In On Not Expecting Too Much from Narrative, Lamarque (2004) challenges theories of narrative identity. For while narrativity might tell us something of interest about our selves, the requirements for this would be so strong that theories of narrative identity would not be able to meet them. In contrast, he identifies minimal conditions for narrativity, so that our identity could be of a narrative nature as well. But in that case, the (...) concept of narrativity would be so weak that it would hardly be able to tell us anything about ourselves. I first examine Lamarque's criticism of narrative concepts of identity. He shows that stories, understood in a minimal sense, are not found but told and that they establish a temporal relationship between at least two events. I then examine the concept of teleological explanations of action. Considering the problem of deviant causal chains that causalists are confronted with, they are at least a serious alternative to causal explanations of action. By doing that, I also attempt to render plausible the irreducibility of teleological explanations of action to causal ones. Subsequently, I outline some features of teleological explanations of action. Finally, I defend the idea that teleological explanations of action are essentially narrative explanations of action because they meet Lamarque's minimal conditions of narratives. I then make the case that these kinds of narratives are not trivial with respect to our personal identity but, on the contrary, are the prerequisite under which we can perceive ourselves as rational agents. (shrink)

In On Not Expecting Too Much from Narrative, Lamarque (2004) challenges theories of narrative identity. For while narrativity might tell us something of interest about our selves, the requirements for this would be so strong that theories of narrative identity would not be able to meet them. In contrast, he identifies minimal conditions for narrativity, so that our identity could be of a narrative nature as well. But in that case, the (...) concept of narrativity would be so weak that it would hardly be able to tell us anything about ourselves. I first examine Lamarque's criticism of narrative concepts of identity. He shows that stories, understood in a minimal sense, are not found but told and that they establish a temporal relationship between at least two events. I then examine the concept of teleological explanations of action. Considering the problem of deviant causal chains that causalists are confronted with, they are at least a serious alternative to causal explanations of action. By doing that, I also attempt to render plausible the irreducibility of teleological explanations of action to causal ones. Subsequently, I outline some features of teleological explanations of action. Finally, I defend the idea that teleological explanations of action are essentially narrative explanations of action because they meet Lamarque's minimal conditions of narratives. I then make the case that these kinds of narratives are not trivial with respect to our personal identity but, on the contrary, are the prerequisite under which we can perceive ourselves as rational agents. (shrink)

This paper focuses on three theories of personal identity that incorporate the idea that personal identity is the result of a person’s adopting certain attitudes towards certain mental states and actions. I call these theories subjective theories of personal identity. I argue that it is not clear what the proponents of these theories mean by “personal identity”. On standard theories, such as animalism or psychological theories, the (...) term “personal identity” refers to the numerical identity of persons and its analysis provides the persistence conditions for persons. I argue that if the subjective theories purport to provide a criterion of numerical personal identity, they fail. A different interpretation may suggest that they purport to provide a non-numerical type of identity for the purpose of providing plausible analyses of certain identity-related practical concerns. I argue that the criteria the subjective theories provide fail to capture several of the identity-related concerns. As a result, this interpretation must be rejected as well. (shrink)

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

The problem of personal identity contains various questions and issues, but the main issue is persistence; how can one person remain the same over time? Modern philosophers have proposed various solutions to this problem; however, none are without problems. David Hume rejected the notion of personal identity as fictitious and posited a theory that personal identity is merely a bundle of perceptions which does not remain the same over time. Hume’s approach to personal (...) identity is flawed, and Derek Parfit pushed back against Hume’s complete rejection of personal identity through his argument of psychological continuity; a continuous chain of overlapping cognitive connections between beliefs, preferences, memories, and other characteristics can meet the criterion of identity. However, Parfit falls short in only acknowledging mental features as the essential property of personal identity; physical features such as age, race, sex, etc. have a significant impact on one’s understanding of themselves. Through a combination of Hume’s bundle theory and Parfit’s psychological continuity, an understanding of what personal identity is and how it is able to remain constant over time can be reached. In this paper, I argue that personal identity is a bundle of mental and physical features that persists through time through psychological continuity. (shrink)

