Good physical experiments conform to the basic methodological standards of experimental design: they are objective, reliable, and valid. But is this also true of thought experiments? Especially problems of personal identity have engendered hypothetical scenarios that are very distant from the actual world. These imagined situations have been conspicuously ineffective at resolving conflicting intuitions and deciding between the different accounts of personal identity. Using prominent examples from the literature, I argue that this is due to many of these thought experiments (...) not adhering to the methodological standards that guide experimental design in nearly all other disciplines. I also show how empirically unwarranted background assumptions about human physiology render some of the hypothetical scenarios that are employed in the debate about personal identity highly misleading. (shrink)

If we were to connect two individuals’ brains together, how would this affect the individuals’ conscious experiences? In particular, it is possible for two people to share any of their conscious experiences; to simultaneously enjoy some token experiences while remaining distinct subjects? The case of the Hogan twins—craniopagus conjoined twins whose brains are connected at the thalamus—seems to show that this can happen. I argue that while practical empirical methods cannot tell us directly whether or not the twins share conscious (...) experiences, considerations about the locality of content processing in the brain entails that they most likely do so. (shrink)

Two of the main contenders in the debate about personal persistence over time are the neo-Lockean psychological continuity view and animalism as defended by Olson and Snowdon. Both are wrong. The position I shall argue for, which I call, following Olson, the hybrid view, takes psychological continuity as a sufficient but, pace the neo-Lockeans, not necessary condition for personal persistence. It sides with the animalist in allowing that mere biological continuity is also sufficient. So I am, in a sense, a (...) psychological continuity theorist. But I am also in a sense, a biological theorist. (shrink)

The best justification of time-discounting is roughly that it is rational to care less about your more distant future because there is less of you around to have it. I argue that the standard version of this argument, which treats both psychological continuity and psychological connectedness as reasons to care about your future, can only rationalize an irrational—because exploitable—form of future discounting.

The epistemology of self-locating belief concerns itself with how rational agents ought to respond to certain kinds of indexical information. I argue that those who endorse the thesis of Time-Slice Rationality ought to endorse a particular view about the epistemology of self-locating belief, according to which ‘essentially indexical’ information is never evidentially relevant to non-indexical matters. I close by offering some independent motivations for endorsing Time-Slice Rationality in the context of the epistemology of self-locating belief.

When it comes to personal identity, two approaches have long ruled the roost. The first is the psychological approach, which has it that our persistence through time consists in the continuance of certain of our psychological traits, such as our memories, beliefs, desires, or personality. The second is the biological approach, according to which personal persistence consists in continuity in our physical or biological makeup. Amid the bipartite reign of these approaches, a third contender has emerged: the phenomenal approach. On (...) this approach, personal persistence consists in continuity in phenomenal consciousness or the capacity for phenomenal consciousness. In this paper I will introduce and defend a new argument for the phenomenal approach. In the process, I will argue against the psychological and biological approaches. I will also address some lingering questions and outline further ways to develop the phenomenal approach. (shrink)

Eric Olson has argued, startlingly, that no coherent account can be giv- en of the distinction made in the personal identity literature between ‘complex views’ and ‘simple views’. ‘We tell our students,’ he writes, ‘that accounts of personal identity over time fall into [these] two broad categories’. But ‘it is impossible to characterize this distinction in any satisfactory way. The debate has been systematically misdescribed’. I argue, first, that, for all Olson has said, a recent account by Noonan provides the (...) coherent characterization he claims impossible. If so we have not been wrong all along in the way he says in what we have been telling our students. I then give an account of the distinction between the reductionist and non-reductionist positions which makes it differ- ent from the complex/simple distinction. The aim is to make clear sense of the notion of a not simple but non-reductionist position — which seems an eminently reasonable possibility and something it may also be useful to tell our students about. (shrink)

