In this volume, thirteen philosophers contribute new essays analyzing the criteria for personal identity and their import on ethics and the theory of action: it presents contemporary treatments of the issues discussed in Personal Identity, edited by John Perry (University of California Press, 1975).

Ruth Boeker offers a new perspective on Locke’s account of persons and personal identity by considering it within the context of his broader philosophical project and the philosophical debates of his day. Her interpretation emphasizes the importance of the moral and religious dimensions of his view. By taking seriously Locke’s general approach to questions of identity, Boeker shows that we should consider his account of personhood separately from his account of personal identity over time. On this basis, she argues that (...) Locke endorses a moral account of personhood, according to which persons are subjects of accountability, and that his particular thinking about moral accountability explains why he regards sameness of consciousness as necessary for personal identity over time. In contrast to some Neo-Lockean views about personal identity, Boeker argues that Locke’s account of personal identity is not psychological per se, but rather his underlying moral, religious, metaphysical, and epistemic background beliefs are relevant for understanding why he argues for a consciousness-based account of personal identity. Taking his underlying background beliefs into consideration not only sheds light on why many of his early critics do not adopt Locke’s view, but also shows why his view cannot be as easily dismissed as some of his critics assume. -/- . (shrink)

Consequentialist and Kantian theories differ over the ethical relevance of consequences of actions. I investigate how they might differ too over the relevance of what actions are consequence of. Focusing on the case of group action and collective responsibility, I argue that there's a kind of analog to the problem of aggregating the value of consequencesthat Kantian theories will not confront and consequentialist theories will. The issue provides a useful way to characterize a deep difference between Kantian and consequentialist theories (...) and points, ironically, toward a way of making those views compatible. (shrink)

A widely accepted view in the discussion of personal identity is that the notion of psychological continuity expresses a one--many or many--one relation. This belief is unfounded. A notion of psychological continuity expresses a one--many or many--one relation only if it includes, as a constituent, psychological properties whose relation with their bearers is one--many or many--one; but the relation between an indexical psychological state and its bearer when first tokened is not a one--many or many--one relation. It follows that not (...) all types of psychological continuity may take a one--many or many--one form. This conclusion casts doubt on the Lockean approach to the issue, by showing that the notion of psychological continuity Lockeans rely on may not be available. (shrink)

Locke defined a person as ‘a thinking intelligent being, that has reason and reflection, and can consider itself as itself, the same thinking thing, in different times and places”. To many who have been excited by the same thought as Locke, continuity of consciousness has seemed to be an integral part of what we mean by a person. The intuitive appeal of the idea that to secure the continuing identity of a person one experience must flow into the next experience (...) in some ‘stream of consciousoness” is evidenced by the number of attempts in the so-called constructionalist tradition to explain continuity of consciousness in terms of memory, and then build or reconstruct the idea of a person with these materials. The philosophical difficulty of the idea is plain from the failure of these attempts. Hindsight suggests this was as inevitable as the failure of the attempt to make bricks from straw alone—and as a failure just as uninteresting. Which is not to deny that the memory theorist might get from it a sense that some of the difficulties in his programme have arisen from his leaving flesh and bones, the stuff of persons, out of his construction. (shrink)

The object of the research of this article is the modern philosophical discourse on the problem of identity of personality. The subject of the study is the substantial approach of R. Swinburne and his place in this discourse. The author analyzes R. Swinburne's approach and, in particular, its main advantages – the ability to solve the problem of personality reduplication. However, as the author of the article shows, the substantive approach itself is not devoid of vulnerabilities. First of all, he (...) is vulnerable to criticism using the verification principle. Swinburne believes that his approach is not consistent only with a strong version of the verification principle. However, as the author of this article shows, even a weak version of the verification principle is a problem for Swinburne's substantive approach. The author presents his own alternative to the substantial approach for overcoming the reduplication argument and interpreting hypothetical situations associated with it. Such an alternative is the perdurant theory of personality. The article presents a study in the field of the history of modern analytical philosophy. Therefore, the key research method used is historical and philosophical. In particular, the study used a textual analysis of the works of philosophers, first of all, R. Swinburne, according to several sources, a reconstruction of his views was carried out. The article also uses the method of comparative analysis, in particular, a comparison of empiricist approaches and a substantive approach to the problem of identity of personality is made. The article is devoted to the substantial concept of identity of R. Swinburne's personality. Despite the fact that this concept represents an important alternative to solving the problem of identity, it has not been studied much, especially in the Russian history of philosophy. The novelty of the article also lies in a detailed analysis of the verification counterargument in relation to the substantive approach. The author of the article also presents his own alternative to the substantial approach, which allows overcoming the indicated difficulties. As a result of the research, the author comes to the conclusion that the substantial approach only partially solves the problem of asynchronous identity of personality, and is most vulnerable to criticism with the help of the verification argument. (shrink)

