Criterion Of Personal Identity Research Articles

Genetic Enhancement and Problems of Personal Identity

There are various discussions on personal identity in philosophy. Some differences of opinions exist in western philosophy regarding the criteria that needs to be fulfilled for two different persons at two different times to be considered as identical. Some philosophers think if physical continuity exists between the persons before and after, then they are identical. Some philosophers go against this and think that only psychological continuity must exist between the persons before and after to be considered as identical. There are also some philosophers who think only if both physical and psychological continuity exist between two persons at two different times, then they can be considered identical. The answer to the question , which of the three criteria, i.e. physical, psychological or mixed, is acceptable as the criteria of personal identity - is entwined with a very important question : when an entity becomes a person. In this paper, personhood of an entity, whether a fetus and who are in vegetative state can be considered as a person etc will be discussed along with another issue on whether personal identity changes after genetic enhancement.

Losing One's Head or Gaining a New Body?

A surgical head-transplant technique, HEAVEN, promises to offer significantly improved quality of life for quadriplegics and others whose minds are functional, but whose bodies require artificial support to continue living. HEAVEN putatively actualizes a thought-experiment long debated by philosophers concerning the definition of personhood and criterion of personal identity through time and change. HEAVEN's advocates presume to preserve the identity of the person whose head is transplanted onto another's living body, leaving one's previous body behind as one would their corpse. Various classical and contemporary theories of personhood and personal identity would support this presumption, while others would contest it as providing an accurate or complete view of what is essential for a human person to persist through this procedure. This paper brings such theories to bear in analyzing whether HEAVEN can indeed deliver on its promise of complete ontological survival for the person whose head is transplanted.

Misfortune caused by death, personal identity and what matters in survival

This article presents and discusses concepts and arguments found in debates on three philosophical problems: the misfortune inflicted by death on the person who dies; personal identity; and what is important in survival. First, it outlines the debate raised in the argument by Epicurus, to whom death means nothing to those who die. Second, the rivalry between neo-Lockeans and animalists regarding the most plausible criterion of personal identity is presented and discussed. Finally, a discussion on whether the misfortune caused by death is or not related to personal identity is conducted. The paper concludes that the dimension of the misfortune caused by death depends on both the amount of goods one is deprived of by death and on the interest such an individual would have to continue living. The aforementioned philosophical problems make up a core of acute issues such as decisions regarding the maintenance of life and delaying death.

How Sense-phenomenal Theory of Personal Identity Might Legitimize Racism

The major concern of the problem of personal identity gravitates around the question of whether a person’s identity is located in the mind or in the body. Scholars have developed different theories such as survivalist and physicalist criteria among others in response to this question. In this paper, I engage with the theory of sense-phenomenalism as an aspect of the physicalist criterion of personal identity to show how it might legitimize racism and colour-branding. Sense-phenomenalism is a body-only model of personal identity that holds that an individual’s identity is determined by the physical features sensually perceptible by other humans in the society. I argue that sense-phenomenalism by reposing a person’s identity on his/her bodily traits might foster social discrimination, deepen the dichotomy between the self and the other and enhance the fabrication of justifications for the denial of individual’s rights.

Brain Transplant and Personal Identity

Abstract Should Christians support the view that one’s psychological continuity is the main criterion of personal identity? Is the continuity of one’s brain or memory states necessary and sufficient for the identicalness of the person? This paper investigates the plausibility of the psychological continuity theory of personal identity, which holds that the criterion of personal identity is certain psychological continuity between persons existing at different times. I argue that the psychological continuity theory in its various forms suffers from interminable problems. Then, I introduce an alternate account of personal identity, according to which personal identity is not further analyzable in terms of qualitative properties (“suchnesses”) of persons. Rather, persons are individuated by their primitive thisnesses (haecceities), which are nonqualitative properties of immaterial substances (or souls). This alternate conception of personal identity would be of particular relevance to those who believe in the immortality of the soul and are looking for a nonphysicalist account of personal identity.