How can we know whether we are punishing the same corporation that committed some past crime? Though central to corporate criminal justice, legal theorists and philosophers have yet to address the basic question of how corporate identity persists through time. Simple cases, where crime and punishment are close in time and the corporation has changed little, can mislead us into thinking an answer is always easy to come by. The issue becomes more complicated when corporate criminals undergo any number of (...) transformations—rebranding, spinning-off a division, merging, changing ownership, changing management, swapping lines of business, etc. These changes are common among all corporations, including those trying to conceal or limit liability for past crimes. This article takes a first step toward developing a workable and philosophically satisfying theory of corporate personal identity and discusses its prospects for fulfilling the retributive, rehabilitative, and deterrent purposes of criminal law. (shrink)

This paper examines the need for static dispositions within the basic ontology of the powers view of properties. To lend some focus, Neil Williams’s well developed case for static dispositions is considered. While his arguments are not necessarily intended to address fundamental ontology, they still provide a useful starting point, a springboard for diving into the deeper metaphysical waters of the dispositionalist approach. Within that ontological context, this paper contends that Williams’s arguments fail to establish the need to posit static (...) dispositions, or at least any sort not already well appreciated by advocates of the powers view. The paper then proceeds to suggest an alternative motivation for positing static dispositions, the success of which depends greatly on which ontological approach to objects is paired with the powers view. (shrink)

The problem of diachronic personal identity is this: what explains why a person P1 at time T1 is numerically identical with a person P2 at a later time T2, even if they are not at those times qualitatively identical? One traditional explanation is the soul theory, according to which persons persist in virtue of their nonphysical souls. I argue here that this view faces a new and arguably insuperable dilemma: either souls, like physical bodies, change over time, in which case (...) the soul theory faces an analogue problem of diachronic soul identity, or souls, unlike physical bodies, do not change over time, in which case the soul theory cannot explain why souls relate to particular bodies over time and so at best only partially explains personal identity. I conclude that the soul theory fares no better than physicalist-friendly accounts of personal identity such as bodily- or psychological-continuity-based views. (shrink)

Sometimes in philosophy one view engenders another. If you hold the first, chances are you hold the second. But it’s not always because the first entails the second. Sometimes the tie is less clear, less clean. One such tie is between substance dualism and anti-criterialism. Substance dualism is the view that people are, at least in part, immaterial mental substances. Anti-criterialism is the view that there is no criterion of personal identity through time. Most philosophers who hold the first view (...) also hold the second. In fact, many philosophers just assume that substance dualists ought to, or perhaps even have to, accept anti-criterialism. But I aim to show that this assumption is baseless. Substance dualism doesn’t entail, suggest, support, or in any way motivate anti-criterialism, and anti-criterialism confers no benefit on dualism. Substance dualists have no special reason—and, indeed, no good reason at all—to accept anti-criterialism. Or so I shall argue. My aim isn’t to defend substance dualism, nor is it to attack anti-criterialism. My aim is to show that, contrary to a long-standing trend, dualists needn’t be anti-criterialists. Nor, as it will turn out, should they be. (shrink)

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)

In “Tropes and Ordinary Physical Objects”, Kris McDaniel argues that ordinary physical objects are fusions of monadic and polyadic tropes. McDaniel calls his view “TOPO”—for “Theory of Ordinary Physical Objects”. He argues that we should accept TOPO because of the philosophical work that it allows us to do. Among other things, TOPO is supposed to allow endurantists to reply to Mark Heller’s argument for perdurantism. But, we argue in this paper, TOPO does not help endurantists do that; indeed, we argue (...) that anyone who accepts TOPO should reject endurantism. (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)

According to one argument for Animalism about personal identity, animal , but not person , is a Wigginsian substance concept—a concept that tells us what we are essentially. Person supposedly fails to be a substance concept because it is a functional concept that answers the question “what do we do?” without telling us what we are. Since person is not a substance concept, it cannot provide the criteria for our coming into or going out of existence; animal , on the (...) other hand, can provide such criteria. This argument has been defended by Eric Olson, among others. I argue that this line of reasoning fails to show Animalism to be superior to the Psychological Approach, for the following two reasons: (1) human animal , animal , and organism are all functional concepts, and (2) the distinction between what something is and what it does is illegitimate on the reading that the argument needs. (shrink)

