I illustrate with three classical examples the mistakes arising from using a modal operator admitting multiple interpretations in the same argument; the flaws arise especially easily if no attention is paid to the range of propositional variables. Premisses taken separately might seem convincing and a substitution for a propositional variable in a modal context might seem legitimate. But there is no single interpretation of the modal operators involved under which all the premisses are plausible and the substitution successful.

Many philosophers working on personal identity and ethics say that personal identity is constituted by stories: narratives people tell or would tell about their lives. Most of them also say that this is personal identity in the ‘characterization sense’, that it is the notion people in ordinary contexts are interested in, and that it raises the ‘characterization question’. I argue that these claims are inconsistent. Narrativists can avoid the incompatibility in one of two ways: They can concede that their view (...) is not about the constitution but the epistemology of personal identity. Or they can say that it is not about personal identity at all. (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)

Sydney Shoemaker leads today’s “neo-Lockean” liberation of persons from the conservative animalist charge of “neo-Aristotelians” such as Eric Olson, according to whom persons are biological entities and who challenge all neo-Lockean views on grounds that abstracting from strictly physical, or bodily, criteria plays fast and loose with our identities. There is a fundamental mistake on both sides: a false dichotomy between bodily continuity versus psychological continuity theories of personal identity. Neo-Lockeans, like everyone else today who relies on Locke’s analysis of (...) personal identity, including Derek Parfit, have either completely distorted or not understood Locke’s actual view. Shoemaker’s defense, which uses a “package deal” definition that relies on internal relations of synchronic and diachronic unity and employs the Ramsey–Lewis account to define personal identity, leaves far less room for psychological continuity views than for my own view, which, independently of its radical implications, is that (a) consciousness makes personal identity, and (b) in consciousness alone personal identity consists—which happens to be also Locke’s actual view. Moreover, the ubiquitous Fregean conception of borders and the so-called “ambiguity of is” collapse in the light of what Hintikka has called the “Frege trichotomy.” The Ramsey–Lewis account, due to the problematic way Shoemaker tries to bind the variables, makes it impossible for the neo-Lockean ala Shoemaker to fulfill the uniqueness clause required by all such Lewis style definitions; such attempts avoid circularity only at the expense of mistaking isomorphism with identity. Contrary to what virtually all philosophers writing on the topic assume, fission does not destroy personal identity. A proper analysis of public versus perspectival identification, derived using actual case studies from neuropsychiatry, provides the scientific, mathematical and logical frameworks for a new theory of self-reference, wherein “consciousness,” “self-consciousness,” and the “I,” can be precisely defined in terms of the subject and the subject-in-itself. (shrink)

Among the questions to be raised under the heading of “personal identity” are these: “What are we?” (fundamental nature question) and “Under what conditions do we persist through time?” (persistence question). Against the dominant neo-Lockean approach to these questions, the view known as animalism answers that each of us is an organism of the species Homo sapiens and that the conditions of our persistence are those of animals. Beyond describing the content and historical background of animalism and its rivals, this (...) entry explores some of the arguments for and objections to this controversial account of our nature and persistence. (shrink)

A number of commentators claim their disability to be a part of their identity. This claim can be labelled ‘the identity claim’. It is the claim that disabling characteristics of persons can be identity-constituting. According to a central constraint on traditional discussions of personal identity over time, only essential properties can count as identity-constituting properties. By this constraint, contingent properties of persons (those they might not have instanced) cannot be identity-constituting. Viewed through the lens of traditional approaches to the problem (...) of personal identity over time, disablement is most likely to be regarded as a contingent property of a person and not an essential one. Hence, on traditional approaches, the identity claim must be false. An alternative account of identity is sketched here. It is one which exploits the idea of narrative identity, and points to five basic features of personal existence. When accounts of identity are structured in relation to these five features, it is argued, disablement can be shown to be identity-constituting, and hence the identity claim can be accepted. (shrink)

