Psychological Theories of Personal Identity

The popular belief that our mind either depends on or (in stronger terms) is identical with brain functions and processes, along with the belief that advances in technology in virtual reality and computability will continue, has contributed to the contention that one-day (perhaps this century) it may be possible to transfer one’s mind (or a simulated copy) into another body (physical or virtual). This is called mind-uploading or whole brain emulation. This paper serves as an introduction to the area and (...) some of the major issues that arise from the notion of mind-uploading. The topic of mind/brain uploading is, at present, both a philosophical and scientific minefield. This paper ties together several thoughts on the topic in the popular, philosophical, and scientific literature, and brings up some related issues that might be worth exploring. A challenge is made that uploading a mind from a brain may have intrinsic limitations on what can be uploaded: whatever is uploaded may not be recognizably human, or will be a very limited version. (shrink)

Article où l'on propose une lecture égologique de la botanique rousseauiste. La botanique certifierait la continuité temporelle d'un moi menacé de fragmentation.

In her essay, “People and their Bodies,” Judith Thomson writes an evaluation of several formulations of the psychological criterion for personal identity and attempts a strategy of criticizing each formulation of the psychological theory. This is done in order to conclude that a physical theory must be the only remaining viable sufficient candidate for explaining personal identity that is both necessary and sufficient, despite its theoretical weaknesses. This paper seeks to analyze Thomson's critique and explain why her chosen formulations of (...) psychological criterion are inadequate and easy to refine against some of her rather hasty objections. In addition, counterarguments in favor of an 'impure' psychological criterion for personal identity are presented in the hopes of clarifying the philosophical discourse. (shrink)

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

I am a person. But am I fundamentally and essentially a person? The animalist says no. So must the phenomenal continuity theorist, or so I will argue. Even if, contra animalism, we cannot survive zombification, being a subject of experience is not sufficient for being a person, and phenomenal continuity is not sufficient for our survival as the same person over time. These observations point the way to a positive account of personhood, and provide further insight into the conditions under (...) which literal survival preserves what matters. (shrink)

Conventionalists hold that the sorts of events that one survives—such as teletransportation, or a brain transplant—is at least partly determined by our attitudes. But if Conventionalism is true, whose attitudes directly determine whether one survives? Do the individual's attitudes do all the work as Private Conventionalists hold, or do the community's attitudes also factor in as Public Conventionalists hold? There has recently been a greater push towards Private Conventionalism, while explicit arguments for Public Conventionalism are difficult to come by. In (...) this paper, I attempt to rectify the situation by presenting my case for Public Conventionalism. (shrink)

Goffman’s (1959) dramaturgical identity theory requires modification when theorising about presentations of self on social media. This chapter contributes to these efforts, refining a conception of digital identities by differentiating them from ‘corporatised identities’. Armed with this new distinction, I ultimately argue that social media platforms’ production of corporatised identities undermines their users’ autonomy and digital well-being. This follows from the disentanglement of several commonly conflated concepts. Firstly, I distinguish two kinds of presentation of self that I collectively refer to (...) as ‘expressions of digital identity’. These digital performances (boyd 2007) and digital artefacts (Hogan 2010) are distinct, but often confused. Secondly, I contend this confusion results in the subsequent conflation of corporatised identities – poor approximations of actual digital identities, inferred and extrapolated by algorithms from individuals’ expressions of digital identity – with digital identities proper. Finally, and to demonstrate the normative implications of these clarifications, I utilise MacKenzie’s (2014, 2019) interpretation of relational autonomy to propose that designing social media sites around the production of corporatised identities, at the expense of encouraging genuine performances of digital identities, has undermined multiple dimensions of this vital liberal value. In particular, the pluralistic range of authentic preferences that should structure flourishing human lives are being flattened and replaced by commercial, consumerist preferences. For these reasons, amongst others, I contend that digital identities should once again come to drive individuals’ actions on social media sites. Only upon doing so can individuals’ autonomy, and control over their digital identities, be rendered compatible with social media. (shrink)