The special and unique attitudes that we take towards events in our futures/pasts—e.g., attitudes like the dread of an impeding pain—create a challenge for “Reductionist” accounts that reduce persons to aggregates of interconnected person stages: if the person stage currently dreading tomorrow’s pain is numerically distinct from the person stage that will actually suffer the pain, what reason could the current person stage have for thinking of that future pain as being his? One reason everyday subjects believe they have a (...) substantially extended temporal existence stems from introspection—they introspectively experience their selves as being temporally extended. In this paper, I examine whether a Reductionist about personal identity can co-opt this explanation. Using Galen Strawson’s recent work on self-experience as a resource, I reach both a negative and a positive conclusion about the prospects of such a position. First, the relevant kind of self-experience—i.e., the introspective experience of one’s self as being a substantially temporally extended entity—will not automatically arise within a person stage simply in virtue of that stage being psychologically connected to/continuous with other person stages. Second, the relevant kind of self-experience will arise, however, in virtue of person stages weaving together their respective experiences, actions, etc. via a narrative. This positive conclusion points towards a new Reductionist position that focuses upon a narrative, and not mere psychological continuity, in attempting to justify the special attitudes we take towards events in our futures/pasts. (shrink)

This paper introduces three new criteria that a theory of personal identity ought to satisfy: (1) material holism, (2) narrative unity, and (3) narrative integrity. Material holism guards against the undesirable consequence of positing the person as part and existentially distinct from the organismal whole, of which it is dependent and interconnected. Narrative unity ensures that continuity between the beginning, middle, and end of a human life is sufficiently accounted for. Narrative integrity secures fidelity (...) and congruence between each part and the whole, the whole to each part. Jeff McMahan’s Embodied Mind Account (EM) fails to satisfy each of these. On McMahan’s account, human persons and human organisms are distinct entities, human persons come into existence after its human organism, and human persons may go out of existence before their human organism. Moreover, fetuses, infants, the congenitally severely cognitively impaired, those with severe dementia, and the comatose are non-persons. A theory of personal identity that incorporates holism and narrative can provide a better explanation of human existence, life and death, and the identity paradox of dicephalic twins. If accepted, EM must either be rejected or ameliorated, and the new criteria ought to be incorporated in contemporary research of personal identity. (shrink)

Michel Gondry and Charlie Kaufman’s 2004 Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which celebrated its fifteenth anniversary in 2019, is an extended thought experiment on the nature of memory, minds, and persons. The memory erasure thought experiment presented in the film—and its implications for personal identity—raises poignant questions for the ethicist, epistemologist, neuroscientist, metaphysician, and cognitive scientist. In this paper, I explore the rich insights the film has to offer interdisciplinary studies of memory, providing a case study in (...) how narrative can uniquely contribute to memory research, while also maintaining philosophical rigor and fidelity to scientific discoveries about memory. Turning to the philosophical implications of memory erasure, I consider memory erasure in the context of several leading views of personal identity and proposed answers to the persistence question of personal identity, assessing the challenges and complications that the memory erasure thought experiment brought to life by Eternal Sunshine poses to these theories. I argue that the psychological continuity view of personal identity—in its various iterations—does not allow an individual to truly survive the memory erasure procedure. The memory erasure thought experiment presented in Eternal Sunshine—and its metaphysical and epistemological consequences—reveal how we establish the relationship between memories and selfhood, how to define personhood in the presence of both hypothetical and real-world memory loss, and what experiences we value in human life. (shrink)

This paper explores the implications of extended and distributed cognition theory for our notions of personal identity. On an extended and distributed approach to cognition, external information is under certain conditions constitutive of memory. On a narrative approach to personal identity, autobiographical memory is constitutive of our diachronic self. In this paper, I bring these two approaches together and argue that external information can be constitutive of one’s autobiographical memory and thus also of one’s diachronic (...) self. To develop this claim, I draw on recent empirical work in human-computer interaction, looking at lifelogging technologies in both healthcare and everyday contexts. I argue that personal identity can neither be reduced to psychological structures instantiated by the brain nor by biological structures instantiated by the organism, but should be seen as an environmentally-distributed and relational construct. In other words, the complex web of cognitive relations we develop and maintain with other people and technological artifacts partly determines our self. This view has conceptual, methodological, and normative implications: we should broaden our concepts of the self as to include social and artifactual structures, focus on external memory systems in the (empirical) study of personal identity, and not interfere with people’s distributed minds and selves. (shrink)

A popular “Reductionist” account of personal identity unifies person stages into persons in virtue of their psychological continuity with one another. One objection to psychological continuity accounts is that there is more to our personal identity than just mere psychological continuity: there is also an active process of self-interpretation and self-creation. This criticism can be used to motivate a rival account of personal identity that appeals to the notion of a narrative. To the (...) extent that they comment upon the issue, proponents of narrative accounts typically reject Reductionist metaphysics that (ontologically) reduce persons to aggregates of person stages. In contrast to this trend, we seek to develop a narrative account of personal identity from within Reductionist metaphysics: we think person stages are unified into persons in virtue of their narrative continuity with one another. We argue that this Reductionist version of the narrative account avoids some serious problems facing non-Reductionist versions of the narrative account. (shrink)