The paper argues that the idea of gift-giving and its associated imagery, which has been founding the ethics of organ transplants since the time of the first successful transplants, should be abandoned because it cannot effectively block arguments for markets in human body parts. The imagery suggests that human bodies or their parts are transferable objects which belong to individuals. Such imagery is, however, neither a self-evident nor anthropologically unproblematic construal of the relation between a human being and their body. (...) The paper proposes an alternative conceptualization of that relation, the identity view according to which a human being is identical with their living body. This view, which offers a new ethical perspective on some central concepts of transplant medicine and its ethical and legal standards and institutions, supports widely shared intuitive ethical judgments. On this proposal, an act of selling a human body or one of its parts is an act of trade in human beings, not in owned objects. Transfers of human body parts for treatment purposes are to be seen as sharing in another human being’s misfortune rather than as giving owned objects. From the perspective of policy-making, the proposal requires, first, that informed consent for removal of transplant material be obtained from the potential benefactor. Secondly, explicit consent by the prospective benefactor is obligatory in the case of removal of transplant material from a living benefactor. Thirdly, in the case of posthumous retrieval, informed consent by the potential benefactor during their life is not ethically indispensable. Additionally, while refusal of posthumous retrieval expressed by a potential benefactor during their life must be respected, such a refusal needs ethical justification and explanation. (shrink)

The personal identity relation is of great interest to philosophers, who often consider fictional scenarios to test what features seem to make persons persist through time. But often real examples of neuroscientific interest also provide important tests of personal identity. One such example is the case of Phineas Gage – or at least the story often told about Phineas Gage. Many cite Gage’s story as example of severed personal identity; Phineas underwent such a tremendous change that Gage “survived as a (...) different man.” I discuss a recent empirical finding about judgments about this hypothetical. It is not just the magnitude of the change that affects identity judgment; it is also the negative direction of the change. I present an experiment suggesting that direction of change also affects neuroethical judgments. I conclude we should consider carefully the way in which improvements and deteriorations affect attributions of personal identity. This is particularly important since a number of the most crucial neuroethical decisions involve varieties of cognitive enhancements or deteriorations. (shrink)

In this article, I develop and defend a conception of psychological continuity that differs from the 'orthodox' conception in terms of overlapping chains of strongly connected mental states. By recognizing the importance of the (narrative) interrelatedness of qualitatively dissimilar mental contents, as well as the role of the body in psychological continuity, I argue, serious problems confronting the orthodox view can be solved.

We care for our own future experiences. Most of us, trivially, would rather have them pleasurable than painful. When we care for our own future experiences we do so in a way that is different from the way we care for those of others (which is not to say that we necessarily care more about our own experience). Prereflectively, one would think this is because these experiences will be ours and no one else's. But then, of course, we need to (...) explain what it means to say that a future experience will be mine and how knowledge of this fact renders it rational for me to care for this experience in a special way. Indeed most philosophers take this route. But in doing so, they quickly stumble on insuperable problems. I shall argue that the problem of egocentric care, as it is sometimes called, can be solved by turning things upside down: it is much more fruitful to think that the special kind of care we feel for some future experiences (and not others) is part of what makes them ours should they occur. This requires an explanation of egocentric care for future experiences that does not draw in a theory of personal identity, but rather contributes to one. I will attempt to provide this explanation by making use of the idea of a diachronic mental holism. (shrink)