This paper explores jealousy in Unamuno’s drama El otro. Drawing on contemporary philosophy of emotion, I will argue that for the Spanish author jealousy gives the subject a sense of self. The paper begins by embedding Unamuno’s philosophical anthropology in the context of contemporary emotion theory. It then presents the drama as an investigation into the affective dimension of self-identity. The third section offers an analysis of jealousy as an emotion of self-assessment. The final section discusses how this drama can (...) be regarded as a piece of philosophical work. (shrink)

In “Of Personal Identity”, Hume attempts to understand why we ordinarily believe in persistent selves. He proposes that this ontological commitment depends on illusions and fictions: the imagination tricks us into supposing that an unchanging core self remains static through the flux and change of experience. Recent work in cognitive science provides a good deal of support for Hume’s hypothesis that common beliefs about the self are founded on psychological biases rather than rational insight or evidence. We naturally believe in (...) personal persistence, according to this emerging research, because we are prone to categorize the world in terms of hidden essences and structure our lives in terms of whole life stories. (shrink)

According to the Psychological-Continuity Account of What Matters, you are justified in having special concern for the well-being of a person at a future time if and only if that person will be psychologically continuous with you as you are now. On some versions of the account, the psychological continuity is required be temporally ordered, whereas, on other versions, it is allowed to be temporally unordered. In this paper, I argue that the account is implausible if the psychological continuity is (...) allowed to be temporally unordered. I also argue that, if the psychological continuity is required to be temporally ordered, it cannot plausibly be purely psychological (in the sense that the psychological continuity is not required to be caused through spatio-temporal continuity of a brain). The upshot is that no plausible version of the Psychological-Continuity Account of What Matters is purely psychological. So psychological continuity is not what matters in survival. (shrink)

Ordinary judgments about personal identity are complicated by the fact that phrases like “same person” and “different person” have multiple uses in ordinary English. This complication calls into question the significance of recent experimental work on this topic. For example, Tobia (2015) found that judgments of personal identity were significantly affected by whether the moral change described in a vignette was for the better or for the worse, while Strohminger and Nichols (2014) found that loss of moral conscience had more (...) of an effect on identity judgments than loss of biographical memory. In each case, however, there are grounds for questioning whether the judgments elicited in these experiments engaged a concept of numerical personal identity at all (cf. Berniūnas and Dranseika 2016; Dranseika 2017; Starmans and Bloom 2018). In two pre-registered studies we validate this criticism while also showing a way to address it: instead of attempting to engage the concept of numerical identity through specialized language or the terms of an imaginary philosophical debate, we should consider instead how the identity of a person is described through the connected use of proper names, definite descriptions, and the personal pronouns “I”, “you”, “he”, and “she”. When the experiments above are revisited in this way, there is no evidence that the differences in question had an effect on ordinary identity judgments. (shrink)

Standard views of personal identity over time often hover uneasily between the subjective, first-person dimension, and the objective, third-person dimension of a person’s life. Since both dimensions capture something integral to personal identity, we show that neither can successfully be discarded in favor of the other. The apparent need to reconcile subjectivity and objectivity, however, presents standard views with problems both in seeking an ontological footing of, as well as epistemic evidence for, personal identity. We contend that a fresh look (...) at neutral monism offers a novel way to tackle these problems; counting on the most fundamental building blocks of reality to be ontologically neutral with regards to subjectivity and objectivity of personal identity. If the basic units of reality are, in fact, ontologically neutral – but can give rise to mental as well as physical events – these basic units of reality might account for both subjectivity and objectivity in personal identity. If this were true, it would turn out that subjectivity and objectivity are not conflictive dimensions of personal identity but rather two sides of the same coin. (shrink)

