Abstract

Contrary to what David Wiggins seems to suppose, I do not hold a view that attempts to “replace the self, the person, by a construct.” I do not hold that persons are “constructed from” states over which the psychological continuity relation is to be defined. I do not think that anything I say implies, or even suggests, such a view. I take it as obvious that a state must be a state of something, so it is assumed from the start that there are subjects of whatever states are in question. In the case of mental states, of the sort that concern us, these subjects are persons. So there is no suggestion that psychological predicates are in the first instance applied to “assemblages of states or to person stages.”