How does the concept of a person affect our beliefs about ourselves and the world? In an intriguing recent addition to his established Reductionist view of personal identity, Derek Parfit speculates that there could be beings who do not possess the concept of a person. Where we talk and think about persons, selves, subjects, or agents, they talk and think about sequences of thoughts and experiences related to a particular brain and body. Nevertheless their knowledge and experience of the world (...) is unaffected, in that it is largely like our own. It is their view of ‘themselves’ that is different (and superior) to ours. My paper critically assesses this ‘impersonal beings’ hypothesis through an examination of Parfit’s construal of the concept of a person. I argue that Parfit’s understanding of the concept of a person undermines his impersonal beings hypothesis. (shrink)

I am interested in fear of non-existence, which is often discussed in terms of fear one’s own death, or as it is sometimes called, fear of death as such. This form of fear has been denied by some philosophers. Cognitive theories of the emotions have particular trouble in dealing with it, granting it a status that is simultaneously paradigmatic yet anomalous with respect to fear in general. My paper documents these matters, and considers a number of responses. I provide examples (...) from philosophy and literature of fear of non-existence, and distinguish it from other death-related fears. I then look at the success that cognitive theories of the emotions have had in dealing with other “problematic” fears, such as phobias, and examine how the solutions here fail to apply to fear of non-existence. The problem lies with the perceptual-centred model of fear that is typically called upon. Against this I recommend a retreat to a belief-centred model for fear of non-existence. I argue that there are other fears that are better explained by a belief-centred rather a perceptual-based approach. This reinforces the plausibility of the belief-centred model, and goes some way to alleviating the anomalous and problematic status of the fear of non-existence. (shrink)

Derek Parfit’s early work on the metaphysics of persons has had a vast influence on Western philosophical debates about the nature of personal identity and moral theory. Within the study of Buddhism, it also has sparked a continuous comparative discourse, which seeks to explicate Buddhist philosophical principles in light of Parfit’s conceptual framework. Examining important Parfitian-inspired studies of Buddhist philosophy, this article points out various ways in which a Parfitian lens shaped, often implicitly, contemporary understandings of the anātman doctrine and (...) its relation to Buddhist ethics. I discuss in particular three dominant elements appropriated by Parfitian-inspired scholarship: Parfit’s theoretical categories; philosophical problems raised by his reductionist theory of persons; and Parfit’s argumentative style. I argue that the three elements used in this scholarship constitute different facets of one methodological approach to cross-cultural philosophy, which relies on Western terminology and conceptual schemes to establish a conversation with non-Western philosophy. I suggest that while this methodology is fruitful in many ways, philosophy as a cosmopolitan space may benefit significantly from approaching Buddhist philosophy using its own categories and terminology. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that standard psychological continuity theory does not account for an important feature of what is important in survival—having the property of personhood. I offer a theory that can account for this, and I explain how it avoids the implausible consequences of standard psychological continuity theory, as well as having certain other advantages over that theory.

Your replica is created on Mars and you, on Earth, are destroyed. Parfit claims that your replica may still have what prudentially matters for you – provided that you are psychologically connected and continuous with your replica. If someone accidentally destroys the tapes containing your psychological profile used in the production of your replica and this same action fortuitously produces a functionally equivalent tape, Ehring claims that Parfit should maintain that the resulting new individual may still have what matters. Nihilism (...) about what matters follows, or so Ehring claims. I argue that Ehring is wrong and that the difference between the two ways of creating a replica is not trivial – there is no trivial survival. (shrink)

It is argued that claims about personal obligation (of the form "s ought to 0") cannot be reduced to claims about impersonal obligation (of the form "it ought to be the case that p"). The most common attempts at such a reduction are shown to have unacceptable implications in cases involving a plurality of agents. It is then argued that similar problems will face any attempt to reduce personal obligation to impersonal obligation.

The unity of consciousness has so far been studied only as a relation holding among the many experiences of a single subject. I investigate whether this relation could hold between the experiences of distinct subjects, considering three major arguments against the possibility of such ‘between-subjects unity’. The first argument, based on the popular idea that unity implies subsumption by a composite experience, can be deflected by allowing for limited forms of ‘experience-sharing’, in which the same token experience belongs to more (...) than one subject. The second argument, based on the phenomenological claim that unified experiences have interdependent phenomenal characters, I show to rest on an equivocation. Finally, the third argument accuses between-subjects unity of being unimaginable, or more broadly a formal possibility corresponding to nothing we can make sense of. I argue that the familiar experience of perceptual co-presentation gives us an adequate phenomenological grasp on what between-subjects unity might be like. (shrink)