This paper aims to provide an overview of the conceptual terrain of what we call conative accounts of personal identity. These are views according to which the same-person relation in some sense depends on a range of broadly conative phenomena, especially desires, behaviours and conventions. We distinguish views along three dimensions: what role the conations play, what kinds of conations play that role, and whether the conations that play that role are public or private. We then offer a more detailed (...) consideration of direct private conativism—the version of conativism that we favour—before considering how conativists ought respond to a general worry, according to which any conativist view will lead us to be radically pluralist about persons. (shrink)

In this paper we argue that reflection on the patterns of practical concern that agents like us exhibit strongly suggests that the same person relation comes in continuous degrees rather than being an all or nothing matter. We call this the SP-degree thesis. Though the SP-degree thesis is consistent with a range of views about personal-identity, we argue that combining desire-first approaches to personal-identity with the SP-degree thesis better explains our patterns of practical concern, and hence gives us reason to (...) endorse such an approach. We then argue that the combination of the SP-degree thesis and the desire-first approach are best modelled by a stage-theoretic view of persistence according to which temporal counterpart relations are non-symmetric relations that come in continuous degrees. Ultimately, we think that the overall appeal of this package of views provides reason to accept the package: reasons that outstrip the reasons we have to endorse any particular member of the package. (shrink)

Theoria, EarlyView. Henry Pollock, in “Parfit's Fission Dilemma: Why Relation R Doesn't Matter”, examines the options available to Parfit for defending his “argument from below” from Johnstonʼs reductio objection. Pollock argues that Parfitʼs proposed defence against Johnston fails. In this article, I argue that Pollockʼs objections to Parfitʼs defence can be resisted.

Recent research has begun treating the perennial philosophical question, “what makes a person the same over time?” as an empirical question. A long tradition in philosophy holds that psychological continuity and connectedness of memories are at the heart of personal identity. More recent experimental work, following Strohminger & Nichols (2014), has suggested that persistence of moral character, more than memories, is perceived as essential for personal identity. While there is a growing body of evidence supporting these findings, a critique by (...) Starmans & Bloom (2018) suggests that this research program conflates personal identity with mere similarity. To address this criticism, we explore how loss of someone’s morality or memories influence perceptions of identity change, and perceptions of moral duties towards the target of the change. We present participants with a classic ‘body switch’ thought experiment and after assessing perceptions of identity persistence, we present a moral dilemma, asking participants to imagine that one of the patients must die (Study 1) or be left alone in a care home for the rest of their life (Study 2). Our results highlight the importance of the continuity of moral character, suggesting lay intuitions are tracking (something like) personal identity, not just mere similarity. (shrink)

This paper develops the Diachronic Self-Making View, the view that we are the non-accidentally best candidate referents of our ‘I’-beliefs. A formulation and defence of DSV is followed by an overview of its treatment of familiar puzzle cases about personal identity. The rest of the paper focuses on a challenge to DSV, the Puzzle of Inconstant ‘I’-beliefs: the view appears to force on us inconsistent verdicts about personal identity in cases that we would naturally describe as changes in one’s de (...) se beliefs. To solve this problem, the paper defends the possibility of overlapping people, and addresses a number of objections to this idea. (shrink)

When an individual is comatose while parts of her brain remain functional, the question arises as to whether any mental characteristics are still associated with this brain, that is, whether the person still exists. Settling this uncertainty requires that one becomes clear about two issues: the type of functional loss that is associated with the respective profile of brain damage and the persistence conditions of persons. Medical case studies can answer the former question, but they are not concerned with the (...) latter. Conversely, in the philosophical literature, various accounts of personal identity are discussed, but usually detached from any empirical basis. Only uniting the two debates and interpreting the real-life configurations of brain damage through the lens of the philosophical concepts enables one to make an informed judgment regarding the persistence of comatose persons. Especially challenging are cases in which three mental characteristics that normally occur together—wakefulness, awareness and memory storage—come apart. These shall be the focus of this paper. (shrink)