I am now typing on a computer I bought two years ago. The computer I bought is identical to the computer on which I type. My computer persists over time. Let us divide our subject matter in two. There is first the question of criteria of identity, the conditions governing when an object of a certain kind, a computer for instance, persists until some later time. There are secondly very general questions about the nature of persistence itself. Here I include (...) the question of temporal parts, as well as certain familiar paradoxes (e.g., the statue and the lump). Following John Perry (1975, Introduction), let us characterize a criterion of identity over time for F s as a way of filling in φ in the following schema: Stages S1 and S2 belong to some continuing F iff φ Defenders of temporal parts (see below) regard S1 and S2 as being temporal parts of the continuing F ; others regard S1 and S2 as different stages in the life history of the continuing F . Thus each camp can make use of Perry’s formula. It is traditional to divide such criteria into those governing persons and those governing anything else. It is further traditional to say that the criterion of identity over time for non-persons involves spatiotemporal continuity. An excellent discussion is Eli Hirsch’s The Concept of Identity1, which utilizes the notion of continuity under a sortal. Kind-terms, or sortals, are terms that specify what kind of or sort of thing an object is. Examples include ‘tree’, ‘car’, and ‘mountain’. Where F is a sortal, Hirsch’s analysis is roughly that stages belong to the same F iff they are connected by a spatiotemporally and qualitatively continuous sequence of F -stages. Unmodified, this analysis prohibits temporally discontinuous entities, such as a watch that is taken apart and then reassembled. Hirsch discusses the necessary modifications. Spatiotemporal continuity analyses face a problem when applied to the persistence of matter. The literature here has been dominated by discussion of examples provided by David Armstrong (1980) and Saul Kripke (unpublished.... (shrink)

The existence and importance of supervenience principles for identity across times and worlds have been noted, but insufficient attention has been paid to their precise nature. Such attention is repaid with philosophical dividends. The issues in the formulation of the supervenience principles are two. The first involves the relevant variety of supervenience: that variety is global, but there are in fact two versions of global supervenience that must be distinguished. The second involves the subject matter: the names “identity over time” (...) and “identity across worlds” are misnomers, for in neither case is identity at issue. The philosophical dividends then follow. Nathan Salmon’s argument that identity over time needs no “grounds” in matters of qualitative fact can be answered, as can an argument offered by many, that coincident objects would require objectionably ungrounded differences in identities across times and worlds. (shrink)

What makes an object the same persisting individual over time? Philosophers and psychologists have both grappled with this question, but from different perspectives—philosophers conceptually analyzing the criteria for object persistence, and psychologists exploring the mental mechanisms that lead us to experience the world in terms of persisting objects. It is striking that the same themes populate explorations of persistence in these two very different fields—e.g. the roles of spatiotemporal continuity, persistence through property change, and cohesion violations. Such similarities may reflect (...) an underlying connection, in that psychological mechanisms of object persistence (especially relevant parts of mid-level visual object processing) may serve to underlie the intuitions about persistence that fuel metaphysical theories. This would be a way for cognitive science to join these two disparate fields, helping to explain the possible origins and reliability of some metaphysical intuitions, and perhaps leading to philosophical progress. (shrink)

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)

What happens to a person in a case of fission? Does it survive? Does it go out of existence? Or is the outcome indeterminate? Since each description of fission based on the persistence conditions associated with our ordinary concept of a person seems to clash with one or more platitudes of common sense about the spatiotemporal profile of macroscopic objects, fission threatens the common-sense conception of persons with inconsistency. Standard responses to this paradox agree that the common-sense conception of persons (...) is unstable, differing over which part of the conception requires revision. I will show that this entrenched view of fission is not compulsory. I will develop a solution to the paradox that maintains the consistency of the common-sense conception of persons on the basis of an ontology of persons and other ordinary objects as double-layered compounds. Each of various descriptions of the outcome of personal fission is compatible with principles about the spatiotemporal profile of persons, because the descriptions and the principles manifest different perspectives on persons and are made true or false by different ontological components of the latter. What holds for the fission of persons, holds for the fission of other kinds of objects. (shrink)

In Part I, I consider the normal contexts of assertions of belief and declarations of intentions, arguing that many action-guiding beliefs are accepted uncritically and even pre-consciously. I analyze the function of avowals as expressions of attempts at self-transformation. It is because assertions of beliefs are used to perform a wide range of speech acts besides that of speaking the truth, and because there is a large area of indeterminacy in such assertions, that self-deception is possible. In Part II, I (...) analyze the conditions of self-deception, and discuss the grounds on which it is regarded as irrational, even when particular instances may be beneficial. I consider some of the classical analyses of the motives for self-deception, and attempt to give an account of the occasions in which it is likely to occur. In the final section, I discuss the complex organization of the self that is presupposed by the phenomena of self-deception. (shrink)