A main element in Richard Swinburne’s (2019) argument for substance dualism concerns the conditions of a person’s continued existence over time. In this commentary I aim to question two things: first, whether the kind of imaginary cases that Swinburne relies on to make his case should be accorded the kind of weight he supposes; and second, whether philosophers should be concerned to give any substantial theory, of the sort that dualism and its competitors are apparently meant to provide, to explain (...) the conditions of personal identity after all. My suggestion, instead, will be that the concept of a person’s continued existence is better taken as philosophically unanalyzable. (shrink)

Locke’s theory of personal identity was philosophically groundbreaking for its attempt to establish a non-substantial identity condition. Locke states, “For the same consciousness being preserv’d, whether in the same or different Substances, the personal Identity is preserv’d” (II.xxvii.13). Many have interpreted Locke to think that consciousness identifies a self both synchronically and diachronically by attributing thoughts and actions to a self. Thus, many have attributed to Locke either a memory theory or an appropriation theory of (...) personal identity. But the former stumble on circularity and the latter is insufficient for Locke’s moral theory insofar as he is committed to a theory of divine rectification. The common problem is that Locke’s theory seems to demand an objective, or metaphysical, fact of a continuing consciousness that does not appeal to a traditional notion of substance for the continuity. I’m suggesting something new. In II.xxvii of the Essay, we see an ambiguity in Locke’s use of the term ‘consciousness’. Locke seems to see consciousness as both a mental state by means of which we are aware of ourselves as perceiving and as the ongoing self we are aware of in these conscious states. First, I make the textual argument why we should read Locke as having a conception of a metaphysical fact of a continuing consciousness that does not appeal to thinking or bodily substance to establish its continuity. I then argue that the metaphysical fact of an enduring consciousness is revealed to us as a phenomenological fact of experience. Due to the nature of certain kinds of perceptual situations we have an experience of ourselves as temporally extended. Although the text bears out that Locke seemed to think there is a fact of an ongoing consciousness, I argue that it is consistent with his reluctance elsewhere that he makes no further epistemological or ontological claims about it. Finally, I provide an account of Locke’s understanding of memory and its relation to consciousness that supports the claim that consciousness is something ontologically distinct from either thinking or bodily substance. (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)

The paper aims to present two distinct ways of defending John Locke’s theory of personal identity from Thomas Reid’s objection. First, it will be argued that this objection is not effective since it starts from a misunderstanding of Locke’s theory. The identity of a person is not preserved by the psychological continuity of consciousness, as Reid understood it, but by its ontological continuity: the existence of the same consciousness preserves the personal identity. Secondly, it will (...) be argued that it is possible to reply to that objection in the light of the observation that the personal identity is preserved by the identity of the man: person and man are connected by means of the notion of body. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to introduce, interpret, and develop two incompatible process -ontological theories of personal identity that have received little attention in analytic metaphysics. The first theory derives from the notion of personal identity proposed in Alfred North Whitehead’s philosophy, but I interpret this notion differently from previous commentators. The Whiteheadian theory may appeal to those who believe that personal identity involves an entity or entities that are essentially dynamic, but (...) has nothing to do with diachronic objectual identity : the binary equivalence relation that every entity bears to itself, and only to itself, even after undergoing intrinsic change. The Whiteheadian theory may also find favor with those who, like Whitehead, reject the possibility of pure processes and hold that in every becoming, something—which need not be an object, thing, or individual substance—becomes. The second theory derives from the notion of recurrent dynamics presented in Johanna Seibt’s General Process Theory. The Seibtian theory may appeal to those who believe that personal identity involves not only an entity or entities that are essentially dynamic, but also the relation of diachronic objectual identity. The Seibtian theory may also find favor with those who, like Broad and Sellars, find reason to postulate pure processes. (shrink)

The paper discusses Thomas Reid's objection to David Hume's theory of personal identity. The hypothesis states that this criticism is not effective because it is based on a misunderstanding of Hume’s theory, namely, that Hume would have admitted a negative ontological thesis - the inexistence of a mind beyond perceptions - and a positive ontological thesis - a mind reduced to a bundle of perceptions. After explaining in what measures Reid’s objection is based upon this misunderstanding, the paper (...) shows why Hume does not accept those theses,. (shrink)