resumo Esse artigo investiga a leitura que Shaftesbury fez de Marco Aurélio, a fim de comparar a visão estóica da individual ida de e da ide nt ida de pessoal com o conceito lockia no de “self” e, de ma ne i ra mais ge ral, com os mo dos pelos quais a filosofia mo de rna entendeu o si-me s mo. A ênfase recai sobre a conexão int r í nseca ent re sistema e s u b j e (...) t i v ida de no estoicismo imperial. Discute-se a re s i s t ê nc ia de autores cont e m p o r âneos em aceitar a descrição da alma ra c io nal dos estóicos como um “self”. Também se discute a aplicação que Mic hel Foucault fez do seu conceito de “subjetivação” à id é ia estóica de “si-me s mo ”. palavras-chave Estoicismo; self; identidade pessoal; Shaftesbury; Marco Aurélio; Foucault. (shrink)

Parfit has argued for the revolutionary thesis that personal identity does not matter in ordinary survival, only the R-relation does. “Reconciliationists,” such as Lewis, have tried to stop this revolution, arguing that both personal identity and the R-relation matter. The disagreement has been between those who hold that only the R-relation matters and those who hold that, in addition, personal identity matters. But there is a third option. I argue that Parfit is right that personal identity does not matter but (...) he is wrong that the R-relation matters, and the reconciliationists are wrong to think both matter since neither does. (shrink)

This document consists primarily of an excerpt (chapter 6) from the author’s book From Brain to Cosmos. That excerpt presents an analysis of the problem of knowledge of other minds, using the concept of subjective fact that the author developed earlier in the book. (Readers unfamiliar with that concept are strongly advised to read chapters 2 and 3 of From Brain to Cosmos first. See the last page of this document for details on how to obtain those chapters.).

This document consists primarily of excerpts (chapters 5 and 10-12) from the author’s book From Brain to Cosmos. These excerpts address several traditional problems about the histories of conscious subjects, using the concept of subjective fact that the author developed earlier in the book. Topics include the persistence of conscious subjects through time, the unity or disunity of the self, and the possibility of splitting conscious subjects. (These excerpts depend heavily upon the author’s concept of subjective fact as developed in (...) From Brain to Cosmos. Readers unfamiliar with that concept are strongly advised to read chapters 2 and 3 of that book first. See the last page of this document for details on how to obtain those chapters.). (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)

Whether morality has rational authority is an open question insofar as we can seriously entertain conceptions of morality and practical reason according to which it need not be contrary to reason to fail to conform to moral requirements. Doubts about the authority of morality are especially likely to arise for those who hold a broadly prudential view of rationality. It is common to think of morality as including various other-regarding duties of cooperation, forbearance, and aid. Most of us also regard (...) moral obligations as authoritative practical considerations. But heeding these obligations appears sometimes to constrain the agent's pursuit of his own interests or aims. If we think of rationality in prudential terms–as what would promote the agent's own interests–we may wonder whether moral conduct is always rationally justifiable. Indeed, we do not need to think of rationality in exclusively prudential terms to raise this worry. The worry can arise even if there are impartial reasons–that is, nonderivative reasons to promote the welfare of others. (shrink)

In this paper I discuss the nature of the “I” (or “self”) and whether it is presupposed by the very existence of conscious experiences (as that which “has” them) or whether it is, instead, in some way constituted by them. I argue for the former view and try to show that the very nature of experience implies a non-constituted synchronic and diachronic transcendence of the experiencing “I” with regard to its experiences, an “I” which defies any objective characterization. Finally I (...) suggest that the self, though irreducible to inter-experiential relations, is not a “separately existing entity”, but should be conceived of as a dimension , namely the dimension of first-personal manifestation of the experiences. (shrink)

Lockean views of personal identity maintain that we are essentially persons who persist diachronically by virtue of being psychologically continuous with our former selves. In this article, I present a novel objection to this variant of psychological accounts, which is based on neurophysiological characteristics of the brain. While the mental states that constitute said psychological continuity reside in the cerebral hemispheres, so that for the former to persist only the upper brain must remain intact, being conscious additionally requires that a (...) structure originating in the brainstem—the ascending reticular activating system—be functional. Hence, there can be situations in which even small brainstem lesions render individuals irreversibly comatose and thus forever preclude access to their mental states, while the neural correlates of the states themselves are retained. In these situations, Lockeans are forced to regard as fulfilled their criterion of diachronic persistence since psychological continuity, as they construe it, is not disrupted. Deeming an entity that is never again going to have any mental experiences to be a person, however, is an untenable position for a psychological account to adopt. In their current form, Lockean views of personal identity are therefore incompatible with human neurophysiology. (shrink)

