1. Personal Identity in the 21st Century
Dana Goswick
University of Melbourne

2. Introduction Who I am What I Teach What We’ll Do Today Dana Goswick
One lecture on Personal Identity in year 1
Eight lectures on the Nature of the Self in year 2
What We’ll Do Today
An overview of several contemporary views of personal identity.

3. Some Questions Personal Person-kind Nature of Persons
Who am I? What makes me me? How do I define myself?
Person-kind
What is it to be a person? What makes something a person (as opposed to a table or a possum)?
Nature of Persons
What is the (metaphysical) nature of people? Are we material beings? Are we composites of form and matter? Are we immaterial souls?
Personal Persistence
How do people exist over time? Why is me-now the same person as baby-me? Is personal persistence important? If so, why?

4. History of Personal Identity
You’ve read history of philosophy texts by Locke and Hume.
How do their views relate to contemporary work on personal persistence (or, more broadly) on the nature of the self?
The two historic views in PI come from Locke.
PI = Physical Continuity
PI = Psychological Continuity

5. Historic View PI = Physical Continuity
So long as you’ve got enough of the same matter or the matter you have now is causally tied to the matter you used to have, you persist.
Objection: counter-intuitive
Reflect on Locke’s prince & cobbler case.

6. Historic View PI = Psychological Continuity
So long as you’ve got enough of the same psychology or the psychology you have now is causally tied to the psychology you used to have, you persist.
Objection
Duplicating your psychology doesn’t duplicate you.
Psychology is typically under-defined.

7. Contemporary Views of Personal Identity
The historic views are overly simplistic.
Spruced Up Historic Views
Parfit’s (close-enough) closest-continuer
(psychological continuity) – identity
Baker’s embodied first-person perspective
(psychological continuity + identity ) – just one thing
Radical New Views
Conventionalism

8. PI = Close Enough Closest Continuer
So long as there’s someone at t whose psychology is appropriately causally tied to the psychology you had at t-1, you persist.
Objection: counter-intuitive
Isn’t numerical identity, so doesn’t feel enough like me.

9. PI = First-Person Perspective
So long as p at t has the same first-person perspective as p* at t*, p=p*.
There is a body + a person. The body constitutes the person.
Objection
Requires endorsing coinciding objects theory.

10. PI is Conventional Personal identity is conventional.
There is no objective answer to what personal identity is. We make it up. It may vary from person to person (depending on what that person values) or from circumstance to circumstance.
Objection: counter-intuitive
This answer is too anti-Realist for most philosophers.

11. Summing Up Personal Identity
Physical
PI = physical continuity
Psychological
PI = psychological continuity
PI = close enough closest continuer
PI = first-person perspective
Other
PI is conventional.

12. QUESTIONS