Abstract

In this dissertation, I intend to answer the following philosophical problem: which are the facts (if there are any facts) in virtue of which each person is the same over time? This is the problem of personal identity over time. To answer this problem, this dissertation is divided into three chapters. In the first chapter, which is essentially introductory in nature, I present the problem of personal identity over time, clarify the main concepts involved (in particular, the concepts of person and diachronic identity) and discuss how best to understand it, distinguishing between the main perspectives on the nature of personal identity that philosophers have been defending. In the second chapter, I present the main psychological views on the nature of personal identity, namely, the memory view, the psychological continuity view and the embodied mind view, I clarify the main concepts that each of these involves and discuss their merits and shortcomings. For different reasons, I argue that none of these views is capable of responding adequately to the problems that philosophers have been pointing out to them. Their merits do not outweigh their faults. As such, I argue that personal identity over time is not a relation of psychological continuity of any kind. In the third chapter, I present the main physiological view on the nature of personal identity, the biological view (or animalism), I clarify the main concepts it involves (in particular, the concepts of human organism and biological persistence) and I discuss how best to understand it. Then, I discuss the merits and shortcomings of this view. Although I consider that some of the main arguments for this view turn out to be insufficient, I argue that this perspective is able to respond adequately to the problems with which philosophers have been confronting it. As such, I seek to answer their main objections and argue that, ultimately, this is the best answer to the problem of personal identity over time: personal identity over time is a relation of biological continuity.