A Reductionist Account of Personal Identity

These flashcards cover the key concepts related to personal identity, philosophical perspectives, and arguments presented in the lecture notes.

Reductionists argue that personal identity is fully constituted by physical and psychological continuity and that there are no separately existing entities over and above these continuities.

What do reductionists argue about the concept of personal identity?

Locke defines 'person' as a forensic concept determined by common beliefs, attitudes, and practices.

How does John Locke define the concept of 'person'?

Qualitative identity refers to two objects being identical in properties, while numerical identity refers to an object being the same entity over time.

What distinguishes qualitative identity from numerical identity, according to the lecture?

Parfit argues that a person remains the same as long as there is psychological continuity, and if that continuity is lost, a numerically different entity emerges.

What is the view of Derek Parfit regarding psychological continuity?

Constitutive reductionism is the belief that persons exist but are fully constituted by their physical and psychological continuities without being separate entities.

What are constitutive reductionism and its key belief?

It illustrates that while a statue is constituted by clay, it is not the same as the lump of clay; similarly, persons are constituted by continuity but are not just that continuity.

What does Sydney Shoemaker's analogy of a statue and clay illustrate?

Metaphysical nonreductionists believe that persons are separately existing entities above and beyond their physical and psychological continuity.

What do metaphysical nonreductionists believe about persons?

The split-case argument raises issues with personal identity by illustrating scenarios where two individuals can fulfill the criteria for identity despite being different.

What is the 'split-case' argument in the context of personal identity?

Quasi-memory involves having apparent memories of experiences that one did not actually have, leading to implications about psychological continuity and identity.

What does Parfit's quasi-memory concept propose?

Some philosophers argue that using thought experiments may not accurately predict our attitudes in different or hypothetical worlds.

What is one critique of Parfit's use of thought experiments in his arguments?

The view that a person at time t2 is the same as a person at time t1 if they are psychologically continuous, typically through chains of memory and character traits.

What is the Psychological Criterion for personal identity?

The view that personal identity consists in the continued existence of a person's body or a functioning brain over time rather than psychological states.

What is the Physical Criterion for personal identity?

Butler argued that memory presupposes personal identity; one can only truly 'remember' an experience if they were already the person who had that experience.

What is Joseph Butler's circularity objection to the memory-based account?

A nonreductionist position holding that personal identity is an irreducible, 'further fact' that is not analyzable in terms of physical or psychological continuity.

What is the 'Simple View' of personal identity?

Relation R refers to psychological connectedness and/or continuity with any right kind of cause, which Parfit argues is what truly matters for survival rather than numerical identity.

What does Parfit mean by 'Relation R'?

It demonstrates a violation of transitivity; if a general remembers an officer, and the officer remembers a child, but the general forgets the child, the memory criterion suggests the general is not the same person as the child (A=B, B=C, A\neq C).

How does Thomas Reid's 'Brave Officer' paradox challenge the memory criterion?