While the former can, and indeed has, been extensively (...) studied by researchers of various disciplines in the human sciences, the latter most often has been ignored -- treated more as a place holder attached to a particular predicate of interest (e.g., concept, reference, deception, esteem, image, regulation, etc). These two aspects of the self, I contend, are not reducible -- one being an object (the epistemological self) and the other a subject (the ontological self). Until we appreciate the difficulties of applying scientific methods and analysis to what cannot be reduced to an object of inquiry without stripping it of its essential aspect (its status as subject), progress on the "self", taken as a pluralistic construct, will continue to address only one part of the problems we face in understanding this most fundamental aspect of human experience. (shrink)

When one considers one's own persistence over time from the first-person perspective, it seems as if facts about one's persistence are "further facts," over and above facts about physical and psychological continuity. But the idea that facts about one's persistence are further facts is objectionable on independent theoretical grounds: it conflicts with physicalism and requires us to posit hidden facts about our persistence. This essay shows how to resolve this conflict using the idea that imagining from the first-person point of (...) view is a guide to centered possibility, a type of possibility analyzed in terms of centered worlds. (shrink)

It is widely held that every person is a person essentially, where being a person is having special mental properties such as intelligence and self-consciousness. It follows that nothing can acquire or lose these properties. The paper argues that this rules out all familiar psychological-continuity views of personal identity over time. It also faces grave difficulties in accounting for the mental powers of human beings who are not intelligent and self-conscious, such as foetuses and those with dementia.

We offer a framework for assessing what the structure of episodic memory might be, if one accepts the Buddhist denial of persisting selves. This paper is a response to Jonardon Ganeri's paper "Mental time travel and attention", which explores Buddhaghosa's ideas about memory. (It will eventually be published with a reply by Ganeri).

This book is a collection of some of my writings that do not fit the mold of standard philosophical articles. These writings range over several topics, including religion, free will, human dignity, the nature of persons, and a few others. The longest item in the collection is an archive of my blog, The Unfinishable Scroll, as it existed when the book was put together. That blog covers many philosophical topics, including some I haven't discussed elsewhere. Also in the collection are (...) essays (formerly web-based) on topics ranging from progress, to skepticism, to metaphysics - and back again. The book even contains an archive of another, less well-known, blog of mine. (shrink)

This paper is a critique of Richard Dawkins’ “argument from improbability” against the existence of God. This argument, which forms the core of Dawkins’ book The God Delusion, provides an interesting example of the use of scientific ideas in arguments about religion. Here I raise three objections: (1) The argument is inapplicable to philosophical conceptions of God that reduce most of God’s complexity to that of the physical universe. (2) The argument depends on a way of estimating probabilities that fails (...) for the probability of an entity that creates natural laws. (3) The argument supposes that complexity arises from past physical causes; however, some forms of complexity known to mathematics and logic do not arise in this way. After stating these three criticisms, I show that some of these same considerations undermine Dawkins’ critique of agnosticism. I close the paper with some remarks on Dawkins’ conception of God. (shrink)

La aclaración de la estructura de la autoconciencia es crucial en el debate entre los partidarios del “giro lingüístico” y los defensores de la “filosofía de la conciencia”, pues si quedase probado que la autoconciencia tiene un fundamento lingüístico, el lenguaje se infiltraría hasta la raíz misma de la subjetividad. Teniendo presente esta pregunta fundamental, este artículo examina la polémica entre Ernst Tugendhat y los autores de la Escuela de Heidelberg (dieter Henrich y Manfred Frank). Tugendhat concibe la autoconciencia como (...) un fenómeno esencialmente lingüístico, mientras que la Escuela de Heidelberg detecta en la teoría de Tugendhat las dificultades de la concepción clásica de la autoconciencia como reflexión. Tras estudiar los argumentos de una y otra parte, el artículo concluye señalando la simetría de ambos enfoques, e indica brevemente las tareas que debería resolver una teoría alternativa: la distinción de diversos niveles de autoconciencia, y la aclaración de la relación entre el nivel prelingüístico y el nivel conceptual. (shrink)