The transformational pace of modern education, healthcare, business management systems, etc., requires new approaches for prompt and reliable personality assessment. Phenotypology is one of such theories and it claims of the discovered interconnections of a person’s psychological and psychophysical characteristics on the basis of individual features of his/her phenotype. The article aim is to present some validation results for the Phenotypology hypotheses as a possible tool for personality assessment. In order to verify connections between phenotypic treats and individual behavior, we (...) conducted the study when respondents were differentiated according to some anthropometric (facial) peculiarities and characterological features. The results were quantified and analyzed using the mathematical-statistical linear regression. The research output contains the rationale for the conclusion that there are no statistically significant correlations between some phenotypic body features and such individual psychological characteristics as aggressiveness, impetuosity, pedantry, passivity, etc. In particular, the validity of using of appropriate phenotypologic representations to predict the examined character traits was studied. The obtained results disproved the possibility to use directly the phenotypic approach for reliable characterological profiling. Though, the study outcome is tentative due to some limitations on generality. It is necessary to continue verification of the Phenotypology hypotheses with a broader experimental sample with the inclusion of various ethnic and racial groups’ representatives. However, until then, based on actual findings, the practical application of the Phenotypology statements is doubtful, at least for the purposes of character diagnosis and personality assessment. (shrink)

Spirituality and spiritual well-being are connected with many areas of human life. Thus, especially in secular countries, there is a need for reliable validated instruments for measuring spirituality. The Spiritual Well-Being Scale is among the world’s most often used tools; therefore, the aim of this study was its psychometrical evaluation in the secular environment of the Czech Republic on a nationally representative sample (n = 1797, mean age: 45.9 ± 17.67; 48.6% men). A non-parametric comparison of different sociodemographic groups showed (...) a higher disposition for experiencing spirituality among women, older people, and divorced persons. Based on confirmatory factor analysis, negatively worded items were excluded using a polychoric correlation matrix. The new version of the scale consisting of 11 items had good internal consistency (Cronbach’s α = 0.85; McDonald’s ωt = 0.91). The two-factor model of this shortened version, with factors corresponding to the Religious and the Existential subscales of the Spiritual Well-Being Scale, shows a satisfactory fit with the data, where the loadings of all items ranged from medium to high. Thus, this study offered a new version of the tool, convenient for measuring spiritual well-being in secular conditions. (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)

статья содержит реконструкцию аргумента стремительных психологических изменений скотта кэмпбелла. согласно требованиям стандартного психоло- гического подхода, тождество личности основано на постоянстве ее воспо- минаний, убеждений, желаний и намерений. личность сохраняет свое тож- дество во времени, если обладает сильной психологической связанностью и преемственностью. структура аргумента стремительных психологических изменений сопоставляется с аргументом невероятно длительных психологи- ческих изменений дэвида льюиса. главными целями критических атак этих аргументов служат временная рассогласованность психологической связан- ности и преемственности, а также тезис редукционизма, что все важные для выживания факты могут (...) быть описаны безличным способом. ключевые слова: диахроническое тождество личности, психологический кри- терий, психологическая преемственность и связанность, транскраниальная электростимуляции мозга, выживание. (shrink)

Lockean theories of personal identity maintain that we persist by virtue of psychological continuity, and most Lockeans say that we are material things coinciding with animals. Some animalists argue that if persons and animals coincide, they must have the same intrinsic properties, including thinking, and, as a result, there are ‘too many thinkers’ associated with each human being. Further, Lockeans have trouble explaining how animals and persons can be numerically different and have different persistence conditions. For these reasons, the idea (...) of a person being numerically distinct but coincident with an animal is rejected and animalists conclude that we simply are animals. However, animalists face a similar problem when confronted with the vagueness of composition. Animals are entities with vague boundaries. According to the linguistic account of vagueness, the vagueness of a term consists in there being a number of candidates for the denotatum of the vague term. It seems to imply that where we see an animal, there are, in fact, a lot of distinct but overlapping entities with basically the same intrinsic properties, including thinking. As a result, the animalist must also posit ‘too many thinkers’ where we thought there was only one. This seems to imply that the animalist cannot accept the linguistic account of vagueness. In this paper the author argues that the animalist can accept the linguistic account of vagueness and retain her argument against Lockeanism. (shrink)