Whenever an object constitutes, makes up or composes another object, the objects in question share a striking number of properties. This paper is addressed to the question of what might account for the intimate relation and striking similarity between constitutionally related objects. According to my account, the similarities between constitutionally related objects are captured at least in part by means of a principle akin to that of strong supervenience. My paper addresses two main issues. First, I propose independently plausible principles (...) by means of which to delineate, in a non-ad-hoc, non-stipulative and non-circular fashion, those properties which can be expected to be shared among constitutionally related objects in virtue of their being so related from those which in general cannot be expected to be shared, or which are shared for other reasons. Secondly,I spell out in detail the nature of the supervenience-principle at work in this context. My account thus aims at isolating, in a methodologically responsible fashion, the particular sort of restricted indiscernibility principle which is a component of the constitution-relation. (shrink)

One reading of the Doctrine of Original Sin has it that we are guilty of a sin committed by Adam, thousands of years ago. Fission theorists account for this by saying that Adam fissioned after he sinned and that each of us is one of his ‘fission successors’. This paper recaps the current discussion in the literature about this theory, arguing that the proposed version does not work for reasons already raised by Rea and Hudson. I then introduce a new (...) version of fission theory that avoids the Rea-Hudson objection. (shrink)

According to the cohabitation account, all the persons that result from a fission event cohabit the same body prior to fission. This article concerns a problem for this account. Suppose Manuel and Jimena are suffering from an equally painful migraine. Unlike Jimena, however, Manuel will undergo fission. Assuming you have a spare painkiller, whom should you give it to? Intuitively, you have no more reason to give it to one or the other. The problem is that the cohabitation account suggests (...) otherwise. According to the account, there are two persons cohabiting Manuel’s body, in which case you should arguably give them the pill, since doing so alleviates the pain of more beings. One response argues that the two persons cohabiting Manuel’s body share one pain. Thus, giving them the pill alleviates no more pain than giving it to Jimena, and therefore you have no more reason to do one or the other. The goal of this article is to show that this response fails. (shrink)

The defensibility of the extended mind thesis (EMT) is often thought to hinge on the possibility of extended selves. I argue that the self cannot extend and consider the ramifications of this finding, especially for EMT. After an overview of EMT and the supposed cruciality of the extended self to the defensibility of the former thesis, I outline several lines of argument in support of the possibility of extended selves. Each line of argument appeals to a different account of diachronic (...) personal identity. I argue that no such argument for extended selves succeeds, as no account of diachronic personal identity is both plausible and supports the view that the self can extend. Next, I consider three objections that, if successful, would undercut the preceding argument that the self cannot extend. I conclude by reflecting on the implications of the conclusion that the self cannot extend, including the prospects for EMT. (shrink)

Proposed derivations of the Born rule for Everettian theory are controversial. I argue that they are unnecessary but may provide justification for a simplified version of the Principal Principle. It’s also unnecessary to replace Everett’s idea that a subject splits in measurement contexts with the idea that subjects have linear histories which partition Many worlds? Everett, quantum theory, and reality, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 181–205, 2010; Wallace in The emergent multiverse, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2012, Chapter 7; Wilson in (...) Br J Philos Sci 64:709–737, 2013; The nature of contingency: quantum physics as modal realism, Oxford University Press, Oxford, forthcoming). Linear histories were introduced to provide a concept of pre-measurement uncertainty and I explain why pre-measurement uncertainty for splitting subjects is after all coherent, though not necessary because Everett’s original fission interpretation of branching can arguably be rendered coherent without it, via reference to Vaidman, Tappenden, Sebens and Carroll and McQueen and Vaidman. A deterministic and probabilistic quantum mechanics can be made intelligible by replacing the standard collapse postulate with a no-collapse postulate which identifies objective probability with relative branch weight, supplemented by the simplified Principal Principle and some revisionary metaphysics. (shrink)