Mentalistic (or Lockean) accounts of personal identity are normally formulated in terms of causal relations between psychological states such as beliefs, memories, and intentions. In this paper we develop an alternative (but still Lockean) account of personal identity, based on phenomenal relations between experiences. We begin by examining a notorious puzzle case due to Bernard Williams, and extract two lessons from it: first, that Williams's puzzle can be defused by distinguishing between the psychological and phenomenal approaches, second, that so far (...) as personal identity is concerned, it is phenomenal rather than psychological continuity that matters. We then consider different ways in which the phenomenal approach may be developed, and respond to a number of objections. That with which the consciousness of this present thinking thing can join itself, makes the same person, and is one self with it, and with nothing else; and so attributes to itself and owns all the actions of that thing, as its own, as far as that consciousness reaches, and no farther; as every one who reflects will perceive. Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding [II.xxvii.17]. (shrink)

Pummer : 43–77, 2014) ingeniously wraps together issues from the personal identity literature with issues from the literature on desert. However, I wish to take issue with the main conclusion that he draws, namely, that we need to rethink the following principle: Desert.: When people culpably do very wrong or bad acts, they deserve punishment in the following sense: at least other things being equal they ought to be made worse off, simply in virtue of the fact that they culpably (...) did wrong—even if they have repented, are now virtuous, and punishing them would benefit no one. :43–77, 2014: 43–44) Pummer offers an argument that is intended to show that this principle, along with widely-held views about personal identity, entails an inconsistent triad of propositions. I agree. But I think Pummer's argument attacks a straw man. I believe that no-one holds Desert, at least as it is stated, and that once the principle is stated correctly it is easy to see that no inconsistent triad follows from it. So, Desert does not need rethinking. It just needs to be stated correctly. (shrink)

Die Arbeit beschäftigt sich mit der Frage, wie Subjektivität als wesentlich geschichtlich gefasst werden kann. Ein aktuelles Problem besteht darin, den Begriff der Subjektivität mit der Idee der Geschichtlichkeit in Einklang zu bringen. Um dieses Problem zu lösen, schlägt die Arbeit vor, auf Schellings Frühwerk, insbesondere das System des transzendentalen Idealismus, und auf Heideggers Daseinsphilosophie zurückzugreifen. Im ersten Teil wird eine Perspektive auf Subjektivität entwickelt, die auf einer Praxisauffassung basiert. Dabei werden Schelling und Heidegger kritisch interpretiert und in den aktuellen (...) Debatten zum Naturalismus und zur Perspektive der ersten Person angewendet. Im zweiten Teil wird der Fokus themenspezifisch auf die Geschichtlichkeit gerichtet. Hierbei werden insbesondere Schellings früher Zeitbegriff und Heideggers Theorie der Geschichtlichkeit des Daseins diskutiert und mit Blick auf die Frage der personalen Identität in der Zeit aktualisiert. Die Monografie richtet sich an Forscherinnen und Forscher der klassischen deutschen Philosophie, der Hermeneutik, der Philosophie der Praxis sowie der breit gefassten Philosophie des Geistes. (shrink)

If a brain is uploaded into a computer, will consciousness continue in digital form or will it end forever when the brain is destroyed? Philosophers have long debated such dilemmas and classify them as questions about personal identity. There are currently three main theories of personal identity: biological, psychological, and closest continuer theories. None of these theories can successfully address the questions posed by the possibility of uploading. I will argue that uploading requires us to adopt a new theory of (...) identity, psychological branching identity. Psychological branching identity states that consciousness will continue as long as there is continuity in psychological structure. What differentiates this from psychological identity is that it allows identity to continue in multiple selves. According to branching identity, continuity of consciousness will continue in both the original brain and the upload after nondestructive uploading. Branching identity can also resolve long standing questions about split-brain syndrome and can provide clear predictions about identity in even the most difficult cases imagined by philosophers. (shrink)

This paper examines the prevalent assumption that when people interact online via proxies—avatars—they encounter each other. Through an exploration of the ontology of users and their avatars we argue that, contrary to the trend within current discussions of interaction online, this cannot be unproblematically assumed. If users could be considered in some sense identical to their avatars, then it would be clear how an encounter with an avatar could ground an encounter with another user. We therefore engage in a systematic (...) investigation of several conceptions of identity, concluding that in none of these senses can users and avatars be identified. We go on to explore how current accounts of identity-as-selfhood online might resolve this problem by appealing to narrativity or authorship, ultimately concluding that as these accounts stand they are unable to provide grounds for the claim that users encounter each other online and so supplementary work is required. (shrink)