This paper assesses the first-person authority account (FPA) of gender, according to which X's self-identification of what X's gender is, is the final say on what X's gender is, such that if others disagree, they are mistaken. One main reason in support of FPA is respecting X's autonomy—that is, overriding X's self-identification amounts to denying X's autonomy. Ozturk criticizes this view using analogies of religious and patriotic self-identifications, such that there are cases in which someone can permissibly claim that another (...) is not, say, a true Muslim or a true patriot. This implies that there might also be cases of permissible rejections of gender self-identification. Ozturk offers instead the negotiative theory of identity, according to which it is permissible to reject a self identification as long as three constraints are satisfied: no harm is done to the self-identifier, and their privacy and dignity are not violated. (This essay is a slightly revised version of that found in the 7th edition of The Philosophy of Sex.). (shrink)

In this paper, I defend the idea that we need a metaphysical theory to justify identity-related practical concerns, such as self-concern. I outline D. Parfit’s theory, in which the concerns receive a metaphysical justification. Then, I focus on two objections: C. Korsgaard’s claim that the concerns are justified by the unity of agency, and M. Johnston’s contention that the concerns are prima facie justified independently of a metaphysical theory. I argue that even if these theories have a point, (...) they do not cover a range of situations in which justification may be sought. It is in these situations that a metaphysical theory may find its place. (shrink)

I am going to defend a diagnosis of Hume’s recantation that I have already defended—rather unsuccessfully—in more than one publication. My excuse for trying again is that I shall now offer a more carefully qualified defense. My diagnosis was, and still is, that in the Appendix to the Treatise Hume came to see that he could not account for the necessary ownership of perceptions —i.e., for the fact that this very perception could not have occurred in a different set.

Our ability to tell stories about ourselves has captivated many theorists, and some have taken these developments for an opportunity to answer long-standing questions about the nature of personhood. In this essay I employ two skeptical arguments to show that this move was a mistake. The first argument rests on the observation that storytelling is revisionary. The second implies that our stories about ourselves are biased in regard to our existing self-image. These arguments undercut narrative theories of (...) class='Hi'>identity, but they leave room for a theory of narrative self-knowledge. The theory accommodates the first skeptical argument because there are event descriptions with retrospective assertibility conditions, and it accommodates the second argument by denying us epistemic privilege in regard to our own past. The result is that we do know our past through storytelling, but that it is a contingent feature of some of our stories that they are about ourselves. (shrink)

In this paper, I present an informational approach to the nature of personal identity. In “Plato and the problem of the chariot”, I use Plato’s famous metaphor of the chariot to introduce a specific problem regarding the nature of the self as an informational multiagent system: what keeps the self together as a whole and coherent unity? In “Egology and its two branches” and “Egology as synchronic individualisation”, I outline two branches of the theory of the self: one (...) concerning the individualisation of the self as an entity, the other concerning the identification of such entity. I argue that both presuppose an informational approach, defend the view that the individualisation of the self is logically prior to its identification , and suggest that such individualisation can be provided in informational terms. Hence, in “A reconciling hypothesis: the three membranes model”, I offer an informational individualisation of the self, based on a tripartite model, which can help to solve the problem of the chariot. Once this model of the self is outlined, in “ICTs as technologies of the self” I use it to show how ICTs may be interpreted as technologies of the self. In “The logic of realisation”, I introduce the concept of “realization” (Aristotle’s anagnorisis ) and support the rather Spinozian view according to which, from the perspective of informational structural realism, selves are the final stage in the development of informational structures. The final “Conclusion: from the egology to the ecology of the self” briefly concludes the article with a reference to the purposeful shaping of the self, in a shift from egology to ecology. (shrink)

Our aim in this entry is to articulate the state of the art in the moral psychology of personal identity. We begin by discussing the major philosophical theories of personal identity, including their shortcomings. We then turn to recent psychological work on personal identity and the self, investigations that often illuminate our person-related normative concerns. We conclude by discussing the implications of this psychological work for some contemporary philosophical theories and suggesting fruitful (...) areas for future work on personal identity. (shrink)

The vast advances in biometrics over the past several decades have brought with them a host of pressing concerns. Philosophical scrutiny has already been devoted to many of the relevant ethical and political issues, especially ones arising from matters of privacy, bias, and security in data collection. But philosophers have devoted surprisingly little attention to the relevant metaphysical issues, in particular, ones concerning matters of personal identity. This paper aims to take some initial steps to correct this oversight. (...) After discussing the philosophical problem of personal identity, the ways in which the notion of biometric identity connects with, or fails to connect with, the philosophical notion of personal identity is explored. Though there may be some good reasons to use biometric identity to track personal identity, it is contended that biometric identity is not the same thing as personal identity and thus that biometrics researchers should stop talking as if it were. (shrink)