This paper aims to make headway on two related issues—one methodological, the other substantive. The former concerns cost–benefit analyses when applied to metaphysical theory choice. The latter concerns material coincidence, i.e., multiple objects occupying the same space at the same time, such as the statue and the clay from which it’s made. The issues are entwined as many reject coincidence on the grounds that it’s costly. I argue this judgment is unjustified. More generally, I set out and defend a framework (...) for the use of cost–benefit analyses in metaphysics. The framework employs a fourfold division of pretheoretical costs and benefits, and theoretical costs and benefits. Yet these do not hold equal weight. Instead I argue that the appeal to theoretical benefits is illegitimate if the theory in question cannot first account for the relevant evidence or data, including, crucially, certain bits of pretheoretical or common knowledge. This is crucial because I not only argue that material coincidence is consistent with common sense, against what is widely believed, but that coincidence may even be a feature or implication of the common sense view. Put together, the result is that accepting an anti-coincidence theory for its putative theoretical virtues at the expense of common sense is an improper usage of the cost–benefit methodology. I instead conclude that material coincidence should be accepted with equanimity—which, after all, is free. (shrink)

According to the Psychological Account of personal identity, personal identity across time is maintained by some form of psychological overlap or continuance. I show that the Psychological Account has trouble accommodating cases of transient retrograde amnesia. In such cases, the transitivity of psychological continuity may break down. I consider various means of responding to this problem, arguing that the best available response will undercut our ability to rely on intuitions about brain transplantation to support the Psychological Account. When the Psychological (...) Account is re-interpreted in such a way as to overcome the problems posed by cases of transient retrograde amnesia, it turns out that standard brain transplantation cases involve details which are strictly irrelevant according to the theory. On the other hand, these features seem to drive our intuitions about survival in these cases. In this way, my argument undermines one of the key motivations for adopting the Psychological Account. (shrink)

Animalism is at once a bold metaphysical theory and a pedestrian biological observation. For according to animalists, human persons are organisms; we are members of a certain biological species. In this article, I introduce some heretofore unnoticed data concerning the interlocking interests of human persons and human organisms. I then show that the data support animalism. The result is a novel and powerful argument for animalism. Bold or pedestrian, animalism is true.

Revisionary theories of logic or truth require revisionary theories of mind. This essay outlines nonclassically based theories of rational belief, desire, and decision making, singling out the supervaluational family for special attention. To see these nonclassical theories of mind in action, this essay examines a debate between David Lewis and Derek Parfit over what matters in survival. Lewis argued that indeterminacy in personal identity allows caring about psychological connectedness and caring about personal identity to amount to the same thing. The (...) essay argues that Lewis's treatment of two of Parfit's puzzle cases—degreed survival and fission—presuppose different nonclassical treatments of belief and desire. (shrink)

Rebecca Roache’s recent critique of David Lewis’s cohabitation view assumes that a person cannot be properly concerned about something that rules out that she ever exists. In this brief response, I argue against this assumption.

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)

Taking ontological realism about social groups as the thesis that groups are composite material objects constituted by their members, this paper considers a challenge to the very possibility that groups be regarded as material entities. Ordinarily we believe that two groups can have synchronic co-extensive memberships—for example, the choir and the rugby team—while preserving their distinctive identity conditions. We also doubt that two objects of the same kind can be in the same place at the same time, which would appear (...) to be the case when groups have identical memberships. I explain that the principle denying the synchronic co-location of objects of the same kind need not apply universally to material objects and that it is a mistake to take resistance to penetrability as a necessary feature of materiality. Therefore, initial appearances notwithstanding, groups can be in the same place at the same time. Key Words: identity • materiality • location • social group. (shrink)

Theories of personal identity in the tradition of John Locke and Derek Parfit emphasize the importance of psychological continuity and the abilities to think, to remember and to make rational choices as a basic criterion for personhood. As a consequence, persons with severe dementia are threatened to lose the status of persons. Such concepts, however, are situated within a dualistic framework, in which the body is regarded as a mere vehicle of the person, or a carrier of the brain as (...) the organ of mental faculties. Based on the phenomenology of embodiment, this paper elaborates a different approach to personal identity in dementia. In this perspective, selfhood is primarily constituted by pre-reflective self-awareness and the body memory of an individual, which consists in the embodiment and enactment of familiar habits, practices and preferences. After describing the different types of body memory, the paper develops a phenomenology of dementia as a loss of reflexivity and meta-perspective. This is contrasted with the preservation of individual forms of body memory even in the later stages of the illness. The ethical consequences of an embodied approach to dementia are outlined. A final look is given to narrativistic and constructionist concepts of the self in dementia. (shrink)