It is argued that those who accept the psychological criterion of personal identity, such as Parfit and Shoemaker, should accept what I call the 'series' view of a person, according to which a person is a unified aggregate of mental events and states. As well as defending this view against objections, I argue that it allows the psychological theorist to avoid the two lives objection which the 'animalist' theorists have raised against it, an objection which causes great difficulties for the (...) conception of a person that most psychological theorists favour, the constitution view. It is also argued that the series view allows that people can body swap and teleport, which the constitution view—which takes a person to be a physical object (but a distinct physical object from the human being)—has great trouble with. (shrink)

In this paper I shall argue that if the Parfitian psychological criterion or theory of personal identity is true, then a good case can be made out to show that the psychological theorist should accept the view I call “psychological sequentialism”. This is the view that a causal connection is not necessary for what matters in survival, as long as certain other conditions are met. I argue this by way of Parfit’s own principle that what matters in survival cannot depend (...) upon a trivial fact. (shrink)

In his Reasons and Persons, Derek Parfit argues from the possibility of cases of fission and/or fusion of persons that one must reject identity as what matters for personal survival. Instead Parfit concludes that what matters is “psychological connectedness and/or continuity with the right kind of cause,” or what he calls an R-relation. In this paper, I argue that, if one accepts Parfit’s conclusion, one must accept that R-relations are what matter for moral responsibility as well. Unfortunately, it seems that (...) accepting that the R-relation is what matters for both survival and moral responsibility leads to a contradiction. My goal, however, is not merely to point out a problem in Parfit’s account. Instead, I believe that once we understand the basic intuitions which lead to this contradiction, it is clear that there is no fully satisfactory way to account for what matters with respect to survival and moral responsibility. (shrink)

To introduce the issue of the tracking and identification of human agents, I examine the ability of an agent to track a human person and distinguish this target from other individuals: The ability to perform person identification. First, I discuss influential mechanistic models of the perceptual recognition of human faces and people. Such models propose detailed hypotheses about the parts and activities of the mental mechanisms that control the perceptual recognition of persons. However, models based on perceptual recognition are incomplete (...) theories of person identification because they do not explain several identification behaviors that are fundamental to human social interactions. Furthermore, recognition-based models tend to appeal to the controversial concept of the “identity” of a person without explaining what determines personal identity and persistence. To overcome these limitations, I propose to integrate the face-recognition program into a broader causal-historical theory of identification. The causal-historical theory of identification complements models focused on perceptual recognition because it can account for the types of non-perceptual identification overlooked by the face-recognition program. Moreover, it can decompose the identification behaviors into tracking processes that succeed or fail to be sensitive to causal characteristics of a target. I illustrate these advantages with a discussion of the difference between the tracking of a person understood as either a causally continuous biological organism or a psychologically continuous mind. Finally, I argue that the causal-historical theory provides a theoretical framework for investigating the tracking of relations between a target and its contextual and historical attributes, such as a target's possessions. (shrink)

Some of the concerns that have been raised in connection to the use of advance directives are of the epistemic variety. Such concerns highlight the possibility that adhering to an advance directive may conflict with what the author of the directive actually wants at the time of treatment. However, at least one objection to the employment of advance directives is metaphysical in nature. The objection to be discussed here, first formulated by Rebecca Dresser and labeled by Allen Buchanan as the (...) slavery argument and David DeGrazia the someone else problem, aims to undermine the legitimacy of certain uses of advance directives by concluding that such uses rest upon an incorrect assumption about the identity over time of those ostensibly governed by the directives. There have been numerous attempts to respond to this objection. This paper aims to assess two strategies that have been pursued to cope with the problem. (shrink)

Williams (1970) argues that our intuitions about personal identity vary depending on how a given thought experiment is framed. Some frames lead us to think that persistence of self requires persistence of one's psychological characteristics; other frames lead us to think that the self persists even after the loss of one's distinctive psychological characteristics. The current paper takes an empirical approach to these issues. We find that framing does affect whether or not people judge that persistence of psychological characteristics is (...) required for persistence of self. Open-ended, abstract questions about what is required for survival tend to elicit responses that appeal to the importance of psychological characteristics. This emphasis on psychological characteristics is largely preserved even when participants are exposed to a concrete case that yields conflicting intuitions over whether memory must be preserved in order for a person to persist. Insofar as our philosophical theory of personal identity should be based on our intuitions, the results provide some support for the view that psychological characteristics really are critical for persistence of self. (shrink)

Tracking persons, that is, determining that a person now is or is not a specific earlier person, is extremely common and widespread in our way of life and extremely important. If so, figuring out what we are tracking, what it is to persist as a person over a period of time, is also important. Trying to figure this out will be the main focus of this chapter.

