Abstract

The chief goal of this dissertation is to attain some clarity with respect to the interconnected issues which constitute the problem of personal identity. The logical and linguistic categories developed by Saul Kripke provide the tools through which these issues can be separated and put into perspective. In the first two chapters I examine the modal and other semantic features of rigid singular terms and such rigid predicates as natural kind terms. I defend both the transworld identity of named individuals and the real essence of genuine natural kinds. ;In the third chapter this linguistic framework is used to explicate the distinction between the numerical identity of individuals and the qualitative identity of properties. I suggest that individual identity consists in a principle of uniqueness typically supplied through indexical identification and a principle of individuation through which a given individual can be tracked through qualitative change. Property identity is explicated as a form of qualitative similarity. ;In the final two chapters I consider personal identity as a form of individual identity and personal identity as a form of property identity. I reject the former interpretation on the grounds that 'person' fails to supply a principle of individuation for actual persons. I adopt the latter interpretation and suggest that person designates a necessary dispositional property of actual persons. I consider alternative theories of personal identity from the standpoint of a property identity theory of personal identity and I argue that the property identity theory provides a compelling account of a series of widely discussed problem cases.