David lewis has argued that--Despite the 'fission' cases--One may consistently hold both that what matters in survival is "mental continuity and connectedness" and that what matters in survival is identity. To prove his point, He produces a certain theory of persons. Derek parfit and penelope maddy have objected that the theory lewis produces does not actually have the advantages he claims for it. In this paper, The author questions their objections, And then argues that, Even though lewis's theory has many (...) virtues, No sufficiently knowledgeable person can be justified in accepting it (here and now) as an adequate theory of persons. (shrink)

The alleged conflict between religion and science most pointedly focuses on what it is to be human. Western philosophical thought regarding this has progressed through three broad stages: mind/body dualism, Neo-Darwinism, and most recently strong artificial intelligence (AI). I trace these views with respect to their relation to Christian views of humans, suggesting that while the first two might be compatible with Christian thought, strong AI presents serious challenges to a Christian understanding of personhood, including our freedom to choose, moral (...) choice itself, self-consciousness, and the relevance of God to our beginning, being, and ending. (shrink)

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

Jacob Ross argues that the fission cases discussed in the personal identity literature cannot be accommodated without rejecting basic intuitions of everyday ethical thinking. He notes that many philosophers have responded to the challenge of fission ‘by rejecting the metaphysical assumptions on which it rests’. In particular, that many have denied that in fission one ceases to exist. He contends that these denials do not meet the challenge to commonsense ethical thinking. I reject these claims. One of the metaphysical views (...) he considers is the multiple occupancy view of Lewis and Robinson, according to which in fission there are all along two numerically distinct, initially collocated, persons. I claim that Ross has not shown that this view has counterintuitive ethical implications. (shrink)

In a recent series of papers, Beck and Wagner have been arguing about the general role that thought experiments can play in the debate on personal identity, showing their disagreement about the famous criticisms that Wilkes’ launched against their use. In this article I come back to Wilkes’ criticisms to show that her position is deeply problematic. If we adopt instead the mental model account of thought experiments, we can accommodate Wilkes’ criticisms and justify the use of thought experiments in (...) the debate of personal identity. This will allow us to see why Beck and Wagner were both half right and half wrong in their discussion. (shrink)

Many philosophers believe that the criteria of identity over time for ordinary objects entail that such objects are permanent members of certain sortal kinds. The sortal kinds in question have come to be known as substance sortal kinds. But in this article, I defend a criterion of identity that is suited to phasalism, the view that alleged substance sortals are in fact phase sortals. The criterion I defend is a sortal‐weighted version of a change‐minimizing criterion first discussed by Eli Hirsch. (...) I present this criterion and then argue that it withstands attempts to show that it is inferior to non‐phasalist rivals. (shrink)

There is a considerable effort in current theorizing about psychological phenomena to eliminate minds and selves as a vestige of folk theories. The pertinent strategies are quite varied and may focus on experience, cognition, interests, responsibility, behavior and the scientific explanation of these phenomena or what they purport to identify. The minimal function of the notion of self is to assign experience to a suitable entity and to fix such ascription in a possessive as well as a predicative way. It (...) is usually argued that Hume formulated an empiricist account of experience that obviated the need for reference to selves; and recent arguments mustered by Derek Parfit claim to show how to preserve experience, interest, responsibility usually assigned selves and persons without invoking any such entities. The argument here advanced demonstrates that Hume actually concedes the minimal use of the notion of self, that there appear to be no convincing grounds for eliminating it, that there are critical uses for the notion that render it ineliminable, that admission is neutral regarding the nature of selves, and that Parfit''s arguments in particular fail. There appear, therefore, to be no empiricist or materialist grounds for the eliminative move. A large recent literature that favors various eliminative strategies is canvassed and shown to be inadequate to its task and unlikely (for principled reasons) to be able to achieve its eliminative objective. (shrink)

There are five main claims that may be made about life after death: We are reincarnated in the self-same body we had in life. We are reincarnated in another body. We are revived, or continue to live in a disembodied form.