The Sense and Reality of Personal Identity

The vast majority of philosophers of personal identity since John Locke have been convinced that the persistence of persons is not grounded in bodily continuity. Why? As numerous ‘textbooks’ on personal identity attest, their conviction rests, to a large extent, on an objection to the bodily approach, which concerns episodic memory. The objection invites us to a thought experiment in which we meet a person who experientially remembers events from the past of a person with a different body. The nature of such first-personal memory-links is viewed as strongly suggesting that the rememberer is identical with the remembered, and hence, given the possibility of such a case, as suggesting that a person can transgress its bodily limits. The memory objection is as influential as it gets in the metaphysics of personal identity. Textbooks often portray it as the starting point of the contemporary debate about personal identity. And it has been widely perceived as a success. As everyone who has taught an introductory course on personal identity knows, the recognition of episodic-memory links in body-switching cases has the power to turn any group of novice students against bodily criteria of personal identity. In this essay, I shall specify and undermine the memory objection. I shall attempt to establish two theses. The first thesis (Sects. 1, 2) is that the memory objection is only viable if construed as resting on the view that episodic memory contains a sense of personal identity, which teaches us about the reality of personal identity. The second thesis (Sects. 3, 4) is that there is no such sense of personal identity, that episodic memory teaches us nothing at all about personal identity.

Dualists needn’t be anti-criterialists (nor should they be)

Sometimes in philosophy one view engenders another. If you hold the first, chances are you hold the second. But it’s not always because the first entails the second. Sometimes the tie is less clear, less clean. One such tie is between substance dualism and anti-criterialism. Substance dualism is the view that people are, at least in part, immaterial mental substances. Anti-criterialism is the view that there is no criterion of personal identity through time. Most philosophers who hold the first view also hold the second. In fact, many philosophers just assume that substance dualists ought to, or perhaps even have to, accept anti-criterialism. But I aim to show that this assumption is baseless. Substance dualism doesn’t entail, suggest, support, or in any way motivate anti-criterialism, and anti-criterialism confers no benefit on dualism. Substance dualists have no special reason—and, indeed, no good reason at all—to accept anti-criterialism. Or so I shall argue. My aim isn’t to defend substance dualism, nor is it to attack anti-criterialism. My aim is to show that, contrary to a long-standing trend, dualists needn’t be anti-criterialists. Nor, as it will turn out, should they be.

Head Transplants and Personal Identity: A Philosophical and Literary Survey.

The criterion of personal identity is clearly called into question by the project to perform a human head transplant. Is identity provided by psychological continuity alone, or does it depend on bodily continuity as well? And how do these different perspectives interface with our notion of mind and mind-body relationship? The reader will be provided with a discussion concerning these problems, together with a philosophical and literary survey about the conception of body-mind relationship from the Greek thought to contemporary philosophy. The analysis will conclude with a discussion concerning the possibility to consider the issue of personal identity from a statistic point of view, which privileges the general perception of identity, so as it has been shaped by the cultural trends of the last four centuries. It could hence be argued that personal identity is not something which can be defined once and for all. On the contrary, the general perception of identity is subject to significant alterations resulting from one's cultural environment. However, the cultural environment itself can be changed by particularly notable events, such as, hypothetically, the successful outcome of a human head transplant.

МЕТАЛЛОПРОИЗВОДСТВО И СОЦИАЛЬНАЯ ИДЕНТИЧНОСТЬ ПО МАТЕРИАЛАМ ПОГРЕБАЛЬНЫХ ПАМЯТНИКОВ СИНТАШТИНСКОЙ КУЛЬТУРЫ ЮЖНОГО УРАЛА

The study aims at a social interpretation of the Sintashta burials, southern Ural (21st–18th century BC cal.), where artifacts related to bronze metallurgy (molds, ceramic nozzles, ore and slag remains, metal bars and drops) had been placed. These were found in at least 10 % of graves. If stone hammers and abrasive tools are included, the share increases to one-sixth. The fi ndings apparently indicate the social identity of those buried and point to a general characteristics of the group. People engaged in metal production were mostly adult males, and were relatively few. Women, too, may have participated, at least at the preparatory stages. Markers of engagement in metal production very rarely co-occur with attributes of high status such as mace-heads, spearheads, axes, chariots, and cheek-pieces. This agrees with conclusions of cross-cultural studies suggesting that “metallurgists” were not top-ranking members of the social hierarchy. Nor were they subject to discrimination in the Sintashta society, because being buried at a cemetery evidenced high status. Professional membership was an important but not the main criterion of personal identity. Despite being few, burials of smiths distinguish Sintashta from most other Bronze Age steppe societies of Eurasia.

