Online research in philosophy

Does intention presuppose personal identity, and what relevance does the issue have for the contemporary personal identity debate? I distinguish three ways in which intention might be said to presuppose personal identity, focusing mainly on causal presupposition and content presupposition. I argue that intention often causally presupposes personal identity. I argue that intention does not content-presuppose personal identity. The former result is a potential basis for a Butlerian circularity objection to Lockean theories of personal identity. The latter result undercuts a prominent Lockean reply to ‘the thinking animal’ objection which has recently supplanted traditional Butlerian circularity objections in the personal identity debate.

After motivating the general problem of personal identity and considering several possible accounts, this entry reviews a variety of arguments for and against the animalist criterion of personal identity.

Among the many topics covered in Sven Bernecker’s impressive study of memory is the relation between memory and personal identity. Bernecker uses his grammatical taxonomy of memory and causal account to defend the claim that memory does not logically presuppose personal identity and hence that circularity objections to memory-based accounts of personal identity are misplaced. In my comment I investigate these claims, suggesting that the relation between personal identity and memory is more complicated than Bernecker’s analysis suggests. In particular, I argue (1) that while he shows that some memories do not presuppose personal identity he fails to show that those that are appealed to in memory-based accounts of personal identity do not, and (2) that the features of his view that allow him to define memory without reference to personal identity also obscure important features of memory that must be part of a complete account.

The first book synthesizing the many different topics that surround the issue of personal identity, this text makes an important contribution to the philosophy of personal identity and mind, and to epistemology.

One of the main problems of personal identity is supposed to be how we relate to our bodies. A few philosophers endorse what is called a 'bodily criterion of personal identity': they say that we are our bodies, or at any rate that our identity over time consists in the identity of our bodies. Many more deny this--typically on the grounds that we can imagine ourselves coming apart from our bodies. But both sides agree that the bodily criterion is an important view which anyone thinking about personal identity must consider.

Personal identity deals with questions about ourselves qua people (or persons). Many of these questions are familiar ones that occur to everyone at some time: What am I? When did I begin? What will happen to me when I die? Discussions of personal identity go right back to the origins of Western philosophy, and most major figures have had something to say about it. (There is also a rich literature on personal identity in Eastern philosophy, which I am not competent to discuss. Collins 1982 is a good source.).