N-Continuity as a Part of Folk-Psychology. The Link between Personal Identity and the Identities of Persons

Abstract

The main idea for which I have argued in the foregoing four chapters is the following: The connections between mental states that are constitutive of the kind of psychological continuity that can function as a criterion of personal identity must be conceived—briefly put—in terms of a diachronic holism of mental contents (see Chapter 5, Section 2) rather than in terms of overlapping causal connections between the substrata of qualitatively similar states. Therefore, as far as psychological continuity is concerned, mental states ought to be identified and individuated in terms of their contents rather than their substrata. Only thus can we grant the narrative, process-like succession of mental states and the intimate relation between psychological continuity and embodiment in a physical world the relevance that is their philosophical due.