The Role of Naturalness in Lewis's Theory of Meaning

Many writers have held that in his later work, David Lewis adopted a theory of predicate meaning such that the meaning of a predicate is the most natural property that is (mostly) consistent with the way the predicate is used. That orthodox interpretation is shared by both supporters and critics of Lewis's theory of meaning, but it has recently been strongly criticised by Wolfgang Schwarz. In this paper, I accept many of Schwarze's criticisms of the orthodox interpretation, and add some more. But I also argue that the orthodox interpretation has a grain of truth in it, and seeing that helps us appreciate the strength of Lewis's late theory of meaning. References T. Bays. The Problem with Charlie: Some Remarks on Putnam, Lewis and Williams. Philosophical Review 116:401–425, 2007. http://dx.doi.org/10.1215/00318108-2007-003 J. Hawthorne. Craziness and Metasemantics. Philosophical Review 116:427–440, 2007. http://dx.doi.org/10.1215/00318108-2007-004 R. Holton. David Lewis's Philosophy of Language. Mind and Language 18:286-295, 2003. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1468-0017.00228 D. Lewis. Convention: A Philosophical Study. Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1969. D. Lewis. Radical Interpretation. Synthese 27:331–344, 1974. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF00484599 D. Lewis. Languages and Language. In Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, 7:3–35. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1975. D. Lewis. Attitudes De Dicto and De Se. Philosophical Review 88: 513–543, 1979. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2184843 D. Lewis. Mad Pain and Martian Pain. In Ned Block, editor, Readings in the Philosophy of Psychology, pages 216-232. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980. D. Lewis. New Work for a Theory of Universals. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 61: 343–377, 1983. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00048408312341131 D. Lewis. Putnam's Paradox. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 62: 221-236, 1984. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00048408412340013 D. Lewis. On the Plurality of Worlds. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1986. D. Lewis. Meaning without Use: Reply to Hawthorne. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 70: 106-110, 1992. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00048408112340093 D. Lewis.. Reduction of Mind. In Samuel Guttenplan, editor, A Companion to the Philosophy of Mind, pages 412–431. Oxford: Blackwell, 1994. Reprinted in Lewis 1999. References to reprint. D. Lewis. Papers in Metaphysics and Epistemology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511625343 W. Schwarz. Lewisian Meaning without Naturalness. Unpublished manuscript, 2006. W. Schwarz. David Lewis: Metaphysik und Analyse. Paderborn: Mentis-Verlag, 2009. T. Sider. Criteria of Personal Identity and the Limits of Conceptual Analysis. Philosophical Perspectives 15: 189–209, 2001a. T. Sider. Four-Dimensionalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001b. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/019924443X.001.0001 T. Sider. Writing the Book of the World. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. PMCid:3539916 R. Stalnaker. Lewis on Intentionality. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 82: 199–212, 2004. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/713659796 B. Weatherson. What Good Are Counterexamples?. Philosophical Studies 115: 1-31, 2003. http://dx.doi.org/10.1023/A:1024961917413 B. Weatherson. Vagueness as Indeterminacy. In Richard Dietz and Sebastiano Moruzzi, editors, Cuts and Clouds: Vaguenesss, its Nature and its Logic, pages 77–90. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199570386.003.0005 J. R. G. Williams. Eligibility and Inscrutability. Philosophical Review 116: 361-399, 2007. http://dx.doi.org/10.1215/00318108-2007-002