Some Christian materialists have argued for the possibility of resurrection given that persons are constituted by bodies, and constitution is not identity. Baker's constitutionist view claims superiority over animalist alternatives but offers only circular accounts of both personal identity over time and personhood. Corcoran's alternative approaches these questions differently but makes use of Zimmerman's ‘Falling Elevator Model’ of resurrection, which is rendered incoherent by its reliance on contingent identity. A recent constitutionist revision of this model succeeds only in exchanging incoherence (...) for absurdity. Despite difficulties for such resurrection accounts, the idea of constitution as a sui generis relation remains attractive among philosophers and Christian materialists in particular. However, Wasserman's deflationary view combines with problems such as extensionality, indiscernibility and the explosion of reality to provide reason to worry that constitution might be just identity after all. If so, then the metaphysics of constitution cannot provide a convenient route between animalism and immaterialism when explaining the possibility of resurrection. (shrink)

Ontological dualism is energetically resisted by a range of Christian scholars including philosophers such as Baker and Corcoran who defend accounts of human persons based on material constitution. Whilst Baker’s view fails to account for diachronic identity, Corcoran’s account of life after death makes use of Zimmerman’s problematic “Falling Elevator Model.” It is argued that Zimmerman’s recent reassessment of the model overestimates its value for materialists. In fact, the model generates either a fatal encounter with the nature of identity, or (...) absurdity. A lack of alternatives is illustrated by anticriterialist proposals. Thus it seems materialism and resurrection belief remain incompatible. (shrink)

Recently, Caterina Moruzzi has appealed to Ted Sider’s case for continuant exdurantism and the availability of a “parallel move” in musical ontology to promote a specific version of musical work exdurantism. In this article, I argue that her version of musical exdurantism undermines the prospects for making the parallel move, but I go on to sketch two alternatives that do not. In Section I, I outline apparent persistence-parallels between ordinary material objects and musical works. In Section II, I sketch a (...) transposable case for accepting continuant exdurantism. In Section III, I introduce Moruzzi’s exdurantism. In Section IV, I introduce her selected rivals—the type-token theory of Julian Dodd and an austere musical perdurantism due to Ben Caplan and Carl Matheson. In Section V, I argue that several of Moruzzi’s commitments undermine her motivation from the “parallel move.” In sections VI and VII, I sketch alternative versions of musical exdurantism that are better positioned to adopt the parallel move. (shrink)

Derek Parfit’s argument against the platitude that identity is what matters in survival does not work given his intended reading of the platitude, namely, that what matters in survival to some future time is being identical with someone who is alive at that time. I develop Parfit’s argument so that it works against the platitude on this intended reading.

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.

En el presente trabajo presentaremos el problema filosófico de la identidad personal y analizaremos el enfoque genético de la misma. Este enfoque constituye una perspectiva generalizada actualmente en nuestra sociedad, a partir de la divulgación científica y la educación formal. Esto se debe, principalmente, al impacto que han tenido las técnicas de identificación genética de personas en la restitución identitaria de los hijos de desaparecidos, apropiados durante la última dictadura cívico-militar argentina. Alertaremos sobre la extrapolación de la estrategia política de (...) las Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, que apela a una noción de identidad anclada en los genes y el origen, a otros contextos. Alertaremos acerca del riesgo del determinismo genético al que puede conducir una concepción genetizante sobre la identidad personal. (shrink)

This article presents a critical assesment of Dennett’s narrative self theory as a personal identity theory. First it is contextualized in regard to the debate on personal identity in the decade of 1980, then Dennett’s theory is presented in the light of Strawson’s analysis of Narrativity, the criticisms received by Dennett’s theory and by narrative theories in general are put in relationship, and finally it is shown how Dennett’s theory could help the actual supporters of narrative identity theories to reformulate (...) their arguments in defense to the received criticisms. Thus I hope to contribute to a better understanding of Dennett’s theory and to claim for its relevance in the actual debate about personal identity in analytic philosophy. (shrink)

According to colocationism, two different material objects can be colocated during their entire careers. The typical example is that of a statue and the lump of clay out of which it is made, both of which start to exist and cease to exist at exactly the same time. One of the main problems for colocationism is the grounding problem. Recently, several attractive colocationist answers to the problem have been formulated. In this paper I analyse the proposals by Kit Fine, Kathrin (...) Koslicki, Noël Saenz and Catherine Sutton and conclude that all of them have problematic, unsatisfactory consequences, and this constitutes a strong reason against them. That, in turn, shows, I think, the difficulty of finding a satisfactory colocationist answer to the grounding problem, which continues to be a fundamental difficulty for the position. (shrink)

Is it absurd to believe that, in the absence of bodily continuity, personal identity could be retained? Bernard Williams argued for an affirmative answer to this question partly on the basis of a well-known thought experiment. Some other philosophers, including D. Z. Phillips, have accepted, or appear to have accepted, Williams' conclusion.Yet the argument has the consequence of dismissing as absurd the sorts of reincarnation beliefs which, within their proper contexts, have a meaningful role in the lives of many millions (...) of people. Drawing upon philosophical work by David Cockburn, and also on anthropological studies concerning reincarnation beliefs, this paper questions the extent to which ostensibly meaningful beliefs can be deemed unintelligible in the absence of careful attention to their cultural contexts. (shrink)