People change with time. Their personalities, values, and preferences shift incrementally as they accrue life experience, discover new sources of meaning, and form/lose memories. Accumulated psychological changes eventually reshape not just how someone relates to the world about her, but also who she is as a person. This transience of human identity has profound implications for criminal law. Previous legal scholarship on personal identity has assumed that only abrupt tragedy and disease can change who we are. However, psychologists now know (...) that the ordinary processes of growth, maturation, and decline alter us all in fundamental respects. Many young adults find it hard to identify with their adolescent past. Senior citizens often reflect similarly on their middle years. However tightly we hold on to the people we are today, at some tomorrow we inevitably find ourselves changed. -/- Criminal justice has not come to grips with this aspect of the human condition. The law — by imposing lengthy sentences, allowing enduring consequences of conviction, and punishing long bygone violations — assumes that people’s identities remain fixed from birth to death. If people do change with time, these policies must violate the criminal law’s most basic commitment to prosecute and punish present-day people only for crimes they (and not some different past person) committed. -/- Drawing on contemporary psychology and philosophy of personal identity, this Article concludes that criminal law punishes too often and too severely. Lengthy prison terms risk incarcerating people past the point at which their identity changes. Elderly inmates who have languished on death row for decades should have a new claim for release — that they are now different people, innocent of the misdeeds of yesteryear. One-time felons should recover lost civil rights sooner. And defendants should benefit from juvenile process well into their twenties, when personal identity first begins to stabilize. By confronting the challenges posed by the limits of personal identity, the criminal law can become more just and humane. (shrink)

On a Parfit-inspired account of culpability, as the psychological connections between a person’s younger self and older self weaken, the older self’s culpability for a wrong committed by the younger self diminishes. Suppose we accept this account and also accept a culpability-based upper limit on punishment severity. On this combination of views, we seem forced to conclude that perpetrators of distant past wrongs should either receive discounted punishments or be exempted from punishment entirely. This article develops a strategy for resisting (...) this conclusion. I propose that, even if the perpetrators of distant past wrongs cannot permissibly be punished for the original wrongs, in typical cases they can permissibly be punished for their ongoing and iterated failures to rectify earlier wrongs. Having set out this proposal, I defend it against three objections, before exploring how much punishment it can justify. (shrink)

Given reductionism about people, personal persistence must fundamentally consist in some kind of impersonal continuity relation. Typically, these continuity relations can hold from one to many. And, if they can, the analysis of personal persistence must include a non-branching clause to avoid non-transitive identities or multiple occupancy. It is far from obvious, however, what form this clause should take. This paper argues that previous accounts are inadequate and develops a new proposal.

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

Objective – is to formulate a methodological discourse regarding the place and role of the language interconnected with the process of socialization of a person and develop a systemic idea of the corresponding functional features. -/- Materials & Methods – this discourse is formulated on the basis of a systemic idea of the personality socialization, which, in turn, is realized using the structural-ontological method of studying the subject matter field in interdisciplinary researches. This method involves the construction of special visual-graphic (...) matrices that reflect the interaction of the primary process and the material of the studied system. -/- Results. The work with the structural-ontological matrix made it possible to analyze the functions of the language in the context of such significant factors of socialization as complex psychodynamics, civilization space and the function of reflection. At the same time, reflection is considered at the level of two plans – primary (reflection-bond) and secondary (reflection-splitting). This made it possible to deduce the idea of the role of language beyond the traditional framework of working with text and analyze the place of the language in the context of activities to establish a connection between individuals, which is realized in a specific cooperative situation (Shchedrovitsky). In particular, the look at language as a specific tool of civilizational rationing, the mechanism of which is provided through reflection-communication. Thus, the language is examined through the prism of its systemic influence on the morphology of the psyche. -/- Conclusions – a structural-ontological analysis of the place and role of language in the process of personality socialization has led us to construction of a hypothesis about the phenomenon of language discontentment, as a tendency to distance away ego-consciousness in the process of individuation from linguistic ontology. The arguments were also advanced in favor of the assumption regarding the peculiarities of the influence of language discontentment on cultural activities and the psychodynamic contribution of this phenomenon in the midlife crisis (Jung). (shrink)