The Lack of Collective Memory and Identity Construction in Cyberspace

According to Maurice Halbswachs memory depend upons social conditions. Social framework is the sine qua non of the existence of memory. A lonely person can neither has an individual nor a social memory. However social amnesia and forgetting is a problem in contemporary world wherein social life and the society is fragmented; in addition, the identity is the result of this fragmented world. The frantically identity-seeking is a side effect of the repression and tension rooted in globalization and individualization. Identity in today’s world is unstable, multible, fluctuating and fragmentary. If the identity is a seeking of escaping from uncertainity, one of the reasons of this uncertainity is the lack of collective memory. The problem in producing and transfering the common past in today’s world, in other words the loss of collective memory is lead to the individualization of the society; identity means for a man -who is imprisoned in a permanent “now”- a kind of a safety home in an unsafe world. As Barbara A. Mitsztal asserts “memory and identity depend upon each other since not only is identity rooted in memory but also what is remembered is defined by the assumed identity.” John Locke sees memory as the criterion of personal identity and equates it with a collection of experiences. He says that “I am what I remember.” The essence strategy of postmodern life is not the construction of identity, avoiding to make it immobilized. Digital world and cyberspace fulfil this need through the cheapest and easiest way. Digital world offers us a lot of opportunities in having different identities. On the internet an individual identity becomes so fluid. Cyberspace allows people to construct their self-presentation and to play with online identity. The user become the author of their life.

Physical Continuity, Self and the Future

Jeff McMahan's impressive recent defence of the embodied mind theory of personal identity in his highly acclaimed work The Ethics of Killing has undoubtedly reawakened belief that physical continuity is a necessary component of the relation that matters in our self-interested concern for the future. My aim in this paper is to resist this belief in a somewhat roundabout way. I want to address this belief in a somewhat roundabout way by revisiting a classic defence of the belief that enormous changes in the contents of a person's psychology does not preclude justified fear of future pain. I have in mind Bernard Williams' The Self and the Future (1970) in which he argues, against the psychological view, that physical continuity is necessary for survival. I examine Williams' second thought experiment which ostensibly supports that intuition and afterwards defend two related claims. First, I argue that a close examination of the second thought experiment reveals that one's prior commitments to a particular criterion of personal identity can influence one's response to that thought experiment. Second, I argue that Williams' second thought experiment is set out in questionbegging terms. I do not claim, however, that the intuition under consideration lacks justification; I only claim that Williams' second thought experiment does not provide the needed support.

John locke on personal identityFNx08

John Locke speaks of personal identity and survival of consciousness after death. A criterion of personal identity through time is given. Such a criterion specifies, insofar as that is possible, the necessary and sufficient conditions for the survival of persons. John Locke holds that personal identity is a matter of psychological continuity. He considered personal identity (or the self) to be founded on consciousness (viz. memory), and not on the substance of either the soul or the body.

Yo mismo como alguien más. La identidad personal y el lenguaje

The traditional criteria (physical and psychological) used over time to explain personal identity are not only insufficient but unreliable. The contemporary debate, notably the Anglo-Saxon approach, seems to be limited on these two criteria. The author of this study proposes a new criterion of personal identity: the language criterion. This one is both, an ontological (as constitutive) and epistemological approach (as cognitive) of the identity of the person across the time. The author bases his arguments on neurosurgery’s experiences, supported on writings of French philosophy of language. In this sense, Paul Ricoeur, Francis Jacques and Denis Vernant are the main references.

More kinds of being: a further study of individuation, identity, and the logic of sortal terms

Preface vii Acknowledgements xi 1 Introduction 1 The Varieties of 'Is' 3 Individuals, Kinds, and Realism 4 Semantics, Metaphysics, and Necessity 6 New Developments 8 2 Sortal Terms and Criteria of Identity 12 3 Individuals, Sorts, and Instantiation 29 4 Number, Unity, and Individuality 42 5 The Absoluteness of Identity: A Defence 57 Appendix: Some Formal Principles and Arguments 72 6 Identity and Constitution 77 7 Parts and Wholes 92 8 Persons and Their Bodies 104 Matter and Organisms 104 Organisms and Persons 113 Is There a Criterion of Personal Identity? 125 9 Sortal Terms and Natural Laws 141 10 Plural Quantification and Sortal Reference 164 11 Laws, Dispositions, and Sortal Logic 179 Appendix: An Axiomatic System of Sortal Logic 194 12 What Sorts of Things Are There? 198 The Syntax and Semantics of Complex Sortal Terms 198 On the Identity of Sorts 212 Bibliography 217 Index 223

