Against Person Essentialism

Mind 129 (515):715-735 (2020)
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Abstract

It is widely held that every person is a person essentially, where being a person is having special mental properties such as intelligence and self-consciousness. It follows that nothing can acquire or lose these properties. The paper argues that this rules out all familiar psychological-continuity views of personal identity over time. It also faces grave difficulties in accounting for the mental powers of human beings who are not intelligent and self-conscious, such as foetuses and those with dementia.

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Author Profiles

Eric T. Olson
University of Sheffield

Citations of this work

Persistence Without Personhood: A New Model.Joseph Gottlieb - 2022 - Philosophical Quarterly 72 (2):346-364.
In Defence of Advance Directives in Dementia.Karsten Witt - 2019 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 101 (1):2-21.

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References found in this work

Survival and identity.David Lewis - 1976 - In Amelie Oksenberg Rorty (ed.), The Identities of Persons. University of California Press. pp. 17-40.
Material Beings.Peter Van Inwagen - 1990 - Philosophy 67 (259):126-127.
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding.John Locke - 1979 - Revue Philosophique de la France Et de l'Etranger 169 (2):221-222.
Personal identity.Sydney Shoemaker - 1984 - Oxford, England: Blackwell. Edited by Richard Swinburne.
Selves: an essay in revisionary metaphysics.Galen Strawson - 2009 - New York: Oxford University Press.

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