Week 08: Personal Identity
Commencing Monday 23rd November 2020
Seminar Task on yyrama
- Complete and submit your re-written essay at least 24 hours before your seminar in Week 08.
- Check your work for any feedback immediately before the seminar.
- Re-read your work before the seminar (so you can answer questions about it).
- Ensure you can refer back to what you submitted during the seminar.
Note that the seminar tasks are typically on topics from previous weeks.
Not sure what to do? Check this guide to the seminar tasks (this is the same each week).
Live Online Whole-Class Meeting
- Add messages with your questions before the meeting in the teams channel for the lectures.
- Attend the meeting on Thursday at 12 (link to join).
Recorded Lectures
- Make use of the Lecture 13 recordings (or the backup recordings if the main recordings do not work for you); or, if you prefer, just the slide text.
- Review your notes from Lecture 13.
- Make use of the Lecture 14 recordings (or the backup recordings if the main recordings do not work for you); or, if you prefer, just the slide text.
- Review your notes from Lecture 14.
- Make use of the Week 07 Questions recordings (or the backup recordings if the main recordings do not work for you); or, if you prefer, just the slide text.
- Review your notes from Week 07 Questions.
Not sure what to do with the lectures? Check this guide to using lectures (this is the same each week).
In-Lecture Micro Tasks on Zoxiy
Complete these while studying the recorded lectures, ideally with a partner. Once you have followed the lectures, you will already have done these.
Not sure how to complete the in-lecture micro tasks? Check this guide to the micro tasks (this is the same each week).
Assessed work to submit
- Questions for the take-home exam might be due on Monday of this week, I think.
- Check the deadline on tabula. (Tabula is the only authoritative source for deadlines.)
- Submit your work using tabula.
Please remember that all assessed work will only be marked if you submit it using tabula.
Optional reading from the lectures
These are the readings from this week’s lectures. These are the same as the readings listed in the lecture outlines. You are not required to do any of this reading. You may want to do attempt some of this reading in advance, or you might read it as part of your revision. The only required reading is that associated with the seminar tasks.
- Olson, E. T. (2019). Personal Identity. In Zalta, E. N., editor, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, fall 2019 edition.
- Parfit, D. (1984). Reasons and Persons. Clarendon Press, Oxford.
- Olson, E. T. (1997). The human animal: Personal identity without psychology. Oxford Uni- versity Press, Oxford.
- Olson, E. T. (1997). The human animal: Personal identity without psychology. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
- Shoemaker, D. (2019). Personal Identity and Ethics. In Zalta, E. N., editor, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, winter 2019 edition.
- (hard) Sider, T. (2001). Criteria of Personal Identity and the Limits of Conceptual Analysis. Nouˆs, 35(s15):189–209
- Brand, Bethany L., Vedat Sar, Pam Stavropoulos, Christa Krüger, Marilyn Korzekwa, Alfonso Martínez-Taboas, and Warwick Middleton. ‘Separating Fact from Fiction: An Empirical Examination of Six Myths about Dissociative Identity Disorder’. Harvard Review of Psychiatry 24, no. 4 (2016): 257–70. https://doi.org/10.1097/HRP.0000000000000100.
What the Lectures Cover in Week 08
Lecture 13
Personal Identity: The Question
What is metaphysically necessary for your survival? Or, to put the question as Olson (2019) does, ‘If a person exists at one time and something exists at another time, under what possible circumstances is it the case that the person is the thing?’
Reading (optional): Olson, E. T. (2019). Personal Identity. In Zalta, E. N., editor, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, fall 2019 edition.
--- do 2 micro tasks for this unit
Numerical Identity
What is the question of personal identity a question about? One quite natural suggestion: it is about numerical identity. The question is about the circumstances under which a person at one time is numerically identical to a person at another time. But can this be right? According to David Lewis, Numerical ‘identity is utterly simple and unproblematic.’ If Lewis is right, either there is no problem of personal identity, or, if there is a problem, it is not a problem about numerical identity.
Reading (optional): Olson, E. T. (2019). Personal Identity. In Zalta, E. N., editor, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, fall 2019 edition.
--- do one micro task for this unit
Psychological Continuity
According to psychological continuity views of personal identity, necessarily, a person existing at one time is a person existing at another time if and only if the first mentioned person can, at the first time, remember an experience the second mentioned person has at the second time, or vice versa.
Reading (optional): Parfit, D. (1984). Reasons and Persons. Clarendon Press, Oxford.
Lecture 14
Biological Continuity
According to biological continuity views of personal identity, necessarily, a person existing at one time is a thing existing at another time if and only if the first mentioned person’s biological organism is continuous with the second thing’s biological organism.
Reading (optional): Olson, E. T. (1997). The human animal: Personal identity without psychology. Oxford Uni- versity Press, Oxford.
--- do 2 micro tasks for this unit
Does Identity Matter?
If ‘the relations of practical concerns that typically go along with our identity through time are closely connected with psychological continuity [...], then the Biological Approach does have an interesting ethical consequence, namely that those practical relations are not necessarily connected with numerical identity’ (Olson, 1997 p. 70).
Reading (optional): Olson, E. T. (1997). The human animal: Personal identity without psychology. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Psychological Continuity and Fission
If you could be psychologically continuous with two distinct future individuals (that is, if fission is possible), then psychological continuity views of personal identity cannot be correct.
Reading (optional): Shoemaker, D. (2019). Personal Identity and Ethics. In Zalta, E. N., editor, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, winter 2019 edition.
Conclusion
Lewis was right, ‘Identity is utterly simple and unproblematic’. Or so I claim. But maybe you can show this is wrong.
Reading (optional): (hard) Sider, T. (2001). Criteria of Personal Identity and the Limits of Conceptual Analysis. Nouˆs, 35(s15):189–209
Week 07 Questions
Recording of Whole-Class Live Question Session
The whole-class live online question session in is based on questions on the topic of this weeks’ lectures posed in advance in the teams channel.
Reading (optional): Brand, Bethany L., Vedat Sar, Pam Stavropoulos, Christa Krüger, Marilyn Korzekwa, Alfonso Martínez-Taboas, and Warwick Middleton. ‘Separating Fact from Fiction: An Empirical Examination of Six Myths about Dissociative Identity Disorder’. Harvard Review of Psychiatry 24, no. 4 (2016): 257–70. https://doi.org/10.1097/HRP.0000000000000100.
Not what you were looking for?
There is also ...
- a complete week-by-week guide;
- an outline of lectures;
- an index of weeks;
- links for online seminars;
- a list of seminar tasks on yyrama; and
- the in-lecture micro tasks on zoxiy.
... or go to
- Week 01: Points of View
(5th Oct)
- Week 02: Cognitive Penetration
(12th Oct)
- Week 03: Perception without Awareness?
(19th Oct)
- Week 04: Sense and Reference
(26th Oct)
- Week 05: Action
(2nd Nov)
- Week 07: Action
(16th Nov)
- Week 08: Personal Identity
(23rd Nov)
- Week 09: Induction
(30th Nov)
- Week 10: Revision and Extensions
(7th Dec)