Locke, Accountability and Personal Identity


 
 
 When discussing Locke’s views on the topic of personal identity, commentators often cite from Essay II. xxvii. 26, which begins with the remark that ‘person ... is a forensic term appropriating actions and their merit ...’. In some way or other, what Locke says about accountability and punishment is supposed to bear on what he says about the identity of persons over time. According to some, the connection is this: the correct account of personal identity is crucial because the meting out of punishment and the allocation of reward depend upon it. Locke himself says, ‘In this personal identity is founded all the right and justice of reward and punishment’ (II. xxvii. 18). More specifically perhaps, a person is not to be punished or rewarded for an action unless he or she was the person who performed it. To know that Sam is rightly to be punished for the crime one must know that he was actually the criminal; to know that he was actually the criminal one must know not only the details of the case but also, more generally, what it is that makes a person X at one time the same as a person Y at another; whence the need for a criterion of personal identity.
 
 

Persons and Substances

I have argued elsewhere that the psychological criterion of personalidentity entails that a person is not an object, but a series ofpsychological events. As this is somewhat counter-intuitive,I consider whether the psychological theorist can argue that a person, while not a substance, exists in a way that is akin to theway that substances exist. I develop ten criteria that such a`quasi-substance' should meet, and I argue that a reasonablecase can be made to show that the psychological theorist's conception of a person meets these criteria.

Personal identity and mental content

In this paper, I attempt to map out the ‘logical geography’ of the territory in which issues of mental content and of personal identity meet. In particular, I investigate the possibility of combining a psychological criterion of personal identity with an externalist theory of content. I argue that this can be done, but only by accepting an assumption that has been widely accepted but barely argued for, namely that when someone switches linguistic communities, the contents of their thoughts do not change immediately, but only after the person becomes integrated within the new linguistic community. I also suggest that recent work on personal identity, notably by Derek Parfit, has tacitly assumed internalism regarding mental content. I do not intend to argue for either externalism or a psychological criterion. My aim is merely to explicate the issues involved in making them compatible.

On not knowing what or who one is: Reflections on the intelligibility of dualism

Beginning with Descartes' caution not “imprudently” to “take some other object in place of myself”, I consider first the problems of self-identification confronted by variousamnesiacs, both ordinary and Cartesian. Noting thatcogitationes as such do not individuate, I proceed to examine conclusions drawn from certain sorts of “body-switching” thought experiments. This, in turn, gives rise to a general critique of “psychological connectedness” or “unity of consciousness” as a candidate criterion of personal identity. I conclude that our ability to apply any notion of personal identity is parasitic upon the existence of a conceptual apparatus for individuating, identifying, and reidentifying objects. Finally, I argue that, if ‘person’ is a proper sortal predicate to begin with, Descartes'res cogitans cannot be understood as a species of the (metaphysical) genusres, distinct fromres extensa and only problematically in “interaction” with it. Cartesian dualism is a multiply untenable doctrine.

Parfit, Circularity, and the Unity of Consciousness

In his recent book, Reasons and Persons, Derek Parfit propounds a version of the psychological criterion of personal identity. 1 According to the variant he adopts, the numerical identity through time of persons consists in non-branching psychological continuity no matter how it is caused. One traditional objection to a view of this sort is that it is circular, since psychological continuity presupposes personal identity. Although Parfit frequently denies the importance of personal identity, he considers his own psychological account of identity important enough to attempt to defend it against the charge of circularity. The aim of this paper is to argue that Parfit's attempted defence is unsuccessful because it ultimately rests on an analysis of the unity of consciousness that is itself either circular or otherwise inadequate.