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

One of the main reasons for justifying rights originates from the principle of the separateness of persons. However, it can been denied that persons are definite and “thick” entities, and, as such, that their supposed separateness expresses a fundamental normative principle. Should we then reconsider or abandon rights-talk? I will argue for the contrary, and claim that an extreme reductionist position towards persons is flawed. Moreover, I will claim that right-discourse can be anchored on grounds other than the principle of (...) separateness of persons, as principles of distributive justice and rights are still needed to build up what has been called “ morality in the narrow sense ”, which is, in turn, necessary for protecting “ morality in the broad sense” : that is, the individual pursuit of a good life. (shrink)

There is recent empirical evidence that personal identity is constituted by one’s moral traits. If true, this poses a problem for those who advocate for moral enhancement, or the manipulation of a person’s moral traits through pharmaceutical or other biological means. Specifically, if moral enhancement manipulates a person’s moral traits, and those moral traits constitute personal identity, then it is possible that moral enhancement could alter a person’s identity. I go a step further and argue that under the right conditions, (...) moral enhancement can constitute murder. I then argue that these conditions are not remote. (shrink)

Many of those working on moral responsibility assume that "once blameworthy, always blameworthy." They believe that blameworthiness is like diamonds: it is forever. We argue that blameworthiness is not forever; rather, it can diminish through time. We begin by showing that the view that blameworthiness is forever is best understood as the claim that personal identity is sufficient for diachronic blameworthiness. We argue that this view should be rejected because it entails that blameworthiness for past action is completely divorced from (...) the distinctive psychological features of the person at the later time. This is because on none of the leading accounts of personal identity does identity require the preservation of any distinctive psychological features, but merely requires some form of continuity. The claim that blameworthiness is forever should therefore be rejected. We then sketch an account of blameworthiness over time, and consider two objections. (shrink)

This chapter presents the core challenge before Hamlet as that of achieving authenticity in the face of inner multiplicity. Authenticity—which this chapter will take to mean (1) acting on the (2) knowledge of (3) what one truly is, beneath one’s various masks and social roles—becomes a particularly pressing need under conditions of (early) modernity, when traditional forms of action-guidance are at least halfway off the table. But authenticity is highly problematic when the self that is discovered turns out to be (...) multiple. Which self, exactly, should one be true to? Hamlet’s solution, this chapter suggests, is an “actor’s ethos,” in which each of his aspects is given its day in the sun, granted full commitment by means of what we now call “method acting.” That is what Hamlet learns from the players—and that too is what we stand to learn from Hamlet: not an idea but a method. (shrink)

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

Philosophers of mind commonly draw a distinction between the personal level – the distinctive realm of conscious experience and reasoned deliberation – and the subpersonal level, the domain of mindless mechanism and brute cause and effect. Moreover, they tend to view cognitive science through the lens of this distinction. Facts about the personal level are given a priori, by introspection, or by common sense; the job of cognitive science is merely to investigate the mechanistic basis of these facts. I argue (...) that this view misrepresents the structure of cognitive-scientific enquiry. Taken at face value, cognitive science makes no commitment to the existence of a distinctive level at which persons or selves appear. Thus, in the age of cognitive science, we should not expect to find the self in an ontologically distinct realm. Instead, we should expect to locate it in cognitive-scientific models themselves. In closing, I indicate likely results of this approach. (shrink)

Various debates on the desirability and rationality of life-extending enhancements have been pursued under the presupposition that a generic psychological theory of personal identity is correct. I here discuss how the narrative approach to personal identity can contribute to these debates. In particular, I argue that two versions of the narrative approach offer good reasons to reject an argument against the rationality of life-extending enhancements.