When does a human being cease to exist? For millennia, the answer to this question had remained largely unchanged: death had been diagnosed when heartbeat and breathing were permanently absent. Only comparatively recently, in the 1950s, rapid developments in intensive-care medicine called into question this widely accepted criterion. What had previously been deemed a permanent cessation of vital functions suddenly became reversible. -/- A new criterion of death was needed. It was suggested that the destruction of the brain could indicate (...) the death of the organism in the presence of external life support. Soon the so-called brain death became the new worldwide standard. In recent years, however, doubts about this neurological criterion have been growing. Is brain death really our death? -/- This is the question that this thesis seeks to answer. To this end, we shall connect the medical debate about the definition of death to the philosophical debate about personal identity. While we will find that the destruction of its brain does in fact not correspond to an organism’s death, we shall also ask whether the assumption that we are essentially organisms is correct. May brain death be the ceasing to exist of a different entity? -/- Substituting clinical case reports and considerations about human physiology for the use of thought experiments, the thesis takes a novel and philosophically unconventional approach to the problem of what we essentially are. We shall analyse various pathological conditions and their respective effects on the bodily and mental characteristics of our existence. We will conclude that brain death is indeed our death – but for reasons entirely different from those cited in the original justification of this criterion. (shrink)

The central fact about the problem of personal identity is that it is a problem posed by an apparent dichotomy: the dichotomy between the objective, third-person viewpoint on the one hand and the subjective perspective provided by the first-person viewpoint on the other. Everyone understands that the mind/body problem is precisely the problem of what to do about another apparent dichotomy, the duality comprising states of consciousness on the one hand and physical states of the body on the other. By (...) contrast, contemporary discussions of the problem of personal identity generally display little or no recognition of the divide which to my mind is at the heart of the problem. As a consequence, there has been a relentlessly third-personal approach to the issue, and the consequent proposal of solutions which stand no chance at all of working. I think the idea that the problem is to be clarified by an appeal to the idea of a human being is the latest manifestation of this mistaken approach. I am thinking in particular of the claim that what ought to govern our thinking on this issue is the fact that human beings constitute a natural kind, and that standard members of this kind can be said to have some sort of essence. Related to this is the idea that ‘person’, while not itself a natural kind term, is not a notion which can be framed in entire independence of this natural kind. (shrink)

The central objection to neo-Lockeanism about persons is the too many thinkers problem: NLP ends up with an absurd multiplication of thinkers. Sydney Shoemaker attempts to solve this problem by arguing that the person and the animal do not share all of the same physical properties. This, according to him, leads to the idea that mental properties are realized in the person’s physical properties only. The project of this paper is to reject Shoemaker’s physicalist solution to the too many thinkers (...) problem. I first argue that his physicalism fails to explain why two physically indistinguishable objects differ in their persistence conditions and physical properties. I then argue that Shoemaker illicitly treats the case of the person and the case of the animal differently, first in regard to cerebral function and its relation to mental properties, and second in regard to brainstem function and its relation to biological properties. This shows that Shoemaker’s solution actually undermines his entire argument. (shrink)

Moral responsibility seems to presuppose personal identity. However, there are problems with this view, raised by Derek Parfit’s arguments for the view that personal identity isn’t what matters for our practical concerns. While Parfit discusses moral responsibility only in passing, the problems that arise for the connection between moral responsibility and personal identity have recently been sharpened by David Shoemaker. This paper defends the claim that moral responsibility presupposes personal identity against these problems. It argues, first, that only reductionist views (...) about personal identity have problems with the connection between responsibility and identity, which suggests that personal identity is a non-reductionist concept. Second, it argues that while non-reductionism is problematic, there is a novel view—non-representationalism about personal identity, according to which we account for personal identity in terms of a distinctive non-representational function—that is equally well-positioned to rescue the connection as non-reductionism, without suffering from non-reductionism’s problems. (shrink)