This essay develops a theory of identities, selves, and ‘the self’ that both explains the sense in which selves are narratively constituted and also explains how the self relates to a person's individual autobiographical identity and to their various social identities. I argue that identities are the contents of narratively structured representations, some of which are hosted individually and are autobiographical in form, and others of which are hosted collectively and are biographical in form. These identities, in turn, give (...) rise to selves of various sorts—true selves, autobiographical selves, public and private selves, merely possible selves, and so on—which are the characters (or presupposed subjects) that appear in our various identities. Although the theory I develop bears some obvious affinities with the view that selves are fictional characters, the two views are in fact distinct, for reasons explained at the end. (shrink)

Marya Schechtman's The Constitution of Selves presented an impressive attempt to persuade those working on personal identity to give up mainstream positions and take on a narrative view instead. More recently, she has presented new arguments with a closely related aim. She attempts to convince us to give up the view of identity as a matter of psychological continuity, using Derek Parfit's story of the “Nineteenth Century Russian” as a central example in making the case against (...) Parfit's own view, and offers a form of narrative theory as a way out of the problem. In this paper I consider this new case, and argue that we should not be persuaded towards the narrative. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: This essay examines and criticizes a set of Kantian objections to Parfit's attempt in Reasons and Persons to connect his theory of personal identity to practical rationality and moral philosophy. Several of Parfit's critics have tried to sever the link he forges between his metaphysical and practical conclusions by invoking the Kantian thought that even if we accept his metaphysical theory of personal identity, we still have good practical grounds for rejecting that theory when deliberating (...) about what to do. The argument between Parfit and his opponents illuminates broader questions about the relationship between our metaphysical beliefs and ourpractical reasons.RÉSUMÉ: Cet article examine et critique un ensemble d'objections kantiennes à la tentative de Parfit, dans Reasons and Persons, d'ajuster sa théorie de l'identité personnelle à la rationalité pratique et à la philosophie morale. Plusieurs des critiques de Parfit ont essayé de rompre le lien qu'il tisse entre ses conclusions métaphysiques et pratiques en évoquant l'idée kantienne selon -laquelle, même si nous acceptons sa théorie métaphysique de l'identité personnelle, il existe cependant de bonnes raisons pratiques de rejeter cette théorie lorsque nous délibérons à propos de ce que nous devons faire. Le débat entre Parfit et ses adversaires nous éclaire sur un questionnement plus large à propos du rapport entre croyance métaphysique et raison pratique. (shrink)

There is a conflict between a strictly political approach to LGBT rights, in which the battle must never cease. and the less encountered notion that individuals can let the battle settle into the background and simply get on with unpolitical life. at least unpolitical at home. The article takes the example of India as a salient place to view this conflict. As a democratic nation, India has had some limited progress in protecting LGBT rights. How its massively differentiated and traditional (...) society has adopted and tolerated this moral enjoinder is another matter. Certainly, acceptance is as important as legal recognition. But how are the politics faring at the individual level? One of the best media for feeling a nation’s political pulse is not internet or television but literature. Two current Indian authors exemplify how, at the personal level, some sexual politicking has already succeeded, in some social realms, by almost disappearing from the narrative. (shrink)

One of the most prominent ethical concerns regarding emerging neurotechnologies is mental privacy. This is the idea that we should have control over access to our neural data and to the information about our mental processes and states that can be obtained by analyzing it. A key issue is whether this information needs more stringent protection than other kinds of personal information. I will articulate and support the view, underlying recent regulatory frameworks, that mental privacy requires a special treatment (...) because of its relation to relevant aspects of personal identity. It has been suggested that this approach could be supported by the idea that mental privacy constitutes a fundamental psychological dimension of privacy. The connection between this psychological view of privacy and identity can be traced back to Irwin Altman’s idea that privacy is an interpersonal boundary regulation process. However, it is not clear whether this notion of privacy can be associated with a conception of identity that is relevant in contemporary neuroethics. I will suggest that the narrative and relational approach to identity, a prominent view in recent ethical discussions of neurotechnology, lines up with key aspects of Altman’s proposal. I suggest that if mental privacy is an essential component of identity, the latter could be affected by technological mind-reading. (shrink)

This paper addresses a question concerning psycho­logical continuity, i.e., which features preserve the same psychological subject over time; this is not the same question as the one concerning the necessary and sufficient conditions for personal identity. Marc Slors defends an account of psychological continuity that adds two features to Derek Parfit’s Relation R, namely narrativity and embodiment. Slors’s account is a significant improvement on Parfit’s, but still lacks an explicit acknowledgment of a third feature that I call relationality. (...) Because they are usually regarded as cases of radical discontinuity, I start my discussion from the experiences of psychological disruption undergone by victims of severe violence and trauma. As it turns out, the challenges we encounter in granting continuity to the experiences of violence and trauma victims are germane to those we encounter in granting continuity to the experiences of subjects in non-traumatic contexts. What is missing in the most popular accounts of psychological continuity is an explicit acknowledgment of the links that tie our psychological lives to other subjects. A more persuasive notion of psychological continuity is not only embodied and narrative, as is Slors’s notion, but also explicitly relational. (shrink)

