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Personal Identity
This is the third chapter of my book Transformation of the self, which covers Schleiermacher's reception of Kant on the problem of personal identity
Personal Identity
Our aim in this entry is to articulate the state of the art in the moral psychology of personal identity. We begin by discussing the major philosophical theories of personal identity, including their shortcomings. We then turn to recent psychological work on personal identity and the self, investigations that often illuminate our person-related normative concerns. We conclude by discussing the implications of this psychological work for some contemporary philosophical theories and suggesting fruitful areas for future work on personal identity
Morality Grounds Personal Identity
There is a connection between moral facts and personal identity facts: morality grounds personal identity. If, for example, old Sally enters a teletransporter, and new Sally emerges, the fundamental question to ask is: is new Sally morally responsible for actions (and omissions) of old Sally? If the moral facts are such that she is morally responsible, then Sally persisted through the teletransporter event, and if not, Sally ceased to exist
Personal Identity, Numerical and Qualitative
In the analytic tradition, "the problem of personal
identity" is usually taken to mean a question of numerical
identity over time: what makes X at one time the same
person as Y at another? But the title also fits a set of
questions - at least as interesting - which concern what
may be called qualitative identity. A person"s qualitative
identity comprises his defining properties (DPs): these are
properties that he must mention in a full answer to the
question "Who am I?", taken in a special sense which can
be discerned by contrast with the ordinary sense of the
third-person "Who is X?" If you and I are watching a
ceremony and I, pointing to one of the participants, ask
"Who is she?", my purpose is likely to be to find out that
person"s role in the ceremony: the question and the
appropriate answer are relative to my purpose, which is set
by the context. In the sense relevant to DPs, "Who am I?"
is not thus relative to context and purpose: rather, in
answering the question I identify properties of mine that
determine my purposes. There is, however, no simple
asymmetry between the first-person and the third-person
questions; the third-person question can, although it rarely
does, take this sense, and conversely the first-person
question can be relative to purpose and context, as for
example where roles in a game are being assigned and
one of the players is unsure of his role. Nevertheless the
special sense is more prominent in the first-person case
Personal Identity and What Matters
Identity is not what prudentially matters in survival
(this is originally and most famously argued in Parfit 1984,
245-280). Consider the case of division. a is one of three
identical triplets. In World 1 his equipollent cerebral
hemispheres are removed from his head and each is
inserted into the (suitably emptied) skull of one of his
brothers, resulting in the existence of two persons, b and c.
In World 2, only one of his hemispheres is transplanted
(while the other is destroyed), resulting in the existence of
b*. Note that, assuming the necessity and transitivity of
identity, b* is identical to neither b nor c
A Dilemma for Personal Identity
Some theories of personal identity allow persons
to lose their identities in processes of qualitative change,
i.e., to become a numerically different person by getting
new physical and/or psychological properties. I shall call
these theories strong. Weak theories, in contrast, do not
allow for such a loss of identity. In general, weak theories
put less restrictions on personal identity than strong ones. I
will argue that each type of theory faces a serious problem
Strong Evaluations and Personal Identity
Charles Taylor draws
a distinction between weak and strong evaluations. They
are two kinds of evaluative attitudes persons can have
towards a variety of objects of evaluation. The possible
objects can vary from individual desires, emotions and acts
to whole ways of life. Strong evaluations are stable
preferences based on qualitative distinctions concerning
the worth of the options. Strong evaluations are responses
to the non-instrumental value of the options, and they can
be mistaken, because the value of the options is not based
on the response. By contrast, what Taylor calls "weak
evaluations" cannot be mistaken. Weak evaluations make
any of their objects weakly valued. This means that strong
evaluations are value-based, and weak evaluations desirebased
preferences. Taylor also says that strong
evaluations, unlike weak evaluations, are central to one's
identity. One's identity is constituted through a strong
adherence, a strong identification with and commitment to
the values. Thus strong evaluations are stable preferences
that are strongly adhered to, and which are based on
strong values
Personal identity and the radiation argument
Sydney Shoemaker has argued that, because we can imagine a
people who take themselves to survive a 'brain-state-transfer' procedure,
cerebrum transplant, or the like, we ought to conclude that we could survive
such a thing. I claim that the argument faces two objections, and can be
defended only by depriving it any real interest
Memory and Personal Identity in Spinoza
Locke is often thought to have introduced the topic of personal identity into philosophy when, in the second edition of the Essay, he distinguished the person from both the human being and the soul. Each of these entities differs from the others with respect to their identity conditions, and so they must be ontologically distinct. In particular, Locke claimed, a person cannot survive total memory loss, although a human being or a soul can
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