Online research in philosophy

Most views of personal identity allow that sometimes, facts of personal identity can be borderline or indeterminate. Bernard Williams argued that regarding questions of one’s own survival as borderline “had no comprehensible representation” in one’s emotions and expectations. Whether this is the case, I will argue, depends crucially on what account of indeterminacy is presupposed.

This paper argues that if persons last over time by "enduring", then no analysis or reduction of personal identity over time in terms of any sort of psychological continuity can be correct. In other words, any analysis of personal identity over time in terms of psychological continuity entails that persons are four-dimensional and have temporal parts. The paper then shows that if we abandon psychological analyses of personal identity-as we must if persons endure-Parfit's argument for the claim that identity does not matter in survival is easily undermined. The paper then suggests that this offers support for the claim that persons endure. Along the way the paper tries to clarify the contrast between the doctrine that persons endure and its rival, four-dimensionalism.

Parfit’s well known book, Reasons and Persons, argues, among other things, that ‘what matters’ in regard to ‘survival’ is not personal identity but something he calls ‘relation R.’ On this basis, plus other considerations, he rejects the ‘Self-interest’ theory as to what should be our aim in life. Here I show, or try to show, that his over-all argument is seriously defective. In particular, he fails to prove that personal identity is not what matters for survival.

In this paper I shall argue that if the Parfitian psychological criterion or theory of personal identity is true, then a good case can be made out to show that the psychological theorist should accept the view I call “psychological sequentialism”. This is the view that a causal connection is not necessary for what matters in survival, as long as certain other conditions are met. I argue this by way of Parfit’s own principle that what matters in survival cannot depend upon a trivial fact.

Addressing many topics in epistemology and metaphysics, this treatise sets out a new theory of the unity of objects, and discusses personal identity, the metaphysics of possible worlds, the continuity in space time, and the nature of philosophical theorizing.