Digital technology has prompted philosophers to rethink some of the fundamental categories we use to make sense of the world and ourselves. Particularly, the concept of ‘identity’ and its reconfiguration in the digital age has sparked much debate in this regard. While many studies have addressed the impact of the digital on personal and social identities, the concept of ‘collective identity’ has been remarkably absent in such inquiries. In this article, I take the context of social movements (...) as an entry point to discuss the reconfiguration of collective identity in social media environments. I do so by introducing a narrative approach to collective identity. I argue that Twitter’s affordances invite new ways of constructing collective identities and imply a shifting relationship between the individual and the collective. (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)

I intend to discuss Hume’s theory of personal identity in Books I and II of the Treatise of Human Nature. First, I intend to argue that Hume’s distinction between a ‘personal identity with regard to thought and imagination’ and a ‘personal identity with regard to passions and self-interest’ is only methodological, not radical. That is, the philosopher does not sug-gest the existence of two distinct ideas of personal identity in mind. Secondly, I (...) try to show the contribution of the passions of pride and humility to the production of a belief in personal identity. Pride and humility contribute to the liveliness of this belief by producing the person’s interest in his sensations and actions of the past and the future. Thirdly, I want to show how passions and self-interest make it possible to explain the corporeal aspect of the belief in personal identity. I propose to discuss how the body and its qualities can be understood as constituent elements of the notion of personal identity. (shrink)

When talking about personal identity in the context of medical ethics, ethicists tend to borrow haphazardly from different philosophical notions of personal identity, or to abjure these abstract metaphysical concerns as having nothing to do with practical questions in medical ethics. In fact, however, part of the moral authority for respecting a patient’s self-regarding decisions can only be made sense of if we make certain assumptions that are central to a particular, psychological picture of personal (...) identity, namely, that patients will remain psychologically connected to a certain degree with their future selves. I draw this out, show problems with approaches in medical ethics based on alternate theories of personal identity that do not recognise this, and explore some important implications. Namely, I show how this recognition can better explain the circumstances under which we should respect advance directives and why, and how it can better make sense of patient fears that they will not "survive" personality-altering deep brain stimulation procedures, and provide guidance on approaching patient decisions concerning this type of procedure in a manner that captures and addresses such concerns. (shrink)

Nancy Jecker and Andrew Ko (2017) wish to present an account of personal identity which captures what matters to the patient and places the patient at the center of medical decisions. They focus particularly on medical interventions in the brain that can cause drastic changes in personality; under what circumstances should we say the patient has 'survived' these changes? More specifically, how can we best understand the notion of survival in a way that captures what is of concern (...) to the patient? This goal is laudable, however, their chosen account of narrative identity is ill-suited to this task for one reason in particular; it does not give sufficient guidance in predicting which medical decisions are likely to be experienced as disruptive to identity. (shrink)

In this paper, I provide an analysis of Marya Schechtman's theory of personal identity defended in her book Staying Alive: Personal Identity, Practical Concerns, and the Unity of a Life.

Legal theorists have proposed several theories to justify statutes of limitations in the criminal law, but none of these normative theories is generally accepted. This chapter investigates the related descriptive question as to whether ordinary people have the intuition that legal punishment becomes less appropriate as time passes from the date of the offense and, if they do, what factors play a role in these intuitions. Five studies demonstrate that there is an intuitive statute of limitations on both (...) legal punishment and moral criticism, and that these intuitions arise, in part, from judgments about changes in psychological connectedness over time. (shrink)

Hume’s theory of personal identity is developed in response to Locke’s account of personal identity. Yet it is striking that Hume does not emphasize Locke’s distinction between persons and human beings. It seems even more striking that Hume’s account of the self in Books 2 and 3 of the Treatise has less scope for distinguishing persons from human beings than his account in Book 1. This is puzzling, because Locke originally introduced the distinction in order to (...) answer questions of moral accountability and Hume’s discussion of the self in Book 2 provides the foundation of his moral theory in Book 3. In response to the puzzle I show that Locke and Hume hold different moral and religious views and these differences are important to explain why their theories of personal identity differ. (shrink)