In der Diskussion um personale Identität nehmen die einflussreichen Arbeiten Derek Parfits eine Sonderstellung ein, insofern Parfit nicht bestrebt ist, eines der gängigen Identitätskriterien zu verteidigen, sondern vielmehr behauptet, dass unsere alltäglichen wie philosophischen Vorstellungen von personaler Identität unrettbar inkohärent sind und deshalb aufgegeben werden sollten. In seinem Beitrag beleuchtet Sascha Settegast die verschiedenen Argumente, die Parfit für diese provokante These vorbringt, und unternimmt insbesondere den Versuch einer systematischen Dekonstruktion der wichtigsten Gedankenexperimente Parfits, die zeigen soll, dass sich diese Gedankenexperimente (...) auf eine Weise auflösen lassen, die unsere alltäglichen Intuitionen über personale Identität intakt belässt. Settegast entwickelt dabei die Grundzüge einer Konzeption personaler Identität, die sich einerseits von den gängigen neo-lockeanischen und animalistischen Ansätzen abgrenzt und andererseits bewusst an den zeitgenössischen Neo-Aristotelismus in der Ethik anknüpft, wie er etwa bei Philippa Foot und Michael Thomp-son anzutreffen ist. Die diachrone numerische Identität menschlicher Personen gründet nach Settegasts Auffassung darin, dass der Verlauf ihres Lebens eine zeitliche Einheit aufweist, die dadurch bedingt ist, dass ihre Lebensführung die menschliche Lebensform auf eine individuell charakteristische Weise exemplifiziert. Insofern dies aber nur durch Kultivierung der Tugen-den zu erreichen ist, handelt es sich laut Settegast bei personaler Identität letztlich nicht um eine Tatsache, die einfach vorliegt oder nicht, sondern um eine Aufgabe, die uns als Menschen gegeben ist und wesentlich darin besteht, in bewusster Orientierung auf das gute Leben hin ein stabiles, sich zeitlich durchhaltendes Selbst allererst auszubilden. (shrink)

Given the difficulty of characterizing the quandary introduced in Hume’s Appendix to the Treatise, coupled with the alleged “underdetermination” of the text, it is striking how few commentators have considered whether Hume addresses and/or redresses the problem after 1740—in the first Enquiry, for example. This is not only unfortunate, but ironic; for, in the Appendix, Hume mentions that more mature reasonings may reconcile whatever contradiction(s) he has in mind. I argue that Hume’s 1746 letter to Lord Kames foreshadows a subtle, (...) but significant, shift in Hume’s reasonings regarding the relevance of “real connexions”; that the Enquiry of 1748 provides evidence for this shift; and that this shift obviates Hume’s second thoughts by reconciling the contradiction that he had in mind. In short, Hume’s letter to Kames and Enquiry supply the retrodictive keys to a systematically satisfactory account. (shrink)