ABSTRACTOne argument that has been suggested for conventionalism about personal identity is that it captures that certain disagreements about personal identity seem irresolvable, without being committed to the view that these disagreements are merely verbal. In this paper, I will take the considerations about disagreement used to motivate conventionalism seriously. However, I will use them to motivate a very different, novel, and as yet unexplored view about personal identity. This is the view that personal identity is a non-representational concept, the (...) nature of which isn’t to be accounted for in terms of what entity it represents, but its non-representational role. I highlight that we find structurally very similar concerns about disagreement in another philosophical debate, namely in meta-ethics. But, in meta-ethics, such sorts of considerations are, traditionally, thought to support one distinctive view: meta-ethical expressivism, a non-representational view about normative thought and discourse. This suggests that we should take a similar view seriously for personal identity. I also develop what such an unfamiliar view might look like, using expressivism as a template. On this view, judgements about personal identity are plans that regulate who to hold accountable. (shrink)

Issues pertaining to sex and gender continue to be some of the most hotly debated topics of our time. While many of the most heated disputes occur at the level of politics and public policy, metaphysics, too, has a crucial role to play in these debates. In this essay, I explore several key metaphysical debates concerning sex and gender through the lenses of two important areas in contemporary metaphysics: the metaphysics of essence and the ontology of the human person. The (...) goal here is not to advocate any particular position on these issues, but to show how the tools of contemporary metaphysics can help to offer a more comprehensive map of the conceptual terrain, indicating where major areas of agreement can be found and where the most important disagreements really lie. (shrink)

Certain contemporary philosophers have thought that the first-person, qualitative aspect of conscious experience should be taken seriously when it comes to our thinking about personal identity through time. These philosophers have thus argued that experiential continuity is essential to a person’s ability to persist identically through time. This is what I will call ‘the phenomenological theory’. In this thesis I describe the phenomenological theory and then discuss three problems that have plagued the history of this theory: the bridge problem, the (...) token problem, and the ontological problem. I will argue that a recent version of the phenomenological theory proposed by Barry Dainton and Timothy Bayne provides satisfactory answers to two of these problems, but not the third. I will conclude this thesis by proposing a superior version of the phenomenological theory—one that can handle all three problems. (shrink)

Life, whatsoever it is, is a temporal flux. Everything is doomed to change often apparently beyond our awareness. My body appears totally different now, so does my mind. I have gained new attitudes and new ambitions, and a substantial number of old ones have been discarded. But, I am still the same person in an ongoing manner. Besides, recent neuroscientific and psychological evidence has shown that our conscious perception happens as a series of discrete or bounded instants—it emerges in temporally (...) scattered, gappy, and discrete forms. But, if it is so, how does the brain persevere our self-continuity in this gappy setting? How is it possible that despite moment-to-moment changes in my appearance and mind, I am still feeling that I am that person? How can we tackle with this second by second gap and resurrection in our existence which leads to a foundation of wholeness and continuity of our self? How is continuity of self that results in a feeling that one’s life has purpose and meaning preserved? To answer these questions, the problem has been comprehended from a philosophical, psychological, and neuroscientific perspective. I realize that first and foremost fact lies in the temporal nature of identity. Having equipped with these thoughts, in this article, it is hypothesized that according to two principles self-continuity is maintained. It is supposed that there should be a precise temporal integration mechanism in the CNS with the outside world that provides us this smooth, ungappy flow of the Self. However, we are often taken for granted the importance of self-continuity, but it can be challenged by life transitions such as entering adulthood, retirement, senility, emigration, and societal changes such as immigration, globalization, and in much unfortunate and extreme cases of mental illnesses such as schizophrenia. (shrink)

Analytic Philosophy, Volume 62, Issue 1, Page 97-105, March 2021.