The project takes as its starting point our conflicting intuitions about personal identity exposed by Bernard Williams' thought experiment involving the switching of bodies in "The Self and the Future." The conflicted intuitions are identified as animalist and psychologist and correspond roughly with the two major approaches to personal identity. The traditional strategy to resolve the conflict---thought experiments---is critically examined and the project concludes that proper thought experiments will reveal the conflict but are unlikely to resolve (...) it. A new reading of the conflict is proposed. The concept of the person is a cluster concept with distinct components: biological human beings, rational agency and psychological continuity, where the latter is construed as the temporal analog of phenomenological unity at a time. The project then suggests that moral theory is best pursued not by a naturalist conception of persons that unites the components of the cluster, but by a novel conception that separates them. This can be accomplished best by eliminating the concept of the person altogether. Objections that the concept of the person is ineliminable are considered and rejected, as are objections that the nature of conflict is not reason enough to abandon the concept. Personhood's centrality for value theory is questioned and the eliminativist strategy is defended on the grounds that responsibility, self-concern and moral rights are best analyzed with the component concepts instead of the cluster concept. Eliminativism is therefore preferable to competing accounts of personal identity because the former is better suited for moral theory. Among the advantages are the ability to: attribute responsibility to group agents without calling them persons, make sense of our conflicting demonstrations of self-concern without taking them as evidence for conflicting theories of personal identity, and attribute moral rights to entities who fail to meet traditional criteria for personhood but who are nonetheless entitled to moral respect. (shrink)

Usual narratives among prehistoric archaeologists consider typological approaches as part of a past and outdated episode in the history of research, subsequently replaced by technological, functional, chemical, and cognitive approaches. From a historical and conceptual perspective, this paper addresses several limits of these narratives, which (1) assume a linear, exclusive, and additive conception of scientific change, neglecting the persistence of typological problems; (2) reduce collective developments to personal work (e.g. the “Bordes’” and “Laplace’s” methods in France); and (3) presuppose (...) the coherence and identity of these “methods” over time. It explores the case of the “Structural and analytical typology” method, developed in France, Spain, and Italy from the 1950s to the 2000s by Georges Laplace and his collaborators for lithic implements. This paper (1) provides a detailed historical account of the evolving content of this collective endeavour over five decades; (2) it addresses the epistemological question of what makes the identity and unity of a scientific method, demonstrating that the core component of the “analytical typology” lies in its particular way to represent real-world phenomena through its notation system; and (3) it reveals how this little known but significant episode of advances in the methods and theory of archaeology, contemporary but independent of the “New Archaeology” trend in English-speaking archaeology, was instrumental in the continuation of evolutionary perspectives in France and in the development of quantitative and formal methods in archaeology in southwestern Europe, foreseeing crucial knowledge representation issues raised today by digital methods in archaeology and data curation. (shrink)

Locke’s account of personal identity has been highly influential because of its emphasis on a psychological criterion. The same consciousness is required for being the same person. It is not so clear, however, exactly what Locke meant by ‘consciousness’ or by ‘having the same consciousness’. Interpretations vary: consciousness is seen as identical to memory, as identical to a first personal appropriation of mental states, and as identical to a first personal distinctive experience of the qualitative features (...) of one’s own thinking. There is wide agreement, however, that Locke’s theory of personal identity is meant to complement his moral and theological commitments to a system of divine punishment and reward in an afterlife. But these commitments seem to require also a metaphysical criterion, and Locke is insistent that it cannot be substance. The difficulty reconciling the psychological and metaphysical requirements of the theory has led, at worst, to charges of incoherence and, at best, to a slew of interpretations, none of which is widely accepted. (shrink)

I provide a simple solution to the problem of determining the characterising feature(s) of the simple approach to personal identity, sometimes also called the simple view: instead of focusing on claims regarding the analysability, reducibility, or triviality of the concepts used in simple theories of personal identity, I propose instead a metaphysical criterion to define this approach. In particular, I claim that the simple approach is (best seen as) that family of theories according to (...) which personal identity is a relation that essentially depends on a mereologically simple (or impartite) entity the existence and features of which may be known directly (e.g., by introspection) or indirectly (e.g., by deduction from a series of other premises). (shrink)

Hobbes is known for bridging natural and political philosophy, but less attention has been given to how this distinguishes the Hobbesian conception of the self from individualist strands of liberalism. First, Hobbes’s determinism suggests a conception of the self in which externalities determine the will and what the self is at every moment. Second, there is no stable conception of the self because externalities keep it in a constant state of flux. The metaphysical underpinnings of his project downplay the notion (...) of a purely individualistic conception of the self, pointing to a positivist theory of criminology relying upon external forces. This theory is especially prescient with respect to twentieth-century variants of positivism that focus upon how social organization affects personality. In a sense, then, modern criminological theory is indebted to Hobbes’s focus upon the connections between externalities and the self; a focus that illuminates new ways of viewing responsibility and accountability. (shrink)