The article presents the results of a theoretical and empirical study of the process of development of the axiological identity of a future psychologist in the process of his/her professional training in a higher educational institution. The article substantiates the necessity to use the technology of forming the axiological identity of a future psychologist in the process of professional training as a structural component of his/her integral professional value. The axiological identity of a future psychologist is characterized by the integration (...) of personal, professional, and social identities at the level of his/her valuable self-consciousness. The formation of this construct depends on the understanding of its own system of values, understanding of abilities, desires, and capabilities, allows the future psychologist to purposefully build prospects for professional growth, implement informed and responsible choices backed by a sense of integrative integrity, self-esteem, and self-sufficiency. -/- While choosing the direction of the professional activity, a student designs the axiological perspectives of his/her own professional identity, that is, it gives the dominance to the personal, professional, and social values that most closely reflect his/her personal meanings in the professional activity corresponding to preferences and promote self-realization in the future. Difficulties in the vocational education and further professional activity arise under the condition of axiological identification uncertainty, a low level of self-interest and self-understanding, external motivation to the student’s professional activities, etc. Taking into account the above, we have developed and implemented in the process of professional training of students of psychology the technology of “Formation of the axiological identity of a future psychologist”, whose purpose is to support future specialists in the process of becoming a personal, professional, and social value identity on the basis of the student’s awareness of the value of personal “I” as a psychologist and confidence in their own desire and ability to provide psychological help to the Other. (shrink)

Psychological Sequentialism holds that no causal constraint is necessary for the preservation of what matters in survival; rather, it is sufficient for preservation if two groups of mental states are similar enough and temporally close enough. Suppose one’s body is instantaneously dematerialized and subsequently, by an amazing coincidence, a group of molecules are configured to form a qualitatively identical human body. On this view, these events preserve what matters in survival. Despite its unpopularity, several philosophers have argued for this view. (...) One of the main arguments is that a psychologically sequential person is bound to have the same psychological traits and inclinations, and thus preserves what matters in the original person’s survival. In this paper, I argue that this argument fails to establish that no causal constraint is necessary. I also argue that if sequentialism is true, I should be content with the prospect of my bodily destruction followed by the creation of a series of short-lived beings whose mental states are sequential to mine. I suggest that the implausibility of this implication is sufficient to reject the view. (shrink)

Would you survive if your consciousness branched into two or more streams? Commonly discussed within the context of split-brain scenarios, this possibility might soon become commonplace with mind uploading technology. Cerullo suggests that after nondestructive mind uploading and other branching scenarios, personal identity would continue in two streams of consciousness. Thus he argues for what he calls branching identity. In this discussion, I evaluate the theory of branching identity and Cerullo’s arguments for it, concluding that branching identity is insufficiently justified (...) and does not yield a better interpretation of branching cases than provided by Parfit. (shrink)

У дослідженні на прикладі Донбаського регіону проаналізовано феномен регіональної ідентичності, яка моделюється на прорадянській «класовій» ідеології; йдеться про експансію її носіїв, щодо підпорядкування гуманітарного простору України. Політичні та медійні міфи, що є технологічними маніпуляціями, зумовлюють тривалий процес сепарації Донбасу. Нині, зокрема внаслідок російської агресії, щодо майбутнього регіону є повна невизначеність, проте його адаптація у межах України можлива лише за умов деіндустріалізації та деконструкції технологічної/антиукраїнської міфології.

According to reductionists about agency, an agent’s bringing something about is reducible to states and events involving the agent bringing something about. Many have worried that reductionism cannot accommodate robust forms of agency, such as self-determination. One common reductionist answer to this worry contends that self-determining agents are identified with certain states and events, and so these states and events causing a decision counts as the agent’s self-determining the decision. In this paper, I discuss Michael Bratman’s well-known identification reductionist theory (...) and his general strategy of grounding an agent’s identification at a time in the agent’s identity over time. I develop two constraints that an adequate identification reductionist theory must satisfy, argue that Bratman’s theory cannot satisfy both, and show that his general strategy for grounding an agent’s identification at a time in the agent’s identity over time is without merit. (shrink)

David Lewis defends the following "non-circular definition of personhood": "something is a continuant person if and only if it is a maximal R-interrelated aggregate of person-stages. That is: if and only if it is an aggregate of person-stages, each of which is R-related to all the rest (and to itself), and it is a proper part of no other such aggregate." I give a counterexample, involving a person who is a part of another, much larger person, with a separate mental (...) life. I then offer an easy repair, which preserves the virtues of Lewis's definition without introducing any new vices. (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)