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)

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)

Eric Olson and Ned Markosian have, independently, complained that the ways in which the problem of personal identity has been formulated rule out certain views of personal identity just by how the problem is formulated. As a result, both have proposed alternative formulations, each attempting theory neutrality. They have not succeeded, however, since both of their formulations, as well as the formulations that they have rejected, are biased against presentist solutions to the problem, and some are biased against four-dimensionalist solutions, (...) as well as stage theory solutions. In this paper, I show how previous formulations, including Olson’s and Markosian’s, are biased in the ways mentioned, and I propose a list of criteria that any formulation of the problem must meet in order to be theory neutral. Finally, I attempt a formulation that is neutral. (shrink)

We argue that animalism is the only materialist account of personal identity that can account for the autonomy that we typically think of ourselves as possessing. All the rival materialist theories suffer from a moral version of the problem of too many thinkers when they posit a human person that overlaps a numerically distinct human animal. The different persistence conditions of overlapping thinkers will lead them to have interests that conflict, which in many cases prevents them both from autonomously forming (...) and acting on the same intentions. These problems are exacerbated by problems of self-reference plaguing the overlapping thinkers. We contend that the impossibility of simultaneous autonomous action by animals and persons provides a reason to favor animalism over Neo-Lockeanism, Four-Dimensionalism, Constitution theory, and brain-size views of the person. We anticipate and reject arguments that the autonomy of the person and the animal can be shown to be compatible by relying upon either the Parfitian thesis that identity isn’t what matters or claiming that animals acquire the interests of the person they constitute. (shrink)

The concept of time discounting introduces weights on future goods to make these less valu- able. Famously, both the specic functional form of time discounting and its normative sta- tus are contested. To address these problems, this paper provides a measurement-theoretic framework of representation for time discounting. The general representation theorem char- acterises time discounting factors as ratio-scale representations of dierences in temporally extended prospects. This framework of representation is used to reconsider interpretations of time discounting factors such as time (...) preferences, uncertainty and preference change. It also allows to compare these interpretations with regards to their normative appeal, the kinds of reductionism regarding time and preference they imply and the specic functional form of time discounting they suggest. Farther, multiple-self interpretations of decision-makers become available, such that a time discounting factor represents the degree of connectedness between temporal selves in a person. (shrink)

Many requirements of rationality rely for their application on facts about identity at a time. Take the requirement not to have contradictory beliefs. It is irrational if a single agent bel...

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)

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)

Response to human head transplant proposal and pertinent personal identity questions.

A surgical head-transplant technique, HEAVEN, promises to offer significantly improved quality of life for quadriplegics and others whose minds are functional, but whose bodies require artificial support to continue living. HEAVEN putatively actualizes a thought-experiment long debated by philosophers concerning the definition of personhood and criterion of personal identity through time and change. HEAVEN’s advocates presume to preserve the identity of the person whose head is transplanted onto another’s living body, leaving one’s previous body behind as one would their corpse. (...) Various classical and contemporary theories of personhood and personal identity would support this presumption, while others would contest it as providing an accurate or complete view of what is essential for a human person to persist through this procedure. This paper brings such theories to bear in analyzing whether HEAVEN can indeed deliver on its promise of complete ontological survival for the person whose head is transplanted. (shrink)

Many experimental findings with split-brain subjects intuitively suggest that each such subject has two minds. The conceptual and empirical basis of this duality intuition has never been fully articulated. This article fills that gap, by offering a reconstruction of early neuropsychological literature on the split-brain phenomenon. According to that work, the hemispheres operate independently of each other insofar as they interact via the mediation of effection and transduction—via behavior and sensation, essentially. This is how your mind and my mind interact (...) with each other, however, giving rise to the intuition that a split-brain subject has two minds. (shrink)

(2013). Will it be me? Identity, concern and perspective. Canadian Journal of Philosophy: Vol. 43, No. 2, pp. 206-226.

