Persistence and the First-Person Perspective

Philosophical Review 118 (4):425-464 (2009)
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Abstract

When one considers one's own persistence over time from the first-person perspective, it seems as if facts about one's persistence are "further facts," over and above facts about physical and psychological continuity. But the idea that facts about one's persistence are further facts is objectionable on independent theoretical grounds: it conflicts with physicalism and requires us to posit hidden facts about our persistence. This essay shows how to resolve this conflict using the idea that imagining from the first-person point of view is a guide to centered possibility, a type of possibility analyzed in terms of centered worlds.

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Dilip Ninan
Tufts University

Citations of this work

Imagination.Shen-yi Liao & Tamar Gendler - 2019 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
The Myth of the De Se.Ofra Magidor - 2015 - Philosophical Perspectives 29 (1):249-283.
Imagination.Tamar Szabó Gendler - 2012 - In Ed Zalta (ed.), Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
A New Theory of Free Will.Marcus Arvan - 2013 - Philosophical Forum 44 (1):1-48.
De se preferences and empathy for future selves.L. A. Paul - 2017 - Philosophical Perspectives 31 (1):7-39.

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References found in this work

Reasons and Persons.Derek Parfit - 1984 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press.
Does conceivability entail possibility.David J. Chalmers - 2002 - In Tamar Gendler & John Hawthorne (eds.), Conceivability and Possibility. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 145--200.
What is it like to be a bat?Thomas Nagel - 1974 - Philosophical Review 83 (October):435-50.

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