If a person, A, branches into B and C, then it is widely held that B and C are not identical to one another. Many think that this is because B and C have contradictory properties at the same time. In this paper, I show why this explanation cannot be right. I argue that contradictory properties at times are not necessary for non-identity between descendants, and that contradictory properties at times are not sufficient for non-identity. I also argue that the (...) standard explanation cannot be salvaged by a shift to personal time. Appeals to a lack of continuity, or to the absence of unity of consciousness likewise fail. Rather, B and C are non-identical simply because A branched into B and C. Why branching should be problematic for personal identity remains a deep puzzle though I offer some tentative suggestions. (shrink)

Ted Sider aptly and concisely states the self-visitation paradox thus: 'Suppose I travel back in time and stand in a room with my sitting 10-year-old self. I seem to be both sitting and standing, but how can that be?' (2001, 101). I will explore a relativist resolution of this paradox offered by, or on behalf of, endurantists.1 It maintains that the sitting and the standing are relative to the personal time or proper time of the time traveler and is intended (...) to yield the result that Ted is sitting at a certain initial personal/proper time but is not standing relative to that time. Similarly, it is also supposed to yield that Ted is standing relative to a later personal/proper time, but not sitting relative to that .. (shrink)

Traditionally, this puzzle has been solved in various ways. Aristotle, for example, distinguished between “accidental” and “essential” changes. Accidental changes are ones that don't result in a change in an objects' identity after the change, such as when a house is painted, or one's hair turns gray, etc. Aristotle thought of these as changes in the accidental properties of a thing. Essential changes, by contrast, are those which don't preserve the identity of the object when it changes, such as when (...) a house burns to the ground and becomes ashes, or when someone dies. Armed with these distinctions, Aristotle would then say that, in the case of accidental changes, (1) and (2) are both false—a changing thing can really change one of its “accidental properties” and yet literally remain one and the same thing before and after the change. (shrink)

The cohabitation theory is a popular solution to the problem of personal fission. It affirms that all the people who result from fission were there cohabiting the pre-fission body all along. Adopting this solution is an uncontroversial move for four-dimensionalists, but is it open to three-dimensionalists too? Some have thought so, but Katherine Hawley, Mark Johnston, and Eric Olson have argued to the contrary. They claim three-dimensionalists simply cannot be cohabitation theorists. In this paper, I explain how they can.

The fission of a person involves what common sense describes as a single person surviving as two distinct people. Thus, say most metaphysicians, this paradox shows us that common sense is inconsistent with the transitivity of identity. Lewis’s theory of overlapping persons, buttressed with tensed identity, gives us one way to reconcile the common sense claims. Lewis’s account, however, implausibly says that reference to a person about to undergo fission is ambiguous. A better way to reconcile the claims of common (...) sense, one that avoids this ambiguity, is to recognize branching persons, persons who have multiple pasts or futures. (shrink)

The philosophy of time travel is a sub-field of metaphysics – the study of what there is and what things are like – that considers questions about the possibility of time travel and what a world in which time travel is possible looks like. These questions range from whether time travel is actually possible, to how time travellers can act in the past or future. This thesis delves into a particularly interesting, yet historically undertreated theme: the abilities of time travellers (...) and relatedly their freedom as well. The abilities and freedom of time travellers has been the source of a lot of recent discussion with some polarising views. The minority (which includes Lewis (1976), but also Ted Sider (2002)) argue for the affirmative – that time travellers are free and have the same (or perhaps more) abilities as non-time travellers. The majority (which includes Kadri Vihvelin (1996), Michael Rea (2005), Stephanie Rennick (2015), Alison Fernandes (2020), amongst others) argue for the negative, that time travellers do not have exactly the same freedoms and abilities as non-time travellers. I think that it is a mistake to be so pessimistic about the abilities and freedom of time travellers. I treat concerns about the freedom of time travellers and concerns about the abilities of time travellers as two sides of the same coin. Therefore, in what follows, I argue for two related conclusions. First, I argue that time travellers have all sorts of abilities. Second, I argue that time travellers are just as free as non-time travellers. In arguing for these conclusions, I first produce a novel analysis of ability which reveals important details about how abilities track inputs rather than outputs. Second, I use this new analysis of ability to present a new compatibilist account of free will. If I am right in arguing positively for the abilities and freedoms of time travellers, then this has large implications for both the current time travel discourse and the general debate surrounding freedom. Significantly, I am arguing against some prominent views about time travel and in suggesting that these views are mistaken, I am presenting new ideas about ability and freedom: specifically, that time travellers have the ability and are free to do impossible things. (shrink)

Would you survive if your consciousness branched into two or more streams? Commonly discussed within the context of split-brain scenarios, this possibility might soon become commonplace with mind uploading technology. Cerullo suggests that after nondestructive mind uploading and other branching scenarios, personal identity would continue in two streams of consciousness. Thus he argues for what he calls branching identity. In this discussion, I evaluate the theory of branching identity and Cerullo’s arguments for it, concluding that branching identity is insufficiently justified (...) and does not yield a better interpretation of branching cases than provided by Parfit. (shrink)