It has been claimed that we need singular self-knowledge to function properly as rational agents. I argue that this is not strictly true: agents in certain relations could dispense with singular self-knowledge and instead rely on plural self-knowledge. In defending the possibility of this kind of ‘selfless agent’, I thereby defend the possibility of a certain kind of ‘seamless’ collective agency; agency in a group of agents who have no singular self-knowledge, who do not know which member of the group (...) they are. I discuss four specific functions for which singular self-knowledge has been thought indispensable: distinguishing intentional from unintentional actions, connecting non-indexical knowledge with action, reflecting on our own reasoning, and identifying which ultimate practical reasons we have. I argue in each case that by establishing certain relations between agents – relations I label ‘motor vulnerability’, ‘cognitive vulnerability’, ‘evidential unity’ and ‘moral unity’ – we would allow those agents to do everything a rational agent needs to do while relying only on plural, rather than singular, self-knowledge. Finally, I consider the objection that any agents who met the conditions I lay out for selfless agency would thereby cease to qualify as distinct agents, merging into a single agent without agential parts. Against this objection, I argue that we should recognise the possibility of simultaneous agency in whole and parts, and not regard either as disqualifying the other. (shrink)

In his work on personal identity, Derek Parfit makes two revolutionary claims: firstly, that personal identity is not what matters in survival; and secondly, that what does matter is relation R. In this article I demonstrate his position here to be inconsistent, with the former claim being defensible only in case the latter is false. Parfit intends his famous fission argument to establish the unimportance of identity – a conclusion disputed by, among others, Mark Johnston. My approach is to critically (...) assess their debate, focusing on Johnston's reductio of Parfit's position. I contend that although Parfit's own response fails, there are other ways to save the fission argument. The unimportance of identity then comes at a cost, however, because the reductio can only be avoided by accepting either that nothing matters in survival, or else that facts about particles and forces do. Either way, relation R cannot be what matters. (shrink)

It is intuitive to suppose that the question of whether I persist through a given period will always have a metaphysically substantive ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer. Derek Parfit challenges this intuition. Given the truth of Reductionism, he argues, identity can be indeterminate. The main argument Parfit marshals in support of this claim employs his Sorites-style Combined Spectrum thought experiment. Despite its influence, there are conspicuous gaps in his argument. Notably, he claims that identity is indeterminate when questions about persistence are (...) ‘empty’. But indeterminacy in Sorites puzzles is traditionally held to result from vagueness – a topic Parfit avoids. Without an account of the relationships between vagueness, indeterminacy, and question-emptiness, his argument remains incomplete. I begin by outlining Parfit’s argument as it stands. I then propose that we can provide the missing details by supplementing Parfit’s treatment of the Combined Spectrum with Sider’s notion of nonsubstantivity. This gives us a clearer understanding of Parfit’s indeterminacy claim, and affords the room to accommodate vagueness in his argument. Once we spell out what this means, however, it becomes clear that a more radical conclusion is justified by Parfit’s reasoning: it is always an empty question whether a person persists. (shrink)

An influential thesis in contemporary philosophy of mind is that subjectivity is best conceived as inner awareness of qualia. has argued that this unique subjective awareness generates a paradox which resists empirical explanation. On account of this “paradox of subjective duality,” Levine concludes that the hardest part of the hard problem of consciousness is to explain how anything like a subjective point of view could arise in the world. Against this, I argue that the nature of subjective thought is not (...) correctly characterized as inner awareness, that a non-paradoxical approach to the first-person perspective is available, and that the problem about subjectivity should be distinguished from the perennial problem of qualia or phenomenal properties. (shrink)

_In this paper, I show that a robust, reflexivist account of self-awareness (such as was defended by Dignga and Dharmakīrti, most phenomenologists, and others) is compatible with reductionist view of persons, and hence with a rejection of the existence of a substantial, separate self. My main focus is on the tension between Buddhist reflexivism and the central Buddhist doctrine of no-self. In the first section of the paper, I give a brief sketch of reflexivist (...) accounts of self-awareness, using the Buddhist philosopher Dharmakīrti as my example. In the next section, I examine reductionism as it relates to accounts of the self. I then, in the third section, argue that a reductionist account of persons can account for the unique features of first-person contents and our deep and multi-layered sense of self_. (shrink)

Derek Parfit famously defends a number of surprising views about "fission." One is that, in such a scenario, it is indeterminate whether I have survived or not. Another is that the fission case shows that it does not matter, in itself, whether I survive or not. Most critics of the first view contend that fission makes me cease to exist. Most opponents of the second view contend that fission does not preserve everything that matters in ordinary survival. In this paper (...) I shall provide a critique that does not rely on either of these contentions. There are other, interrelated reasons to reject Parfit's defense of the two theses. In particular, the availability of the following view creates trouble for Parfit: I determinately survive fission, but it is indeterminate which fission product I am. (shrink)

This study deals specifically with one of the most relevant issues in neuro-ethics, namely the philosophical classification of so-called memory dampening, which refers to the attenuation of traumatic memories with the help of medication. Numerous neuroethical questions emerge from this issue. For example, how is a person’s identity affected by using such drugs? Does one still remain the same person? Would propranolol, for example, as a memory-dampening agent lead to a fundamental change in one’s identity? Are not a person’s negative (...) memories also part of their identity and present personality? These questions are examined from the perspective of the seventeenth-century Islamic philosopher, Mullā Ṣadrā. The goal is to shed light on the neuroethical foundations of memory dampening and personal identity from an Islamic philosophical perspective. (shrink)

Derek Parfit’s argument against the platitude that identity is what matters in survival does not work given his intended reading of the platitude, namely, that what matters in survival to some future time is being identical with someone who is alive at that time. I develop Parfit’s argument so that it works against the platitude on this intended reading.