Williams (1970) argues that our intuitions about personal identity vary depending on how a given thought experiment is framed. Some frames lead us to think that persistence of self requires persistence of one's psychological characteristics; other frames lead us to think that the self persists even after the loss of one's distinctive psychological characteristics. The current paper takes an empirical approach to these issues. We find that framing does affect whether or not people judge that persistence of psychological characteristics is (...) required for persistence of self. Open-ended, abstract questions about what is required for survival tend to elicit responses that appeal to the importance of psychological characteristics. This emphasis on psychological characteristics is largely preserved even when participants are exposed to a concrete case that yields conflicting intuitions over whether memory must be preserved in order for a person to persist. Insofar as our philosophical theory of personal identity should be based on our intuitions, the results provide some support for the view that psychological characteristics really are critical for persistence of self. (shrink)

Could I have had different parents? In practice, no, but in principle, yes. And could I have been born at a different time? Again, in practice no, but in principle, yes. These are, perhaps, common sense verdicts on such questions. But they go against what may be seen as some prevailing philosophical orthodoxies. I defend versions of the common sense verdicts, and argue against the orthodoxies here.

A number of claims are closely connected with, though logically distinct from, animalism. One is that organisms cease to exist when they die. Two others concern the relation of the brain, or the brainstem, to animal life. One of these holds that the brainstem is necessary for life—more precisely, that (say) my cat's brainstem is necessary for my cat's life to continue. The other is that it is sufficient for life—more precisely, that so long as (say) my cat's brainstem continues (...) to function, so too does my cat. I argue against these claims. (shrink)

Criticism of Locke's account of personal identity has proceeded cumulatively. Three years after the publication of the chapter “Of Identity and Diversity”, John Sergeant raised an objection which, in Bishop Butler's hands, was to become famous as the dictum that “one should really think it self-evident that consciousness of personal identity presupposes, and therefore cannot constitute, personal identity: any more than knowledge, in any other case, can constitute truth, which it presupposes”. Berkeley added, in effect, that when consciousness is taken (...) to be the criterion of personal identity, one must admit that a man conscious of segments of his life at some times and not at others both is — because “conscious of” states a transitive relation — and is not — because of lack of consciousness—the same person. (shrink)

Among your closest associates is a certain human animal – a living, breathing, organism. You see it when you look in the mirror. When it is sick, you don't feel too well. Where it goes, you go. And, one thinks, where you go, it must follow. Indeed, you can make it move through sheer force of will. You bear, in short, an important and intimate relation to this, your animal. So too rest of us with our animals. Animalism says that (...) this relation is nothing short of identity. According to animalists, we do not only coincide with or constitute or inhabit or otherwise hang out with these close associates, our animals: we are them. In this article, I offer an opinionated take on what animalism might be and situate it against contemporary rivals. Then, I outline a simple case for animalism. Finally, I sketch non-standard routes for animalists to take in light of standard challenges. My goal in all of this is to open up some new avenues of animalist thinking. (shrink)

People are organisms of a characteristic shape, with individual personalities, abilities and memories. Each of these features varies through time, but does not normally change very abruptly before death. Because these changes are only gradual, we are able to pick out one and the same individual through time, and refer to him, her or it by use of a proper name, just as we are able to refer to one and the same planet, animal or building. In particular, organisms change (...) shape only gradually, and we have every reason to believe in the possibility of our continuing to watch the spatiotemporally continuous life-history of one and the same organism. (shrink)

Attacks on ?closest continuer? and ?best candidate? theories of identity have something correct in them while still failing to discredit the theories they oppose. What follows from Noonan's and Wiggins's objections to such theories is that they need to be so formulated as not to deny the necessity of identity. The best metaphysics for best?candidate theories to adopt is one in which everyday objects are taken to transcend, in a certain sense, their life histories in given worlds. This metaphysics also (...) has the potential for solving problems about contingent identity, transworld identity, and the issue of haecceitism or individual essence. To develop the metaphysics, it is only necessary to follow through the analogy between worlds and times suggested by writers like Plantinga and Schlesinger. (shrink)