Editor's introduction to first issue of The Southern Journal of Philosophy under the imprint of Wiley-Blackwell (48.1).

The rare condition known as dicephalus occurs when (prior to implantation) a zygote fails to divide completely, resulting in twins who are conjoined below the neck. Human dicephalic twins look like a two-headed person, with each brain supporting a distinct mental life. Jeff McMahan has recently argued that, because they instance two of us but only one animal, dicephalic twins provide a counterexample to the animalist's claim that each of us is identical with a human animal. To the contrary, I (...) argue that in cases of dicephalus it is obvious neither that there is one animal nor that there are two of us. Consequently, the animalist criterion does not straightforwardly apply to cases of dicephalus. I defend an account of dicephalus that is both sensitive to the complexity of twinning phenomena and not inconsistent with animalism. In my view, dicephalic twins are a borderline case of the concept HUMAN ANIMAL. I conclude with some speculative remarks concerning the normative import (if any) of my claim that dicephalic twins are a borderline case. (shrink)

Philosophers have traditionally used thought-experiments in their endeavours to find a satisfactory account of the self and personal identity. Yet there are considerations from empirical psychology as well as related ones from philosophy itself that appear to completely undermine the method of thought-experiment. This paper focuses on both sets of considerations and attempts a defence of the method.

Some claim that the notion of strong emergence as involving ontological or causal novelty makes no sense, on grounds that any purportedly strongly emergent features or associated powers 'collapse', one way or another, into the lower-level base features upon which they depend. Here we argue that there are several independently motivated and defensible means of preventing the collapse of strongly emergent features or powers into their lower-level bases, as directed against a conception of strongly emergent features as having fundamentally novel (...) powers. After introducing the project (Section 1), we motivate and present the powers-based account (Section 2); we then canvass the two main versions of the collapse objection, show how these apply to the powers-based account, and problematize certain strategies of response (Section 3); we then present and defend four better strategies of response (Section 4). (shrink)

How should we count people who have two cerebral hemispheres that cooperate to support one mental life at the level required for personhood even though each hemisphere can be disconnected from the other and support its "own" divergent mental life at that level? On the standard method of counting people, there is only one person sitting in your chair and thinking your thoughts even if you have two cerebral hemispheres of this kind. Is this method accurate? In this paper, I (...) argue that it is not, and I advocate an alternative I call the Multiple Person View. (shrink)

Among your closest associates is a certain human animal – a living, breathing, organism. You see it when you look in the mirror. When it is sick, you don't feel too well. Where it goes, you go. And, one thinks, where you go, it must follow. Indeed, you can make it move through sheer force of will. You bear, in short, an important and intimate relation to this, your animal. So too rest of us with our animals. Animalism says that (...) this relation is nothing short of identity. According to animalists, we do not only coincide with or constitute or inhabit or otherwise hang out with these close associates, our animals: we are them. In this article, I offer an opinionated take on what animalism might be and situate it against contemporary rivals. Then, I outline a simple case for animalism. Finally, I sketch non-standard routes for animalists to take in light of standard challenges. My goal in all of this is to open up some new avenues of animalist thinking. (shrink)

This paper examines the experience of where we end and the rest of the world begins, that is, the sense of boundaries. Since meditators are recognized for their ability to introspect about the bodily level of experience, and in particular about their sense of boundaries, 27 senior meditators were interviewed for this study. The main conclusions of this paper are that the boundaries of the so-called “physical body” are not equivalent to the individual's sense of boundaries; the sense of boundaries (...) depends upon sensory activity; the sense of boundaries should be defined according to its level of flexibility; the sense of body ownership cannot be reduced to the sense of boundaries; nevertheless, the sense of ownership depends on the level of flexibility of the sense of boundaries. (shrink)