Our topic is the ontology and persistence conditions of material objects. One widely held doctrine is that identity-over-time has causal commitments. Another is that identity-over-time is just identity as it relates one object that exists at two times. We believe that a tension exists between these two apparently sensible positions: very roughly, if identity is the primary conceptual component of identity-over-time and—as is plausible—identity is noncausal, then the conceptual origins of the causal commitments of identity-over-time become a mystery. We will (...) begin by formulating the two widely held doctrines and our puzzle more fully and more carefully. Then, the remainder of the paper will be devoted to analyzing views one might adopt that could minimize the tension. (shrink)

In this quite modestly ambitious essay, I'll generally just assume that, for the most part, our "scientifically informed" commonsense view of the world is true. Just as it is with such unthinking things as planets, plates and, I suppose, plants, too, so it also is with all earthly thinking beings, from people to pigs and pigeons; each occupies a region of space, however large or small, in which all are spatially related to each other. Or, at least, so it is (...) with the bodies of these beings. And, even as each of these ordinary entities extends through some space, so, also, each endures through some time. In line with that, each ordinary entity is at least very largely, and is perhaps entirely, an enduring physical entity (which allows that many might have certain properties that aren't purely physical properties.) Further, each ordinary enduring entity is a physically complex entity: Not only is each composed of parts, but many of these parts, whether or not absolutely all of them, are themselves enduring physical entities, and many of them also are such physically complex continuing entities. When an ordinary entity undergoes a significant change, then, at least generally, this change will involve changes concerning that entity's constituting physical parts, whether it be a rearrangement of (some of) these parts, or a loss of parts, or a gain of parts, or whatever. Often, the entity will still exist even after the change occurs. As we may well suppose, this happens when, from two strokes of an ax, an ordinary log loses just a chip of wood. As we may then say, such a change conforms with the log's "persistence conditions." Somewhat less often, such an ordinary entity undergoes a change that means an end to it: When a bomb's explosion makes our log become just so many widely scattered motes of dust, the log will no longer exist. Such a momentous change doesn't conform with the log's persistence conditions. (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)

In this paper, it is our purpose to argue for a processual conception of ill-person- identity. To do so, we will review some of the main answers that philosophy has given to the question of personal identity. We will review certain proposals on how to conceive illness and ill-person-identity, as well. Within the frame of a processual approach to ontology, we will focus on a non-dualistic processual-relational interpretation of biological organisms.

In a successful series of papers, Schroer and Schroer presented a reductionist narrative account of personal identity. They claimed that their reductionist account had advantages over traditional narrative theories. In this paper I intend to show that they were wrong. Although it is possible to defend a reductionist narrative account, the Schroers’ theory has a problem of circularity. And solving that problem will cause their theory to have much more problems than non-reductionist narrative theories. Consequently, they should either present a (...) new and improved reductionist narrative account, or accept that non-reductionist narrative theories are better suited to account for the problem of personal identity. (shrink)

In Are We Bodies or Souls? Richard Swinburne presents an updated formulation and defense of his dualist theory of the human person. On this theory, human persons are compound substances, composed of both bodies and souls. The soul is the only essential component of the human person, however, and so each of us could, in principle, continue to exist without our bodies, composed of nothing more than our souls. As Swinburne himself points out, his theory of the human person shares (...) many similarities with the hylomorphic theory of the human person espoused by Thomas Aquinas. Swinburne suggests at one point that the differences between the two theories are “almost entirely terminological,” pertaining chiefly to how each understands the term ‘substance’. In this essay, I aim to show that the differences between Swinburne’s Cartesian substance dualism and Thomistic hylomorphism are much more significant than that. I argue, moreover, that the distinctive claims of Thomistic hylomorphism allow it to successfully avoid some key concerns for Swinburne’s view. (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)

Our topic is the ontology and persistence conditions of material objects. One widely held doctrine is that identity-over-time has causal commitments. Another is that identity-over-time is just identity as it relates one object that exists at two times. We believe that a tension exists between these two apparently sensible positions: very roughly, if identity is the primary conceptual component of identity-over-time and—as is plausible—identity is noncausal, then the conceptual origins of the causal commitments of identity-over-time become a mystery. We will (...) begin by formulating the two widely held doctrines and our puzzle more fully and more carefully. Then, the remainder of the paper will be devoted to analyzing views one might adopt that could minimize the tension. (shrink)