Buddhism famously denies the existence of the self. This is usually understood to mean that Buddhism denies the existence of a substantial self existing over and above the flow of conscious experience. But what of the purely experiential self accepted by the phenomenological tradition? Does Buddhism deny the reflexive or first-personal character of conscious experience? In this paper, I argue that even the notion of an experiential self is ultimately incompatible with Buddhist teaching—in fact, deeply incompatible. According to Buddhism, I (...) am an objectively existing person (though not irreducibly real). However, when I conceive of myself as myself, I conceive of myself as having a subjective mode of existence. What Buddhism denies, then, is not that I exist, but that I exist in the subjective or first-person manner in which I conceive of myself as existing. The problem I take up in this paper is to understand how Buddhism can simultaneously affirm the reflexivity of conscious experience and yet deny that the experiential self is a self. (shrink)

What makes a person the same over time is a question dealt with by many philosophers. I too offered a purely metaphysical answer in a different work, however, as with many other theorists, I offered an answer outside of considering the political consequences of the theory I offered. Upon reflection, I now see that this was a mistake in need of correction. This is because I believe that conceptually a theory about how a person remains one and the same over (...) time presupposes an understanding of the nature of personhood as an ontological kind. That is, to remain the same person over time logically requires remaining a person. While being a counting as a person is a purely metaphysical matter, the fact is having the status of being a person is highly significant both morally and politically, as any social movement fighting for being granted this status to groups of individuals who have been denied it. To ignore the moral and political consequences of a metaphysical theory of persons is therefore ethically irresponsible. I argue that many of the assumptions concerning personhood are ethically and politically biased in favor of a conception of persons that disadvantages certain individuals, and that examining and correcting these biases is essential to be ethically responsible theorists of personhood. (shrink)

What justifies holding the person that we are today morally responsible for something we did a year ago? And why are we justified in showing prudential concern for the future welfare of the person we will be a year from now? These questions cannot be systematically pursued without addressing the problem of personal identity. This essay considers whether Buddhist Reductionism, a philosophical project grounded on the idea that persons reduce to a set of bodily, sensory, perceptual, dispositional, and conscious elements, (...) provides support for Parfit’s psychological criterion for personal identity. It examines the role that self-consciousness plays in mediating both self-concern and concern for others, and offers an argument for how reductionism about substantive or enduring selves may be reconciled with the seemingly irreducible character of self-consciousness. (shrink)

Ethics in the tradition of Derek Parfit’s Reasons and Persons is riddled with sorites-like arguments, which lead us by what seem innocent steps to seemingly false conclusions. Take, for example, spectrum arguments for the Repugnant Conclusion that appeal to slight differences in quality of life. Several authors have taken the view that, since spectrum arguments are structurally analogous to sorites arguments, the correct response to spectrum arguments is structurally analogous to the correct response to sorites arguments. This sorites analogy is (...) here argued against. There are potential structural disanalogies between spectrum arguments and sorites arguments. But even if these arguments are relevantly structurally analogous, they differ in their content in ways that show the sorites analogy to be implausible. Two content-based disanalogies are here explored—one is inspired by Parfit’s work on reductionism, and the other involves hypersensitivity. The chapter concludes with a methodological lesson. (shrink)

Response to commentaries on keynote article.

This paper seeks to lay down the theoretical groundwork for the emergence of holistic cross-cultural philosophical investigations of personal identity ¾ investigations that approach the theoretical, phenomenological, psychological, and practical-ethical dimensions of selfhood as indissociable. My strategy is to discuss three closely connected conceptual distinctions that the Buddhist approach to personal identity urges us to draw, and a lucid understanding of which is essential for the emergence of appropriately comprehensive and thus genuinely cosmopolitan discussions at the cross-road between Western and (...) Buddhist philosophical traditions. The first, primary distinction is that between the “visceral sense of self” and the “substance view of self”. This in turn gives rise to two derivative distinctions, namely between “harbouring VSS” and “believing SVS”, and between “overcoming VSS” and “rejecting SVS”. After discussing these distinctions, I consider and respond to three philosophical objections to features of Buddhist approach to selfhood that are thrown into sharper relief when attention is paid to these three distinctions. I then discuss some of the ways the foregoing may inform research in cross-cultural philosophy of personal identity. This discussion focuses on: the primacy of the first-person stance in matters of personal identity; the relationship between numerical identity and narrative identity; interdisciplinarity in the study of selfhood; and personal identity and egoism. (shrink)

This thesis explores the possibility of composite consciousness: phenomenally conscious states belonging to a composite being in virtue of the consciousness of, and relations among, its parts. We have no trouble accepting that a composite being has physical properties entirely in virtue of the physical properties of, and relations among, its parts. But a long­standing intuition holds that consciousness is different: my consciousness cannot be understood as a complex of interacting component consciousnesses belonging to parts of me. I ask why: (...) what is it about consciousness that makes us think it so different from matter? And should we accept this apparent difference? (shrink)