In this paper, a rights-based argument for the impermissibility of abortion, infanticide and neglect of some pre-natal organisms and infants/children is advanced. I argue, in opposition to most rights-ethicists, that the potentiality for autonomous agency gives individuals negative rights. I also examine the conjecture that potential autonomous agents have positive rights in virtue of their vulnerability. According to this suggestion, once an individual obtains actual autonomous agency, he or she has merely negative rights. Possible solutions to conflicts of rights between (...) parents and their offspring are investigated. Finally, I discuss a lexical order between positive and negative rights, which may solve conflicts between the rights of potential autonomous agents and actual autonomous agents. (shrink)

As regards the question of what matters in survival two views have been identified: on the one hand, we have the view that what matters is identity (the so-called ?commonsense view?) and, on the other hand, we have the view that what matters is the holding of certain psychological connections between various mental states over time (the relation R). Several attempts have tried to reconcile these two views involving the so-called ?multiple occupancy view? or ?cohabitation thesis?. Even if the latter (...) comes in several formulations, common elements are, positing the appropriateness of a description of the fission case according to which the post-fission persons existed prior to fission and also, that what determines that two persons who exist at a certain time are distinct can be facts about what is the case at other times. The paper discusses three of the most influential formulations of the multiple occupancy view, which intend to reconcile identity with what matters, and argues that for various reasons these at least do not work in this regard. (shrink)

Attacks on ?closest continuer? and ?best candidate? theories of identity have something correct in them while still failing to discredit the theories they oppose. What follows from Noonan's and Wiggins's objections to such theories is that they need to be so formulated as not to deny the necessity of identity. The best metaphysics for best?candidate theories to adopt is one in which everyday objects are taken to transcend, in a certain sense, their life histories in given worlds. This metaphysics also (...) has the potential for solving problems about contingent identity, transworld identity, and the issue of haecceitism or individual essence. To develop the metaphysics, it is only necessary to follow through the analogy between worlds and times suggested by writers like Plantinga and Schlesinger. (shrink)

It is often argued that associations are intelligent organisms with minds and intentional states of their own. It is also argued that groups are merely a plurality of individuals who are related or associated only in a specific and limited sense. This paper draws on both classical and contemporary scholarship to develop an ontological account of persons which has real-world legal and ethical implications.

It is argued here that it is part of our concept of a ‘person’ that persons should be, by its nature, able to endure in time. In no conception of persons as ‘perduring’ entities with different temporal parts for different times, or as sequences of stages in the relation of ‘being a survival of ’ between them, it is possible to make sense of some of our normative intuitions about persons. It is argued also that the traditional psychological theory of (...) personal identity is untenable. Psychological continuity appears to be neither sufficient nor necessary for personal identity. A reasonable conception of persons seems to be either a form of ‘animalism’ where persons are biological organisms, or a theory in which persons are primitive substances, with primitive conditions of identity. (shrink)

On the one hand, philosophers have presented numerous apparent examples of indeterminate individuation, i.e., examples in which two things are neither determinately identical nor determinately distinct. On the other hand, some have argued against even the coherence of the very idea of indeterminate individuation. This paper defends the possibility of indeterminate individuation against Evans’s argument and some other arguments. The Determinacy of Identity—the thesis that identical things are determinately identical—is distinguished from the Determinacy of Distinctness—the thesis that distinct things are (...) determinately distinct. It is argued that while the first thesis holds universally and there is no case of indeterminate identity, there are reasons to think that the second thesis does not hold universally, and that there are cases of indeterminate distinctness. (shrink)

Sydney Shoemaker has claimed that functionalism, a theory\nabout mental states, implies a certain theory about the\nidentity over time of persons, the entities that have\nmental states. He also claims that persons can survive a\n"Brain-State-Transfer" procedure. My examination of these\nclaims includes description and analysis of imaginary\ncases, but--notably--not appeals to our "intuitions"\nconcerning them. It turns out that Shoemaker's basic\ninsight is correct. But there is no implication that it is\nnecessary. (edited).

The view that we are human animals, " animalism ", is deeply unpopular. This paper explains what that claim says and why it is so contentious. It then argues that those who deny it face an awkward choice. They must either deny that there are any human animals, deny that human animals can think, or deny that we are the thinking things located where we are.