Personal Identity

个人身份

• 批准号: AH/F006020/1
• 负责人: Scott Campbell
• 金额: $ 3.27万
• 依托单位: University of Nottingham
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2008
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2008 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=AH%2FF006020%2F1
• 关键词: Personal; Identity

The issue of personal identity concerns the issue of what constitutes the continued existence of a person over time. Or, to put it another way, in personal identity we seek to provide answers to questions such as 'What makes a person A at time t1 the self-same person as a person B at a later time t2?'.One of the most important contemporary theories of personal identity is known as the psychological criterion. According to the psychological criterion a person's continued existence is constituted by 'psychological continuity'. In other words, B at t2 is the self-same person as A at t1 if enough of B's psychological states are causally related to A's psychological states in the right sort of way.In recent years the psychological criterion has been subject to vigorous attack. Much recent work in personal identity has questioned the adequacy of the psychological criterion's account of the relation between the person you are and human being you also are. The standard version of psychological criterion distinguishes between these two things and takes them to be distinct. They do this because of various thought experiments, such as John Locke's story of the minds of a prince and a cobbler swapping places. The conclusion that modern Lockeans draw from this story is that if it is logically possible that this could happen (even if it is not technically possible), then a person and their body cannot be the same thing. But this raises the question of what is the person, if it is not the same thing as the body or the brain, and if it is not conceived of as a traditional non-physical soul.Most psychological theorists wish to maintain that the person is a physical object of some sort, but as they are committed to the view that the person and body are distinct, they are committed to the apparently counter-intuitive view that two distinct physical objects exist, the person and the body. But how is it that there only appears to be one physical object associated with our existence? Their solution to this is to adopt a 'constitution theory' and claim that although there are two physical objects, they share the same matter and the same space. They are nevertheless distinct, however, because it is possible that one could exist when the other does not.I argue that the psychological criterion is not compatible with the constitution theory. For one thing, according to the psychological criterion the existence conditions of people are psychological, but the existence conditions of physical objects are not. I also point out that the psychological criterion allows that people can 'body-swap', but it does not make sense to suppose that a physical object can body-swap.I develop instead an alternative version of the psychological criterion, according to which a person is a series of mental states and events. I then show that on this theory, that while a person is not literally a substance, a person is nevertheless an entity that exists in a way that is akin to the way that substances exist. Such an entity I call a 'quasi-substance'.I also defend the psychological criterion against a number of objections to it, but I finish by developing a significant new problem for it. Certain influential psychological theorists wish downgrade the importance of continued existence in favour of what they say is 'what matters in survival', which they claim is 'Relation R'. R is defined as being 'psychological connectedness and/or continuity', and they wish to make R, unlike continued existence, a matter of degree. I argue, however, that there are various interpretations of what 'psychological connectedness and/or continuity' mean, and that none of them are consistent with the principle that since what matters in survival is of great significance, whether we have what matters in survival cannot depend on a trivial fact, a principle which is used (and required) by this sort of psychological theorist.

个人身份问题涉及一个构成一个人随着时间的持续存在的问题。或者，以换句话说，在个人身份中，我们寻求对诸如“在以后的时间t1成为一个人成为一个人的人，t2的人？根据心理标准，一个人的持续存在是由“心理连续性”组成的。换句话说，如果B的心理状态与A的心理状态有因果关系，则B AT T2是T1的自我名称。个人身份的最新工作质疑了心理标准对您与人与人类之间关系之间关系的充分性。心理标准的标准版本区分了这两件事，并使它们变得独特。他们之所以这样做，是因为各种思想实验，例如约翰·洛克（John Locke）关于王子的思想和鹅卵石交换场所的故事。现代洛克人从这个故事中得出的结论是，如果从逻辑上讲可能会发生这种情况（即使在技术上不可能），那么一个人及其身体就不可能是同一件事。但这提出了一个问题，即如果它与身体或大脑不同，如果它不是被认为不是传统的非物理灵魂，那么大多数心理理论家都希望坚持认为这个人是某种物理的物体对象，但是当他们致力于个人和身体的观点，它们是独特的，它们是截然不同的物理对象。但是，似乎只有一个物理对象与我们的存在相关联？他们对此的解决方案是采用“宪法理论”，并声称尽管有两个物理对象，但它们共享相同的问题和相同的空间。然而，它们是区别的，因为当另一个人不这样做时，一个人可能存在。我认为心理标准与宪法理论不兼容。一方面，根据心理标准，人们的存在条件是心理的，但是物理对象的存在条件不是。我还指出，心理标准允许人们可以“身体折断”，但是假设物理对象可以身体折断是没有意义的。我开发了心理标准的替代版本，根据该版本，一个人是一个人是一系列的心理状态和事件。然后，我表明，基于这一理论，尽管一个人不是字面上的物质，但一个人仍然是一个以类似于物质存在的方式存在的实体。我称这样的实体为“ Quasi-substance”。我也捍卫了心理标准，以应对许多异议，但我通过为其开发一个重大的新问题来结束。某些有影响力的心理理论家希望降低持续存在的重要性，以支持他们所说的“生存重要的东西”，他们声称这是“关系”。 r被定义为“心理联系和/或连续性”，他们希望使R与持续存在不同，这是一个程度的问题。但是，我认为，对“心理联系和/或连续性的含义”有多种解释，并且它们都不符合这样的原则，即由于生存重要的是重要的意义，我们是否拥有生存重要事实的重要性都不取决于一个琐碎的事实，而是这种心理学理论的使用（和要求），并且需要使用（和要求）。