EXAM: Personal Identity In Class Exam

Personal Identity

The concept concerning which individuals remain one and the same person over time.

Persistence

Continued existence or the state of remaining unchanged over time.

Metaphysical Personhood

A non-evaluative descriptive notion of personhood discussing the nature of a person’s existence.

Moral Personhood

Also known as moral standing, it refers to deserving moral consideration.

Legal Personhood

Refers to the status of being a subject of legal rights and obligations.

Person Stage

A temporal slice of a person, representing an individual at a specific moment in time.

Species Accounts

A theory stating that being a member of the human species is a condition for moral standing.

Mental Capacity Accounts

A theory suggesting that the possession of certain mental abilities is required for moral standing.

Nihilism

The belief that nothing persists, including persons, as everything is in constant flux.

Rationalism

The thesis that all and only rational beings have moral standing.

Sentience

The capability of conscious experience, including awareness of pain and pleasure.

The Puzzle of Personal Identity

A philosophical question on how we understand our existence as the same person over time despite changes.

The Speciesism Objection

Discrimination based on biological category, analogous to racism or sexism.

Locke's Definition of Person

A person is a self-aware rational being, capable of reflection across different times and places.

The Mirror Test

An experiment used to determine self-awareness in animals by checking if they can recognize themselves in a mirror.

Anencephaly

A congenital disorder where a baby is born without parts of their brain and skull.

Psychological Accounts

Theories explaining personal persistence based on mental continuity and psychological factors.

Physical Accounts

Theories explaining personal persistence based on physical continuity or the body.

Moral Obligation

The duty to consider the well-being and rights of others, creating a moral community.

Numerical Identity

A and B are numerically identical insofar as A is the same thing as B.

Qualitative Identity

A and B are qualitatively identical to the degree that they have the same qualities, or properties.

Locke’s Memory Theory

Continuity of identity is tied to continuity of memory as proposed by John Locke.

Reidentification Question

What makes a person the same person over time?

Psychological Approach

A person continues to exist insofar as their psychology continues to exist.

Physical Approach

A person continues to exist insofar as their body continues to exist.

Causal Theory of Memory

A genuine memory of an experience is a memory caused in the right way by the original experience.

Circularity Objection

The problem that personal identity analysis in terms of memories presupposes the concept of identity itself.

Quasi-memory

An apparent memory caused in the right way by someone’s experience, which may or may not entail identity.

Amnesia

A significant condition which raises questions about the continuity of psychological identity.

Reduplication

The phenomenon involving the duplication of identity, often referred to as branching or fission.

Non-Branching Theory

A psychological theory asserting that identity is maintained only when there is no branching; branching results in the non-existence of the original entity.

Identity Doesn’t Matter

Derek Parfit's position that survival is more critical than personal identity regarding psychological theories.

Four-Dimensionalism

A philosophical theory proposing that persons are four-dimensional objects or 'space-time worms' with temporal parts at different times.

Endurance

The concept that an object exists wholly at each point in time, in contrast to perdurance.

Perdurance

The idea that an object is 'spread out' over time and has different parts existing at different times.

Doppelganger

An identical double or counterpart of a person; in the context of the lecture, it refers to the second Riker.

Transitivity of Identity

The logical principle stating that if A equals B and B equals C, then A must equal C.

Psychological Theory of Personal Identity

The theory that ties one's identity to the continuation of their psychological elements and memories.

The Problem of Overpopulation

A dilemma arising in four-dimensionalism regarding the existence of multiple individuals with identical temporal parts.