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Personal Identity and the Hybrid View: A Middle Way

  • Harold W. Noonan EMAIL logo
From the journal Metaphysica

Abstract

Two of the main contenders in the debate about personal persistence over time are the neo-Lockean psychological continuity view and animalism as defended by Olson and Snowdon. Both are wrong. The position I shall argue for, which I call, following Olson, the hybrid view, takes (non-branching) psychological continuity as a sufficient but, pace the neo-Lockeans, not necessary condition for personal persistence. It sides with the animalist in allowing that mere (non-branching) biological continuity is also sufficient. So I am, in a sense, a psychological continuity theorist. But I am also in a sense, a biological theorist (or as Olson put it, a new animalist).


Corresponding author: Harold W. Noonan, Department of Philosophy, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, NG72RD, UK, E-mail:

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Published Online: 2021-03-12
Published in Print: 2021-09-27

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