This paper examines three proposals on the difference between the complex and the simple view about personal identity: Parfit’s original introduction of the distinction, Gasser and Stefan’s definition, and Noonan’s recent proposal. I argue that the first two classify the paradigm cases of simplicity as complex, while Noonan’s proposal makes simplicity and complexity turn on features whose relevance for the distinction is questionable. Given these difficulties, I examine why we should be interested in whether a position is complex or simple. (...) I describe two purposes of having a distinction, and show that extant accounts of the complex versus simple distinction fail to serve these. I argue that unless we find a satisfying account of the difference between complex and simple positions, we should not frame discourses on personal identity in these terms. (shrink)

The debate on personal persistence has been characterized by a dichotomy which is due to its still Cartesian framwork: On the one side we find proponents of psychological continuity who connect, in Locke’s tradition, the persistence of the person with the constancy of the first-person perspective in retrospection. On the other side, proponents of a biological approach take diachronic identity to consist in the continuity of the organism as the carrier of personal existence from a third-person-perspective. Thus, what accounts for (...) someone’s persistence over time, is the continuity of his mind on the one hand, and the continuity of his body on the other. In contrast to those views, the paper intends to show that bodily existence represents the basis of selfhood across time, both as the continuity of the experiential self and as the continuity of the autopoietic organism. On the one hand, the lived body conveys a continuity of the self from a first-person perspective, namely a pre-reflective feeling of sameness or a felt constancy of subjectivity. Moreover, an analysis of awakening and sleep shows that there is a continuous transition from full wakefulness to periods of deep sleep which may thus not be regarded as a complete interruption of subjective experience. On the other hand, this constancy converges with the continuity of the organismic life process as conceived from a third-person perspective. Thus, the experiential self of bodily subjectivity and the autopoietic self of the living organism should be regarded as two aspects of one and the same life process. Finally, the lived body also exhibits a specific form of memory that results from the continual embodiment of existence: it consists of all the affinities, capacities and experiences, which a person has acquired throughout his life. Thus, it provides a continuity of self that must not be actively produced through remembering, but rather integrates the person’s entire past in his present being and potentiality. (shrink)

This paper examines three proposals on the difference between the complex and the simple view about personal identity: Parfit’s original introduction of the distinction, Gasser and Stefan’s definition, and Noonan’s recent proposal. I argue that the first two classify the paradigm cases of simplicity as complex, while Noonan’s proposal makes simplicity and complexity turn on features whose relevance for the distinction is questionable. Given these difficulties, I examine why we should be interested in whether a position is complex or simple. (...) I describe two purposes of having a distinction, and show that extant accounts of the complex versus simple distinction fail to serve these. I argue that unless we find a satisfying account of the difference between complex and simple positions, we should not frame discourses on personal identity in these terms. (shrink)

Visual forms of episodic memory and anticipatory imagination involve images that, by virtue of their perspectival organization, imply a notional subject of experience. But they contain no inbuilt reference to the actual subject, the person actually doing the remembering or imagining. This poses the problem of what (if anything) connects these two perspectival subjects and what differentiates cases of genuine memory and anticipation from mere imagined seeing. I consider two approaches to this problem. The first, exemplified by Wollheim and Velleman, (...) claims that genuinely reflexive memories and anticipations are phenomenally unselfconscious, with the co-identity of the notional and actual subjects secured by a determinate causal history. The second approach posits some distinctive phenomenal property that attaches to genuinely reflexive memories and anticipations and serves to experientially conflate the notional and actual subject. I consider a version of the second approach, derived from Kierkegaard’s discussions of phenomenal contemporaneity, and argue that this approach can better account for the possibility of affective alienation from the selves we were and will be: the way in which our sense of self and awareness of our causal history can sometimes come apart. (shrink)