Marya Schechtman has raised a series of worries for the Psychological Continuity Theory of personal identity (PCT) stemming out of what Derek Parfit called the ‘Extreme Claim’. This is roughly the claim that theories like it are unable to explain the importance we attach to personal identity. In her recent Staying Alive (2014), she presents further arguments related to this and sets out a new narrative theory, the Person Life View (PLV), which she sees (...) as solving the problems as well as bringing other advantages over the PCT. I look over some of her earlier arguments and responses to them as a way in to the new issues and theory. I argue that the problems for the PCT and advantages that the PLV brings are all merely apparent, and present no reason for giving up the former for the latter. (shrink)

Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) is an invasive therapeutic method involving the implantation of electrodes and the electrical stimulation of specific areas of the brain to modulate their activity. DBS brings therapeutic benefits, but can also have adverse side effects. Recently, neuroethicists have recognized that DBS poses a threat to the very fabric of human existence, namely, to the selves of patients. This article provides a review of the neuroethical literature examining this issue, and identifies the crucial dimensions related to the (...) self which DBS may endanger—personal identity, authenticity, and autonomy. The most influential theories accounting for these dimensions are analyzed herein, and it is argued that most of these theories require further refinement. This paper also demonstrates the interrelation between personal identity, authenticity, and autonomy, and concludes that one can only fully understand the impact of DBS on the self when all of these factors are taken into account. (shrink)

In this paper, I offer a conceptual framework for understanding and evaluating personal identity claims. I analyze ontological and political properties of personal identity separately, arguing that their conceptual (if not practical) separation is necessary for a proper evaluation of different identity claims. I use probability theory to bypass some of the logical difficulties in conceptualizing personal identity and discuss a case of transitional identification. Finally, I outline the guidelines for a justified liberal (...) policy of recognition. (shrink)

Many philosophers have become sceptical of the use of thought experiments in theorising about personal identity. In large part this is due to work in experimental philosophy that appears to confirm long held philosophical suspicions that thought experiments elicit inconsistent judgements about personal identity, and hence judgements that are thought to be the product of cognitive biases. If so, these judgements appear to be useless at informing our theories of personal identity. Using the (...) methods of experimental philosophy, we investigate whether people exhibit inconsistent judgements and, if they do, whether these judgements are likely to be the source of cognitive bias or, instead, sensitivity to some relevant factor. We do not find that people’s judgements are sensitive to any of the factors we investigate (relevant or irrelevant), nor that people have inconsistent judgements across cases. Rather, people’s judgements are best explained by them having a very minimal account of what it takes for a person to survive. Since this pattern of judgements is no reason to think that we are subject to cognitive bias, we see no reason, as things stand, to be sceptical of our judgements. (shrink)

This article proposes to read John Banville’s The Book of Evidence, a crime story narrated from the protagonist’s first-person gaze, from a Lacanian perspective by referring to his mirror stage theory. As an extension of testimonial literature, the novel is deemed to be a narrative of introspective self-examination, thus introducing a creation of “the self” paralleling the text. The protagonist’s mnemonic narrative is accompanied by the idea of an alternative world of not only self-expression but also self-depiction and (...) presentation, as in Lacan’s Imaginary. This self-creation, however, may not be as innocent as it seems. The reason for this is that although the mirror phase involves a transition from the Imaginary to the Symbolic, it presupposes the role of the other, biologically (m)other, in order to accustom the subject to the law of society. However, just because the protagonist, Freddie, mentions his mother’s presence as “nothing,” there is no soothing force for his adaptation to societal laws. Here, Freddie is subject to what Lacan sees as a minor prototype who lives in a society and yet is attached to his own rules, which is the first principle of male violence associated with this novel. Therefore, this article also tries to find answers for Freddie’s performance of male violence within the axis of psychoanalytic postulations elaborated on Lacan’s identity theory. (shrink)

The paper aims at disclosing the process of writer identity enactive construal in narrative writing. Three constituent parts of identity discoursal construction in the narrative are social semiotics as a reflection of the social environment, cultural identity theory as the embodiment of cultural choices and preferences, and pragmatics (Charles S. Peirce). The following research questions have been formulated: (1) What is the nature of identity construction? (2) What rhetorical factors influence identity construal in (...) narrative discourse? By providing a step-by-step analysis of thematic structure, the paper conducts a discourse analysis of narrative episodes in terms of Agent, Process, and Medium triad (Halliday, 1973), reflecting the mechanisms of reader’s manipulation with information as a dynamic semiotic process of interpretation, limited by a final interpretant. (shrink)